While sipping on a Darjeeling SFTGFOP I picked up while away, I realized that I get asked a decent amount of questions about Darjeeling being a black tea or an oolong, and what the all those letters after the black tea stand for.

Darjeeling seems to almost have an identity crisis of sorts, as it’s traditionally called a black tea, but in certain circles it is also referred to as an Oolong tea. Now it seems that in most cases of Darjeeling tea in its traditional sense, the proper term would be oolong, as Darjeeling tea tends to be oxidized slightly less than black tea, which of course would put it squarely in the oolong category. Yet, to me it seems this is the tea world’s version of “is a Tomato a fruit or a vegetable?” The answer is in the end it only matters to a very few people that wish to be exacting, or it is their job to know. But to the tea world, and to me, I will always consider a classically prepared Darjeeling to be a black tea, as it best matches the flavor characteristics of black tea, and lacks certain things like roasting which is common to many oolong teas.

As for the rating system, the OP on the end stands for Orange Pekoe, orange as in the Dutch house of Orange, and does not mean the tea has been scented or flavored with oranges in anyway. Pekoe is up for debate as to where it actually originated from, while every single letter before that has a specific meaning, it was once explained to me that the last 4 letters tell you basically everything you need to know, while the rest of the system has been people adding on additional letters in front just to make it sound better. But Wikipedia has a great description of how to transcribe what looks like no more than someone banging out random letters on a keyboard.

This might shed some light on if your morning cup of Darjeeling is really a black tea, or what that long string of letters means that no one can really ever figure out. But in the end, I hardly seem to care about those little details, as I let the tea speak for itself.

–Adam Yusko