Are you turning into a bear?<< Test First Name >>, winter is such a testing time for anyone who wants to stay healthy and fit.

Don’t you want to eat, curl up and drift into a blissful sleep?

I know I do!

And heavier food seems like a necessity.

But after a heavy meal, there’s nothing nicer than a soothing cup of hot tea. Besides being a tasty, warming pick-me-up, tea has lots of wonderful health benefits.

Of all tea, I drink WuYi oolong most in winter.

Its “masculine” taste makes me feel grounded, and its power to cut through the grease, to calm my digestion hence help me to repent my overeating sin is nothing short of a small miracle!

And you might not have thought about this, but we folks in Australia are really lucky when it comes to tea drinking in winter.

While we are “enjoying” the wintering chills here in Australia, over in the northern hemisphere, it is the beginning of the hot summer while many tea farmers are busy preparing the new season tea from spring harvest.

You see, from April to June, it is when typically most teas are produced for the year. This harvest usually produces the nicest tea to drink.

In India and Sri Lanka, fresh black tea is made while in China, great green tea like Long Jing is being harvested (their best harvest is in early May)

What I like most is Oolong – and the spring harvest is here!

So have you tried oolong? No? Well you are in the right place. Let me tell you I never thought much about oolong until I tried “real” oolong about 10 years ago.

As a Chinese born in Hong Kong, tea was in my blood, but I also had to admit, oolong, besides having an interesting name (oolong means black dragon), it never really striked me as something I must try.

I recalled the first time I had oolong, it was in a typical Chinese restaurant having a typical Yum Cha Chinese breakfast. The taste was a bit roasty, and the brew smelled a bit burnt.

I pretty much wrote off Oolong until I started working with tea some 10 years ago. Our Taiwanese tea supplier insisted for me to try oolong, so I thought, what would be the harm, get to know what’s in the market, right?

I must tell you I had a complete change in the way I felt about oolong from that first cup on.

In fact, that night after I had that cup of oolong, I was thinking about it the whole night – I could taste it in my mouth, that fragrant, soothing  “sensation”….it was like Kylie’s tune “can’t get you out of my head” replayed again and again!

A good oolong is addictive! Watch out!

So now I am a total convert to Oolong.

From soothing a grumbling tummy to calming a troubled mind, a cup of oolong tea have all sorts of healing powers, sometimes almost seems magical!

Oolong is also a great way to shape up according to some celebs.

But most of all, I just love the great varieties of oolong to suit different mood and food, from green tea like Formosa Oolong to robust black tea like Wuyi ShuiXian.