Batch 119 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is an Wuyi Tie Guan Oolong from Muzha, Taiwan. It was made from the first flush of a small plot of the Wuyi cultivar, and processed in the traditional Muzha Tie Guan Yin fashion by our ongoing source of Tie Guan Yin Oolong Tea. This is the second opportunity we've had to procure his Tie Guan Yin Tea made from the Wuyi cultivar. This spring 2025 batch of Wuyi Tie Guan Yin Oolong Tea amounted to less than 20 kg of cured leaf.  All the time, energy, and cost that went into such a minimal amount of tea is nothing less than ludicrous in the eyes of most tea makers. This tea farmer and master craftsman is an anomaly in our 25 years of exploring tea culture here in Taiwan. The photo above is him in front of his wall of awards he achieved.

Our friend from whom we've been sourcing very small batches of Tie Guan Yin Oolong Tea for many years embodies the tradition like no one else we've met. He procures small batches of raw leaf material, and once the leaves are on his bamboo trays of his dollhouse sized factory, does virtually all the work himself. His curing methods take twice as long as standard Oolong Tea processing, and are more labor intensive. Particularly the rolling technique he uses is a relic of past generations. Much smaller balls of leaf wrapped in cloth, rolled in much a much more labor intensive fashion. It doesn't stop there though. He then roasts the leaves 4 or 5 times over weeks of time for a total of about 40 hours!

The Wuyi cultivar was widely cultivated through the 1980's in Taiwan, but it has become quite rare in the last 20 years or so. For the most part, it has been replaced by much more prolific cultivars, such as Jin Xuan and Four Seasons Spring. In our experience, Wuyi has the most to offer of all small leaf type cultivars in its aromatic and flavor profile across a broad spectrum of processing methods. Over the last ten years of the Eco-Cha Tea Club, we've offered it as a lightly oxidized unroasted Oolong, a heavily roasted Oolong, and an organic Black Tea. This is the second chance we have to offer this classic cultivar as a Tie Guan Yin Oolong made in the local tradition of Muzha, Taiwan. 

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