Eco-Cha Tea Club

The roasted quality is prominent in the initial aroma coming off the leaves after their first steeping. This smoky, cured character is also evident on the palate, but integrated with a complex dried fruit, caramelized quality that gives it a broad flavor profile. It has a tangy/sweet, bold finish that is particularly satisfying.

The first batch of tea that we shared from this plot of Wuyi tea plants was left unroasted, in the fashion of Taiwan's High Mountain Tea. This one is on the other end of the roasting scale, having undergone 6 roasting sessions in total. After being roasted in conventional modern ovens twice, this batch was handed over to a professional charcoal tea roaster. This is all the guy does: roast tea in woven bamboo baskets, using charcoal made from the Longan fruit tree. He does not let anyone into his workshop, and keeps his traditional secrets to himself, which he has been developing for several decades. He also roasted this year's January batch that we shared with our Eco-Cha Tea Club members, which our members have raved about.

There is something about the heady fragrance of this tea combined with its smooth, balanced flavor and substance of character that has us brewing it again and again to figure out what exactly it is that intrigues us. In a word, we keep coming back to this: Heirloom. We can only conclude that this fragrant yet balanced complexity comes from a tea strain that pre-dates modern tea production.

This batch is the very first harvest of a newly planted crop of heirloom Wuyi Oolong that is being cultivated organically. This is a strain of tea that originally comes from the Wuyi Mountains of mainland China, but it was cultivated in Central Taiwan until it was phased out by modern tea production decades ago.

Well, now that we've spent some time getting to know this tea beyond the initial impression it had on us, along with its specs that qualified it as unique batch worthy of sharing with our tea club members, we can offer a closer look into our experience of brewing and enjoying this tea.

Well, the holidays seemed to fly past, with our first two monthly batches of tea we shared with you, and here we are preparing to pack up and ship our third installment of the Eco-Cha Tea Club. As we've described in our Tea Club guidelines, we search for teas that are unique and not offered on the general market (or even in our own store) due to their limited edition, rare batch factor. This month's batch is exciting because it embodies all the main aspects of what Eco-Cha strives to represent. It was cultivated on a residential farm, it's a small harvest, it was processed using traditional methods, and it was naturally cultivated. All this adds up to sustainable practice in preserving the local specialty tea industry by providing tea lovers with what you want — quality, interesting tea. Once again, we feel both privileged and proud to be able to do so. 

Sitting down at the tea table with a fresh clean slate of an open mind, we brewed a Gongfu pot of Dong Ding Tieguanyin Oolong. We focused on noting the character, flavors and aromatic essences that we experienced in brewing the leaves of this unique batch of tea. The character of a tea can first be experienced in the aroma that wafts from the initial steeping. It offered a ripe-fruit, hearty, sweet aroma.

Dong Ding Tieguanyin Oolong — Never Heard Of It? Neither have we. That's why it's the first choice of the recent winter's harvest for January's Eco-Cha Tea Club. We've given it the name Dong Ding Tieguanyin Oolong simply because it is the first crop of Tieguanyin tea trees being cultivated and crafted in the heart of Dong Ding Oolong Country. Planted less than five years ago, and harvested in the last two, this is a batch of tea that we are genuinely thrilled about. Not only because of its uniqueness, but primarily because of how it tastes.