Batch 110 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Qi Lai Shan High Mountain Tea from winter 2024 harvest. In short, this batch of tea embodies what has made Taiwan's High Mountain Tea world famous. It brews a substantial, balanced, complex, aromatic cup of tea that leaves an impression with each sip. Flowery, savory, creamy, and pastry notes all integrate into an extremely satisfying flavor profile.
Batch 110 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Qi Lai Shan High Mountain Oolong Tea from winter 2024 harvest. We wanted a fresh, yet substantial character of tea to bring in the new year, and this winter crop of High Mountain Tea embodies what we were looking for — including its source. We first met Mr. Xu several years ago at Taiwan's Nantou Global Tea Expo, and were impressed by the tea he offered, as well as his manner of representing it. He had a depth of sincerity and intent that made us want to learn more about him and his work in tea.
Batch 100 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Light Roast High Mountain Oolong Tea from the Shan Lin Xi high mountain tea growing region, fall 2023 harvest. It was a good harvest overall in the Shan Lin Xi region, and this batch really spoke to our tea mentor Lisa Lin, who ended up buying the whole day's harvest!
Batch 96 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a High Mountain Concubine Oolong Tea from the Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Tea growing region shown above. Our mentor Lisa Lin procured this batch of bug bitten tea from her friend in Lugu, Taiwan following last fall 2022 harvest. She roasted it three times over several months time. We tasted it a few months ago in Lisa's home and immediately asked if we could procure enough to share with our tea club, and she happily obliged. It's an exemplary batch of Concubine Oolong Tea!
Batch 95 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Lishan High Mountain Oolong Tea, harvested in early August. This second flush of Qing Xin Oolong strain grown at 2000m elevation represents the "gao leng", (which loosely translates as "alpine") style of tea from the northern borders of Taiwan's High Mountain Tea growing regions.
Batch 82 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Li Shan High Mountain Oolong Tea, second flush of 2022. The weather during the spring growing season that produced the first flush remained unusually cool, resulting in a slower growth cycle that produced a character of tea that was a mix of winter and spring qualities. The weather during the second flush growing period was a combination of spring and summer weather at high elevation. This produced leaves that acted like second flush, but also carried aromatic and flavor notes that are similar to a classic spring first flush.
The Eco-Cha Tea Club is mostly about finding an unusually distinct batch of tea that is not generally available on the market, we also make an effort to maintain variability in the monthly editions — with the goal of continually offering a different character of tea from month to month. Furthermore, we want to offer Taiwan's renowned specialty teas that are the best of their kind — in the world. Batch 82 is one of these representative Taiwan Oolong Teas: Li Shan High Mountain Oolong Tea.
Batch 79 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Roasted Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Oolong Tea. As explained in thesourcing post, this batch is the roasted version of Eco-Cha's winter 2021 stock of Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Oolong. We were inspired to dedicate our reserve stock of Shan Lin Xi winter tea to the the Tea Club, upon learning that our friend achieved Top Category Award in the world's largest and most prestigious Oolong Tea competition! So we asked him to roast our stock just how he roasted his competition tea — which increased its value about 5 times of the original unroasted version!
Batch 79 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Roasted Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Oolong Tea. It is the roasted version of our winter 2021 batch we offered in our store. Our friend from whom we sourced this tea submitted a single entry from this same harvest into the Lugu Farmers' Association Dong Ding Oolong Tea Competition and achieved Top Category Award (shown above). When our friend told us this exciting news, we asked him if we could hire his services to roast our reserve stock the same way he roasted his top award winning tea. So this month's edition of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is from the same harvest and roasted the same way as the tea that ranked within the top 2% out of over 5000 entries.
Batch 76 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Lalashan Light Roast High Mountain Oolong Tea, winter 2021 harvest. When we tasted the freshly picked and cured tea in the farmer's home, we appreciated the full-bodied, balanced character of it, although it was still slightly "muddled" due to the remaining moisture content in the leaves. This moisture was locked in the stem material — which was plentiful. So we decided to have the stems removed and do a light roasting to bring the leaves to what we perceived as their fullest potential.
Batch 76 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a first for us, in the sense that we have never sourced tea from the Lalashan region before. Lalashan is the northernmost high elevation tea growing area on the island of Taiwan, and has a significantly colder and usually wetter climate than all other regions. Snowfall on Taiwan's High Mountain Tea farms is a rare occasion. In fact, only a small portion of Taiwan tea farms have ever seen snow. We share this image to represent the location and climate in the Lalashan that sets it apart. The photo above was taken in 2016.
Batch 73 begins our seventh year of the Eco-Cha Tea Club, and we get to celebrate the occasion with a type of tea we've never sourced before. It's a soothing, delicate, yet full-bodied character of tea that combines a classic top quality Alishan High Mountain Jin Xuan Oolong with fresh Osmanthus flowers. The intrinsically pronounced creamy character of the Alishan Jin Xuan infused with the essence of Osmanthus flowers offers an exceptionally soft and satisfying flavor profile.
