Eco-Cha Tea Club

Batch 79 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Roasted Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Oolong Tea. As explained in the sourcing 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!

Pictured above is the Little Green Leafhopper (小綠葉蟬), the tiny insect that is responsible for the creation of Concubine Oolong Tea. It's a bit of Nature's magic at work. Only about 0.5 cm in length, this "mini grasshopper" loves to feed on the sap of tender tea leaf buds. Bug-bitten Tea (as it is called in Taiwanese), has a distinct honey-like note in its flavor profile. Concubine Tea is made from bug-bitten tea leaves that are processed in a similar fashion to traditional Dong Ding Oolong Tea. The name was chosen in reference to the original, or at least the most renowned form of bug-bitten tea — Oriental Beauty.

The leaves shown above were harvested in the Shanlinxi High Mountain Tea growing region last spring, and have undergone 8 separate roasting sessions. The first three preliminary roastings were done in a conventional oven in preparation for the traditional method of using charcoal made from the Longan fruitwood. 

The leaves in the image above have undergone 8 separate roastings over a few months, for a total roasting time of about 50 hours. Our friend first prepared his tea leaves for charcoal roasting by roasting them 3 times in a conventional oven roaster at low temperature of 80 -100°C. This provides a "base" roasting level that the charcoal roasting can proceed from more efficiently. The leaves were then handed over to a specialized charcoal roaster who charges a standard fee, regardless of how many roastings are needed to achieve the desired results. In this case, it was 5 roasting sessions of incrementally increasing heat, starting from about 90° and finishing at 120°.

Less than 60kg of tea leaves were cured from this early summer harvest. This is a small fraction of the leaves produced for a conventional High Mountain Oolong Tea from the summer crop. But given the fact that the quality of Black Tea made from this harvest is exemplary rather than an inferior harvest of High Mountain Oolong, and it maximizes the potential of the following fall and winter harvests, it is the wisest choice of high elevation tea production. This sustainable approach to world-class tea production, combined with the fact that this is perhaps the finest batch of Black Tea that we have procured to date is why we chose it to share with our Tea Club members.

In the wake of a wave of specialty Black Tea popularity in Taiwan that began with the production and promotion of Red Jade #18 Black Tea about 15 years ago, high elevation Oolong Tea farmers have recently been modifying their seasonal production methods to become more sustainable. Initially, high mountain tea farming methods were based on annual yield — timing the growing seasons and harvests to reap the largest possible annual volume. This basically meant harvesting four times a year, despite the shorter growing seasons at higher elevations. We've listened to many tea farmers relate how it is becoming harder to time these seasonal harvests due to increasingly inconsistent weather patterns over the last several years. This has led to the concept of "three and a half" harvests per year. This "half harvest" is where the recent invention of high elevation Black Tea production comes into play.