Batch 99 of theEco-Cha Tea Clubis a Traditional Lugu Oolong Tea from Yonglong Village in the Lugu Township, Taiwan. The Fenghuang/Yonglong community is along a ridge that runs adjacent to Dong Ding Mountain. This community is home to the densest population of artisan Oolong Tea makers on the island, and is considered to be the heart of traditional Oolong Tea culture in Taiwan. Shown above are father and son from a family of tea farmers. This month's batch of tea was harvested from this plot along with another small plot that were initially planted on their family land decades ago.
Ying Xiang Small Leaf Black Tea was selected to share with the Eco-Cha Tea Club mainly because we feel it is an exemplary Small Leaf Black Tea from Taiwan. You can learn about the background of this tea in our sourcing blogpost. Ying Xiang is the name in Mandarin that was given to this cultivar which means "Alluring Fragrance". The leaves from this tea tree offer a distinctly aromatic brew that sets it apart from the other popular Taiwanese tea cultivars.
Batch 85 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is the 7th anniversary commemoration of Eco-Cha's cooperation with Mr. and Mrs. Lin. Seven years ago as of this winter's harvest, Mr. and Mrs. Lin produced their very first crop of certified organic tea from their newly established farm. In support of their endeavor, we ran a crowd funding campaign to procure the entire inaugural harvest. After reaching our initial goal, we ran a booster campaign to raise funds for the renovation of the cabin on their remote homesteaded farmland where Mr. Lin was born and raised.
Batch 84 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Red Jade #18 Black Tea from the historical Sun Moon Lake tea growing region of Taiwan. This cultivar, given the name Red Jade (紅玉) is registered as hybrid #18 by Taiwan's Tea Research and Extension Station. You can learn all about its background in our recentblogpost, but this Black Tea hybrid strain is unique to Taiwan, and was "born" in the 20th century. It has become quite popular over the last 20 years since it was first commercially introduced in the early 2000's.
Batch 83 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is an Alishan Small Leaf Type Black Tea made by our source of Alishan High Mountain Oolong and Alishan High Mountain Jin Xuan Oolong. They picked some of their Jin Xuan summer crop when it was still immature. These young tender leaves from the second flush (summer crop) are ideal for making Black Tea. Jin Xuan is the name of Taiwan's most popular hybrid small leaf type tea.
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 81 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a first for us! A very minimal spring yield of organically grown Wuyi cultivar was processed by our source of Tie Guan Yin Oolong in the way that he usually makes tea. He planted his own plot of the Wuyi cultivar about 20 years ago on his family heritage farm in Muzha, Taiwan — but it has not been available to us until this spring. We've procured his Fo Shou Oolong before, but not his Wuyi. So, as we approach the completion of our eighth year of the Tea Club, we are excited to share a batch of tea that we've just sourced for the first time ever!
Batch 81 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is an Wuyi Tie Guan Oolong from Muzha, Taiwan. It was made from the spring flush of this small, naturally farmed 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 first opportunity we've had to procure his Tie Guan Yin Tea made from the Wuyi cultivar. His spring crop produced less than 20 kg of cured leaf. That's literally the smallest batch of Oolong that we've ever heard of!
This month's edition of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Competition Grade Wenshan Baozhong Tea made from spring 2022 harvest. This batch won an award in the local competition, although not as prestigious as last spring's entry — which won Top Category Prize (within the top 2 % of all entries). Our friend from whom we source this tea said that the tea judge was a newbie, and it's hard to know how they will rate the teas.
Batch 80 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Competition Grade Wenshan Baozhong Tea from spring 2022 harvest. We sourced this batch at the same time we sourced our in store stock of spring Baozhong. While were tasting the different days of harvest, our friend told us that he will enter this batch into the local competition. We promptly asked if he had enough to share with us, and he did!
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!
