Eco-Cha Tea Club
Competition Grade Wenshan Baozhong Tea | Eco-Cha Tea Club
Batch #55 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is an award-winning Wenshan Baozhong Tea that was entered in the recent spring tea competition of the local Farmers' Association. Preparation for competition involves removing the bulkier stems from the leaves, and also sorting the leaves by coloration to achieve the most uniform stock of leaf material possible.
Honey Hong Shui Oolong Tea | Eco-Cha Tea Club
This month's batch #54 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Honey Hong Shui Oolong Tea sourced from our friends who have provided our Dong Ding Oolong Tea and our Small Leaf Black Tea in recent years. They also made Batch #33 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club which we shared in August 2018. Batch #33 was similar to this month's batch in that they were both made with the help of the Green Leafhopper.
Traditional Lugu Oolong Tea Tasting Notes | Eco-Cha Tea Club
Batch #52 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club brings us back to our roots of local tea culture— since our introduction to Taiwanese tea began in Lugu, way back in 1993! Both the source of this tea and its flavor profile invoke those memories of our early days here in Taiwan.
Traditional Lugu Oolong Tea | Eco-Cha Tea Club
Mr. Zhang's father cultivated tea on their homesteaded land in Xiaobantian, on the southside of Lugu Township, where he grew up in the midst of traditional tea making. At 20 something, Mr. Zhang decided to embody his local tradition by clearing his uncle's yet-to-be farmed land to cultivate his own plot of tea higher up and deeper into the mountains.
Light Roast Yushan High Mountain Oolong Tea Tasting Notes | Eco-Cha Tea Club
The leaves brew an exceptionally substantial, smooth, balanced tea with a very satisfying savory/sweet profile. The brewed leaves put forth fresh, buttery green leafy aromatic notes, like sauteed Swiss Chard. The tea is viscous, with an evenly balanced complexity of warming spices and unrefined sugary notes — cardamom, palm sugar, and butternut squash come to mind.
Light Roast Yushan High Mountain Oolong Tea | Eco-Cha Tea Club
Batch #51 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club was sourced from an organic High Mountain Oolong Tea farm located at the trailhead to Taiwan's highest peak — Yushan, or Jade Mountain. This plot of tea is situated high up in a gorge that is the source Dong Pu Hot Springs.
Alishan High Mountain Tea Tasting Notes | Eco-Cha Tea Club
Batch #50 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club starts off 2020 with a freshly harvested Alishan High Mountain Oolong Winter Tea from our ongoing source in Meishan Township. This very small batch of tea was their final day of winter harvest. The leaves were not yet fully mature, and offer a fresh, distinctly aromatic and complex flavor profile.
Alishan High Mountain Oolong Tea | Eco-Cha Tea Club
The photo above is this month's batch of the Eco-Cha Tea Club undergoing solar withering on November 11, 2019. This was the final day of winter harvest for our source of Alishan High Mountain Oolong Tea, and we were able to procure enough of this very minimal batch to share with our Tea Club. This date was 3 days after Li Dong (立冬) in the lunar calendar, and the winter harvest of High Mountain Tea had for the most part been completed in central Taiwan.
Charcoal Roasted Honey Oolong Tea | Eco-Cha Tea Club
his month's batch of tea is from a crop of naturally culitvated Jin Xuan harvested in the summer of 2017. The leaves were significantly affected by the Green Leafhopper and other pests, so they were stunted and gnarled and far from the standard of quality that is commonly followed. But as our friend who sourced the raw leaves and processed them using traditional Oolong Tea making methods once told us "I'm more interested in odd and unusual tea!" (我現在比較喜歡奇奇怪怪的茶!).
Alishan High Mountain Black Tea | Eco-Cha Tea Club
Batch #48 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is an Alishan High Mountain Black Tea. Our source of Alishan High Mountain Oolong and Alishan High Mountain Jin Xuan Oolong makes Black Tea from his summer crop of Qing Xin Oolong tea leaves. The summer crop is actually a bumper crop from their spring harvest. The new leaf growth that was too immature to pick at spring harvest is allowed to continue growing to at least half maturity before it is harvested and processed as Small Leaf Black Tea.
Tieguanyin Light Roast Oolong Tea Tasting Notes | Eco-Cha Tea Club
Batch #46 of the Eco-Cha Tea Club is a Tieguanyin Light Roast Oolong Tea from Yonglong Village in Lugu, Taiwan. The leaves were harvested in June from a plot of heirloom Tieguanyin tea plants. They were cured in the local traditional fashion of Oolong Tea making. The leaves are at least 40% oxidized, and were roasted for about 14 hours.
Tieguanyin Light Roast Oolong Tea | Eco-Cha Tea Club
The father, now in his mid-70's, planted a plot of "small leaf Tieguanyin" cultivar on his family land in Yonglong Village, Lugu over 30 years ago. A tea merchant promised to procure this tea on a seasonal basis. He was one of the first to plant this heirloom Tieguanyin strain in central Taiwan. It had previously only been cultivated in northern Taiwan, with deep roots in strains brought from China hundreds of years ago.