Eco-Cha Tea Club

This batch of Dragon Boat Green Tea was harvested on the fifth day of fifth month in the Chinese Lunar Calendar. It is believed that the hours between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. pm this day are when the Yang Energy is strongest in the Lunar Year. Traditional custom holds this to be the ideal time to collect mountain spring water to be used for its beneficial effects in removing "dampness" from the body, as interpreted by Traditional Chinese Medicine. Our friend Mr. Chen innovated upon this traditional concept to harvest tea leaves at this time, as it is considered an overall atmospheric phenomenon.

When we recently sat down at this farmer's tea table and were served this tea for the first time, we truly felt like it may be the best Black Tea we've ever tasted. It's incredibly rich and smooth yet also carries a complexity and vibrant character that is unique in our experience. The fact that we have been offered the first substantial crop from this newly planted organic plot of heirloom Wuyi Oolong tea only months after we procured our first batch of Wuyi ever from a nearby farm has us very excited! This is living proof that local tea growers in this are reclaiming their heritage for producing specialty teas. And this farmer is an anomaly in his farming practice. Not only is he pioneering farming methods that we have never seen or heard of in Taiwan before. He is also producing some unique and superior batches of tea.

If this were a live conversation, we'd be yapping away in a flurry of excitable acclamations about our recent discovery of an early spring harvest of tea leaves from very young crop of organically grown Wuyi Oolong tea trees. Because it was a minimal crop of young spring leaves, the farmer decided to make them into Black Tea. This is also an anomaly of a spring harvest from a traditional Oolong Tea strain. Making Black Tea is more time consuming and labor intensive. So, when it is a privately run farm like this one that is completely managed and run by a husband and wife couple, the harvests need to be small. And this is why are so wound up.

The Farmers' Associations in the Alishan region have adjusted their competition standards in recent years from a very green, unroasted quality to a slightly mellowed, more balanced, full-bodied and minimally roasted quality. In our experience, when Qing Xin Oolong leaves cultivated at sufficient elevation (beginning at 1100m) and processed with skill and attention to achieve optimal oxidation, they are brought to their potential in quality and substance. These sufficiently oxidized leaves are further cured by a delicate roasting that brings out more subtle flavors and offers a mild, yet complex and exceptionally balanced brew.

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.

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.