We are excited to announce that our freshly picked fall 2026 harvest of Li Shan High Mountain Oolong Tea is from a new source that we just met earlier this year. We've learned quite a bit this year regarding the Li Shan tea growing region, and it's all a result of showing up in the factory during harvest and politely being present to the scene at hand. Our on site education on this region started more than ten years ago, and it still feels like we are just beginning to gain a comprehensive understanding of Taiwan's highest elevation, most remote, and most challenging tea producing region.
Without going into bibliographic detail on the history our Li Shan education, we'll focus on the current scene. We made the four hour plus journey over mountain roads twice during this year's spring harvest. The first visit was brief, but significant. We met a local tea producer of indigenous descent who we visited again on our second visit a week later. This was the start of a new connection that has already come to fruition in the opportunity to offer superior produce directly from a local resident with full transparency. This is the core aspect of our mission: To represent the local producers with a personal family history in the industry. We can confidently proclaim that the best of Taiwan's Tea producers have their act together. Nobody does it better, it's true. We are humbly inspired to represent their wolrd-class expertise. That's it in a nutshell.
We learned that this guy was one of two local residents to establish tea gardens at this location above the indigenous village located at the 74K marker along the Cross-Central Route (that has been mostly closed since the 9/21/1999 earthquake). Previously, Li Shan Tea was further up the road, starting at the 80+K marker. And this is one aspect of the relative sustainability of farm use at high elevations. The plot of tea above is at 2100m elevaton. We'll save that story for a future blogpost with all the detials. But for now, this farm is family land that was repurposed from pre-existing fruit farms over 20 years ago, and now is a fully functional operation that has expanded the availability of Li Shan Tea in a more accessible economic bracket.
We are most inspired about the down to earth first conversation we had in our first meeting last spring, and all the interactions since then. There is just no falderal. Our communication has been easy and real. It's truly a local's vibe in the sense that they know they have a better bio story to relate than everybody else up in Li Shan who has made great efforts and investments to be there. So, the moral of the story, perhaps, is that when you hang about long enough in the venues for which you have respect and admiration, doors open. Once again we are privileged, proud, and grateful for this role.
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