This is the first photo we took to document our winter tea shopping spree. We had already visited Mr. Zheng (sitting next to Andy) in his home several days before, and picked up samples of Li Shan High Mountain Oolong Tea harvested between Oct 8-Oct 11. He went back up to Li Shan for one final day of harvest on the 17th. We then met at our local packaging store on Oct 19 to retrieve our pick of choice from his samples from four days of harvest, as well as four samples from our previous go-to source. We chose the very first day of harvest on Oct 8 from Mr. Zheng. We then sat down and tasted the recent days of Li Shan harvest together. Mr. Zheng was partners with the former boss of our packaging store who passed away several years ago. We used to source Da Yu Ling tea from him. His wife, serving tea, continues the family business with her daughter.
Ms. Liu, serving tea above, brewed her recent procurements from the Li Shan area. One of them brewed a darker hued tea, and had a bit more oxidized and slightly muddled flavor. Mr. Zheng asked her to brew it a second and third time in order to see the color of the brews. Sure enough, it brewed slightly lighter than the first brew, which is not usually the case. He said this indicates that the leaves were not thoroughly dried at the end of the final rolling and drying stage of processing. He said that he will take the leaves back to the factory to put them through the conveyor belt dryer again. He explained that this condition is in contrast to the other most likely cause of brewing a darker hue with subtle "impurities", which is when the moisture is not properly depleted from the leaves during the initial withering stages. The water content in the leaves needs to be slowly and steadily depleted through timely cycles of withering and shuffling. If this is not properly implemented, the effects are basically irreversible. That was a valuable take away from that tea session!
We met Mr. Zheng in the factory in Li Shan a couple of years ago, and quickly became friends. He also lives in Nantou County, not far from us. So we've had the chance to visit occasionally and have learned a lot from him about the micro-industry of Li Shan tea production. We have aspirations of making a short documentary of his career in order to represent the tea professionals that bring us some of Taiwan's finest!
Next on our winter harvest schedule was a relatively early harvest of our Dong Ding Oolong Tea. The photo above features Phoenix Mountain looming in the distance behind Phoenix Village. This mountain ridge that runs adjacent to Dong Ding Mountain is the most densely populated community of traditional Oolong Tea makers on Taiwan. Virtually every family in this community has someone in their clan who is still making tea, even though the population of tea artisans has atrophied in the last 20 year or more. We have known our source for at least 20 years, but have finally begun cooperating in the last five years or so. Initially, he didn't have enough produce to take us on as an ongoing customer. But in recent years, he's leased neighboring plots of tea from retired farmers, and we have been sourcing our Dong Ding Oolong Tea from him ever since.
We visit this home more than any other source of tea by far. We bring samples of tea that we collect on a seasonal basis from other tea regions to come brew and assess them together. We always show up when Mr. Chen is harvesting his own crops to help out, to observe, and to learn what Oolong Tea is all about. We also source our Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Tea from Mr. Chen, who processes his high mountain crops in a larger factory nearby. Phoenix Village is our stomping ground when it comes to showing up in farmers' homes and in the factories. We are quite pleased with the winter crop. This year we've procured the most tea from Mr. Chen to date!
Next, we found ourselves in the factory of our Wenshan Baozhong Tea — way up north in the Pinglin District of the greater Taipei area! The photo above portrays the biggest lesson we learned on our two visits to the factory over a couple days. Those leaves have already been through the tumble heating/ kill green stage of processing! Their appearance shows that they still maintain a signficant amount of moisture in the leaves. This is in contrast to common practice in central Taiwan.
This batch of relatively mature leaf material was being processed in preparation for making Tie Guan Yin Oolong Tea. These two tea types are on opposite ends of the spectrum of partially oxidized tea. Wenshan Baozhong is not referred to as "Oolong", but it is partially oxidized. The contemporary most widely used definition of Oolong is any tea that is partially oxidized. So Baozhong Tea is a type of Oolong Tea in this sense, and it is considered to be one of least oxidized "Oolong" teas. Tie Guan Yin Oolong Tea is a well-oxidized, heavy-roast Oolong Tea — hence on the opposite side of the Oolong/partially oxidized spectrum.
Soon after we met our source of Muzha Tie Guan Yin Oolong Tea over ten years ago, we asked him if he knew any Baozhong Tea makers. He told us that he sources leaf material for making Tie Guan Yin from a Wenshan Baozhong Tea craftsman in Pinglin. The rest is history! These two tea makers have proven to be just the kind of people we like to support!
Back to the lesson learned! Upon first arriving at the factory, they were literally putting the final tray of tea leaves into the tumble heater, after the leaves had slowly wilted, withered, and eventually began to oxidize over a 20 hour stretch of processing. This day of harvest was being made into Wenshan Baozhong Tea. the leaves were much less mature, tender, and supple. What struck us was the difference in tumble heating methods in comparison with Oolong Tea making commonly followed in central Taiwan. The leaves were simply brought up to temperature in the tumble heaters, but not depleted of moisture even nearly to the extent that traditionally made oolongs and high mountain tea leaves are in the tumble heating step. This is significant for several reasons, but that would take a chapter in a book, or a weekend seminar to fully convey! So suffice it to say that variations in tea processing methods exist among regional traditions!
After we visited the Baozhong Tea maker a second time, we stopped by our source of Tie Guan Yin Oolong not far away. He harvested a small plot of Jin Xuan Tai Cha #12 and processed it in his miniature home tea factory (which BTW, is the coolest factory ever, IMHO!). We can see from the photo above that he was paying more attention to the oxidation process, and bringing the level of moisture depletion to a more thorough and uniform degree.
To bring our winter 2026 harvest travel log up to date, in the last few days, we drove out to the Alishan tea growing region in search of our winter bounty. Above is a roadside snapshot of the majestic Ta Shan, or Tower Mountain. It's a sacred mountain for the Tsou tribe of indigenous Taiwanese. We were on our way to the Ruifeng/Ruili tea producing communities to visit our ongoing sources. The weather patterns have not been very conducive to producing an abundant winter crop. There was too much rain at the end of August, followed by no rain through September and most of October. This results in a stunted and less uniform crop of newly sprouted tea leaves.
Although this crop of new growth that our primary source harvested a week ago looks nice and uniform, it was a bit immature, or just not fully grown, evidently due to the lack of rain over the last month or more. The crop produced a quality tea, but it was oxidized a bit more than we like to represent. So we continued our search.
We visited this factory twice in the last three days. The winter yield is really proving to be scarce. This doesn't mean that there isn't good tea being produced, there is just very little of it. So the more in-demand sources are challenged with trying to meet the demands of their long term clientele. This factory is exemplary. This photo was taken on our first visit two days ago. We went back today, and felt the tension of the situation. It's not easy work. But this team of craftsmen is solid and just rolls with it. We are happy to say that we procured more than half of our winter stock that will need to provide us with tea to offer until next May! We are going back up to this area the day after tomorrow to continue our scouting out of quality winter leaf!
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