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Iced tea made from quality loose leaf tea leaves is not only extremely refreshing, but it's literally a 1-2-3 step process to prepare! Read on as we share with you four easy to make loose leaf iced tea recipes to beat the summer heat!

Spring is classically the best quality stock of any given year. So it is no surprise at all that it is more flavorful than the summer crop. This is as it should be, given that it costs almost twice as much. So in the end, the value of summer tea wins vs. its cost. It is a prime quality High Mountain Tea from a source we have come to rely on almost solely for our Alishan High Mountain Oolong. And the price is hard to beat. So if you are looking for an everyday drinker that is really quite good quality, this batch is for you!

At long last, the month of June has been replete with rainy weather here in Taiwan. Taiwan's rainy season, poetically referred to as "Plum Rains", has saved us from the drought that had reached crisis conditions!

This year's second crop of Alishan High Mountain Jin Xuan Oolong began to be harvested last week, before rains that lasted several days. Then resumed earlier this week. We first visited our primary source of Alishan High Mountain Tea to taste their first two days of summer harvest. 

Above is our choice pick of spring tea from our source of Wenshan Baozhong Tea. It was a surprisingly smooth process of choosing which day's harvest we wanted. At first, when we walked in and saw his tea table maxed out with 10 bowls of  pre-brewed tea, and were invited to taste them and choose which one we want, it was rather intimidating!

Here's a quick round-up of how our spring 2021 sourcing turned out. You can check the product pages of any of our teas for details and browse our blog as well! All hail Taiwan Tea!

We are so happy to have been able to show up at the spring harvest time of our Li Shan High Mountain Oolong to really get a sense of what was happening, and also to have first dibs on the day's harvest that we saw being processed. So grateful!

We went up to film on the first day of spring harvest by our source of Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Oolong Tea. The early morning was sunny, but the fog rolled in early, and we were socked in by noon, diminishing our aspirations for getting lots of scenic drone footage! But this is representative of the daily weather — particularly in this micro-climate of a ravine that faces northeast. 

Our friend chose to only use one pot, or tumble heater, for the fixing stage. This would make it a slower and more relaxed tea making session, while allowing the leaves that were picked later in the day to oxidize more — resulting in a more uniformly cured batch of tea.

The photo above shows new leaf growth at the optimal growth stage for harvest, particularly given this year's drought conditions. Normally, the leaves would be a bit larger. But the most essential factor is that there is sufficient new leaf growth that is still in its vibrant growth stage. This is most obviously indicated by pert V-shape contour of the newest growth. The leaves lower down on the newly sprouted branches will eventually flatten out, and settle into their more "permanent" vegetation stage. It's the new,  vibrant leaves that are mature enough to have substance, but tender enough to be optimal raw material for premium Alishan High Mountain Oolong Tea.

The Chairman of Taiwan's Department of Agriculture made an appearance in our neighborhood (Zhushan) to conduct a field survey of the impact drought conditions have made on crops of spring tea. The Tea Research and Extension Station reported that yield is down 30-50% from average at lower elevations, and higher elevations are not much better.

A lot of care and know-how goes into the making of fine artisan teas here in Taiwan, and the same can be said about the packaging of tea. Ever wonder how tea is packaged? The local packaging services in tea producing regions are all family-run businesses. In acknowledgement of their important role, we wanted to show you one and how they package tea.