Hey tea friends, I’ve got some bad news. We couldn’t find any good batches of Lishan autumn tea this year. After tasting and tasting until I was utterly disheartened, I’ve decided not to stock any this season 😞😞
================
This year’s Lishan autumn tea felt just “so-so” to me as the shopkeeper, though a few tea gardens did look quite promising. I still had my hopes up, but from late July through mid-August, after trying over thirty batches, I couldn’t find a single good one. For this season’s autumn tea in the Lishan region—including Dayuling, HuaGung, Biluoxi, Xinjiayang, Farm Edge, Cuiluan, Suspension Bridge Head, and Huanshan—we have definitely decided not to purchase any.
This year’s Lishan autumn tea can be summed up in one word: “watery.” The harvests picked between late July and August 2nd were already quite light in flavor, and then Typhoon Khanun brought torrential downpours on August 3rd and 4th, dumping over 300 millimeters of rain in Lishan and making the subsequent tea even more diluted. Even though August 6th to 8th brought consecutive sunny days, the overall quality just didn’t bounce back. Then came more heavy rain on the 9th, 10th, and 11th, followed by a continuous streak of wet weather. Between the massive amount of water and delayed harvesting, the tea quality took an even harder hit…
================
From the 12th to the 15th, it was alternating between sunny and rainy days, and the quality of the tea leaves still showed no sign of improvement. Another round of torrential rain hit from the 16th to the 18th, and today we are officially giving up on the Lishan autumn tea.
Just in early August, I boasted about finding a top-tier autumn tea that would outperform most spring teas, but looks like I’m eating my own words. Apologies to all the tea friends who were looking forward to the Lishan autumn tea—please bear with your spring tea for now and wait for the winter harvest…
