I’ve spent the last few days visiting the Alishan tea region, hoping to find some high-quality Ershui tea. After searching for days, though, I couldn’t find anything good. Tea lovers might ask, “Does Alishan even harvest Ershui tea?” Yes, absolutely! Actually, it’s not just Alishan—every tea region has it. Whether it gets harvested depends entirely
We didn’t purchase any teas from HuaGung or Biluoxi this year. The reason was poor weather, which caused an overall decline in tea quality, so we chose to “prefer quality over quantity, rather than settling for less.” Although the tea-making conditions were unfavorable, several major tea factories managed to maintain 80% to 90% of their
I really love visiting our tea regions. Not only does it let me check on the condition of the tea gardens to guide our future sourcing, but I also always seem to run into interesting stories along the way. Today, let’s talk about JinXuan tea (also known as No. 27 or Taiwan Tea No. 12).
The plum rain season from May 11 to 17 completely disrupted our tea-sourcing plans, and we weren’t able to secure any HuaGung, Biluxi, or Dayuling teas. At first, I was quite stressed about it, but with the lockdowns in Shanghai leading to fewer orders and logistics bottlenecks, missing out on those batches actually turned out
Summer isn’t the peak harvest season for high mountain tea, but that doesn’t mean tea farmers are just chilling indoors with the AC on. Alongside everyday tasks like weeding and pest control, they have to time things just right to prune the tea bushes and ramp up fertilization. *In the photo below, you can see
A while ago, a tea friend from Hong Kong asked me to source a batch of high-quality Muzha Tieguanyin. Taking advantage of a break in my work up in Lishan these past couple of days, I decided to head over to the Muzha tea region. However, spring tea harvesting wrapped up two months ago, so
A few days ago, the shopkeeper mentioned that Lishan tea farmers were applying supplementary fertilizer in preparation for the upcoming autumn harvest. Several tea friends asked, “Does Lishan harvest autumn tea too?” Let me tell you, absolutely—not only do they harvest it, but they harvest quite a lot of it. /*! elementor – v3.7.8 –
Due to the pandemic, prices across various tea regions have dropped over the past two years, but a few areas have bucked the trend and gone up. Dayuling and the HuaGung Summit are the ones the store manager thinks have seen the wildest price spikes. Everyone knows why Dayuling prices went up: after the tea
The big topic in the tea world these days is investigators cracking down on foreign tea being sold as premium Taiwan tea, so the store manager is chiming in to vent and stay relevant. Note: Updated by the manager on 7/28. First, let’s introduce the key players: Mr. Yang, a Vietnamese tea merchant. Passed off
In late July and early August, the store manager headed up to the Cuifeng tea region to check on the growth of the autumn harvest. To describe it in one sentence: “exceptional in both quality and quantity.” Not only is the yield abundant, but the tea leaves look gorgeous—truly living up to the high hopes
In early August, the store manager visited LongFengXia to check out the autumn harvest. Since Cuifeng and Lishan autumn teas were looking great, we originally expected LongFengXia Budongyu to be exceptional as well. To our surprise, it was only “mediocre.” /*! elementor – v3.7.8 – 02-10-2022 */ .elementor-widget-image{text-align:center}.elementor-widget-image a{display:inline-block}.elementor-widget-image a img[src$=”.svg”]{width:48px}.elementor-widget-image img{vertical-align:middle;display:inline-block} LongFengXia spring tea
In August, the store manager headed up to Lishan’s Sinjiayang and the areas near Fushou Mountain Farm to look for autumn tea. Take a look at the quality of the tea leaves in the photos—can you even tell this is autumn tea? This year’s Lishan Sinjiayang autumn tea also delivers on both quality and yield.
When the shop manager went up to Cingjing in early August, whether it was in Songgang or Meifeng, the tea leaves were “just gorgeous!”. If the manager had to score them, Cuifeng would get a 90, Lishan Xinjiayang an 85, and for the Songgang and Meifeng autumn tea, the manager would give it a super
In early August, the store manager headed up to the Qilai Mountain tea region to check out the autumn harvest. Much like the Cingjing tea region on the opposite ridge, Qilai Mountain autumn tea delivers exceptional quality. While it might not be quite as over-the-top as the spring harvest, the manager easily gives it a
With autumn tea hitting the market in full swing these past few days, I’ve received a lot of messages from new tea friends. I’d like to take this opportunity to share some common questions we get about autumn tea. Autumn tea is of poor quality: I suspect this impression comes from the past when tea
