Experience Taiwan Double Happiness! August '24 Tea of the Month

It’s bittersweet, but Aimee and I have returned from our most recent flavor trip. We’re glad to be back home in Spokane, but there’s so much we didn’t get a chance to do in Taiwan (despite the dizzying amounts of things we DID do) that we’re already excited about the next time we’ll be able to visit.

Throughout our travels in Taiwan, we visited a tea museum, hit up several night markets, and journeyed to many of Taiwan’s tea-producing regions such as Sun Moon Lake and Alishan, as well as some specific farms (QingJing and Biluoyuan come to mind!). We really only scratched the surface of what Taiwan has to offer and the potential of what we can bring back for all of you to try!

And speaking of bringing something back, this brings us to a very special red oolong that we’ve brought back from Biluoyuan, where we made salt-fried tea peanuts, brewed up some milk tea, and tasted some of the farm’s varieties of oolong teas.

We’re excited to say that this is the first tea we’ve ever personally sourced—admittedly in the most touristy way possible, but hey, baby steps! We walked the farm, toured the production facilities, and sat down with the farmers to drink some really fantastic tea. When you taste this red oolong, we hope that the flavor is enriched by the journey that this tea took to get to you.

Oxidation Nation

Tea can roughly be categorized by the level of oxidation, with white and green teas representing the low end of the spectrum and black and pu-erh teas representing the high end of oxidation.

Oolong typically sits in the large middle, with oxidation levels as high as 99% (black teas are all 100% oxidized). When I first learned about oolongs, I didn’t know they encompassed such a wide range of oxidation levels. So when I was told that Taiwan tends to specialize in oolongs, I thought, “Oh, that’s kind of boring.”

I was very happy to be proven wrong.

Which brings us to Taiwan Double Happiness, our August 2024 tea of the month! We’ve got two very different oolong teas for you, both from Taiwan but each on completely opposite ends of the spectrum.

Honey on High

First up, we have our Honey High Mountain Oolong, a special guest from a previous tea of the month. This tea is grown in Alishan at 1600M in elevation (just shy of a full mile!). Also worth noting is this tea is of the bug-bitten, or Oriental Beauty, style, where farmers wait until a tiny bug called the leaf-hopper chomps the tea leaves before harvesting. The plant defends itself by inducing a chemical change in the leaf, ultimately reducing bitterness and increasing aroma.

Brewing this tea yields a tanned yellow-green hued liquor with a floral aroma, slight vegetal honey sweetness, and a creamy/milky mouthfeel (reminiscent of our Peaches & Cream Milk Oolong). You can probably guess that this is a lightly oxidized tea before you even take a sip!

Red Dead Brewdemption

Red oolong, on the other hand, toes the line so closely between oolong and black tea that its name, “hong oolong cha,” even resembles the name for black tea, “hong cha.” (As an aside, the “hong” in both names refers to the red color of the tea liquor. “Hong cha” actually translates to “red tea.”)

When you brew this red oolong, you’re going to see a much darker color develop in the liquor. Those floral notes in the Honey High Mountain? Poof! Nowhere to be seen! Instead, you’re treated to a nice earthy and malted profile with caramelized aromatic notes—and a honey sweetness that made me and Aimee fall in love with this tea.

Want to join the tea club? This month’s tea availability in particular is limited, so sign up quick!

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone. Drink This!

If you’re reading this post around when it first came out, then you’re in luck! I’m hosting a Tea Journey on Saturday, August 24th, 2024 at 1PM.

I’ll be telling more stories from our trip to Taiwan and we’ll be sipping on Taiwan tea. For this specific journey, we’ll be enjoying two teas from QingJing Farm, a veteran-run farm in Nantou County, as well as a couple other surprise companion teas. This will be the first installment of several Taiwan-focused tea journeys.

Hope to see you there!