I picked up some honey green from Done Sheng. It seems honey is a favourite descriptor of their marketing people. A very pleasant green tea. Less like a Taiwan oolong in taste, even though it is fist rolled, the taste reminds me more of a 碧螺春.
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During Winter time I got two Hong Oolongs from Taidong from the same farmer . One from Jin xuan base and one from the local wild variety. Super truffly and gamey. Not for everybody. Regular Hong oolong smells like malty chocolate , brews red and is an oolong that is fermented like a black tea but it’s leaves are always rolled into a ball like oolong. This special tea was invented in Taidong in Taiwan only in the last decade or two .
Picked up some fantastic mixiang hongcha (honey aroma black oolong tea) in Meishan in Chiayi a few months ago. Cannot believe how good this stuff is. Put your nose in you smell aromatic flowers even though no flowers have ever been there. It’s pure tea. And it doesn’t lose its fragrance as long as you keep it sealed.
Hualien and Taidong still probably the best source for this honey oolong. I only buy this type of tea direct from farmers (combined with a stay on a homestay), some are online. They tend to make it in the Summer times from their oolong plants. This is like the Blue Mountain of Coffee folks. It’s a pity most people don’t really understand how good the tea is here.
I also bought a PuEr cake from Yunnan , been repackaged , it’s quality is so so and been knocking lumps off it occasionally to drink.
Hong Oolong (Red Oolong)
Mixiang Oolong Hongcha (Honey Black Oolong Tea)
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Has a bit of the white strips like you would find in Oriental Beauty, but seems to be roasted more, since the rest of the color is pretty dark consistently, whereas Oriental Beauty would have red and brown also.
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Yep that’s right, it has some white tips because it’s the very tips of the shoot (the 2-3 leaves at the tip). Usually a sign of quality obviously as that’s an expensive hand limited quantity hand picked tea and the tips are the sweetest most flavourful of the leaves. Packed full of aromatic polyphenols and caffeine and theanine , all the good stuff.
I’m about to go off on a tangent again cos I have some time…
I have some Oriental Beauty from Miaoli also and Oriental Beauty also only uses the two leaves at the tip if done properly. Oriental Beauty also undergoes heavy fermentation, just like Black Tea, but no roasting. The best Oriental Beauty is supposed to have 5 colours, it looks amazing and takes a lot of skill. And very very expensive at the top end but very affordable (just like a boutique coffee) for low to medium end.
Tea Processing-
The two main treatments are Oxidation (erroneously called Fermentation) and Roasting.
But for oolong in particular they do many other steps such as withering the leaves in the sun, tossing them in a rotating bamboo basket to break the cells open, killing the leaves (fixing them with very high heat) to stop the chemical reactions, rolling them into a ballshape and also some roasting.
Oriental beauty has an unusual flavour because there is no roasting at all. None. The story that OB’s flavour is it’s because of the insects biting them but it’s not only that that gives the unique flavour. It’s because they were using oolong or other small leaf varieties of tea, only hand picking the terminal buds and leaves, and then fermenting it heavily like a black tea. but not roasting it.
The main driver of tea flavour is if the Tea is Small Leaf (Chinese) or Big Leaf (Indian Assam)- (broadly think Arabica vs Robusta). The famous No 18 Hong Yu (Sun Moon Lake Jade Tea) is a mix of both Small Leaf Wild Nantou Tea and Big Leaf Assam Tea, giving it a unique flavour.
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Very informative. I think I’ve heard some of this on my trips to Beipu and Emei, but I could never have explained it so clearly.
I’ve came across something called high altitude beauty, which is tea produced in Nantou, claiming to have the flavor of Oriental Beauty.
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Can anyone recommend a high quality online recommendation to order.
I usually get parents in law to send oolong and high mountain green varities, but it can take time as in months. 40 to 80 US per bag range.
Some great content on this thread!
For those interested in some of the history of how tea—in this case, Taiwan’s remarkable black tea—developed in places such as (what are now know as) Taoyuan and Nantou, I think you’ll greatly enjoy this detailed feature by Han Cheung that appeared in Sunday’s Taipei Times.
Guy
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Good article, there’s lots more to write about the tea there yet. The tea produced now in Taiwan is very high quality compared to by-gone mass manufacturing days.
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Sorry I missed this one back in April. I’ve never bought tea online before, but if you are looking to buy it for gift-giving, this seems to be a very popular tea house.
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Nice link, nice to know can get Assam tea locally.Good for export to the EU though as not the preferred local tatse.
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Things are bad when the gov tells you stop drinking tea because we have no money
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Is the government issuing free tea there in Pakistan? Wouldn’t the way to get more money be encouraging people to drink more tea and then tax the heck out of it?
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That directive is insane.
Could be worse, I suppose. Here see contemporary Sri Lanka. 
Guy
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News about Sri Lanka, gov workers asked grow food with extra days off
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Good information! Do you know any good online sites for these?
Well you can search on facebook for tea farmers who sell directly …and shopee has individual sellers some of which are decent, just trial and error.
lugu is the main tea town in Taiwan , they have conpetitions and you can buy the teas directly .
You cant buy winning teas cos they sell out immediately
There’s a food and drink expo that is very good in nangang end of each year!
I like tea in cocktails
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its an excuse, he really wants them to take less tea breaks, and spend more time actually working… thus raising productivity.
its a Muslim country, hence there are 2 to 3 breaks for prayer, then lunch break … add tea breaks and the guys only work 3 hours a day…
im being conservative here and assume they smoke during tea breaks, otherwise factor also smoke breaks into the work day.
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Thanks.
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Also a nice new trend. (There are also some really bad ones too)
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