Life at Tung Ting revolves around the typhoon, when it last came, repairing from damage, and when it’ll come next and whether they can recover enough yet. Today, we have blinding fog on the mountain. Hearing the chorus of birds early morning gives me hope. That might portend a lessening severity? I wish I was more connected to all the messages that nature gives us, instead of relying on weather reports that are usually wrong anyway.
A fun time is had by all: My tour group is enjoying the warm hospitality of the farmers and Taiwanese people.
Harvest time for Tung Ting will be in mid November this year for the winter crop. It is getting later each year, due to massive weather pattern changes. Not good, but that is what we face. My tour group is taking turns coming up with new stories. Perhaps, there will be a typhoon tea! That is, whatever is left on the ground after the mad typhoon hits in a couple of days.
The fertilizer? Sesame seed pulp. Weeding? By hand. The handsome dark green varietals of Ruby 18 or 21 flourish amongst a wild forest of birds, snakes, and beetlenut trees.
Ruby 18? Ruby 21? The latest greatest hongcha (red tea) is a whole different skill set level from black teas around the world. Completely intact and without a hint of astringency, the honey sweet water has an intense fragrance of wintergreen and hinoki.
Taiwan Beauty is special. It can not happen without those tiny cicadas called Leaf Hoppers. Though this style of tea was discovered by accident, today, a whole different way of agriculture to production method, has been devised to create a tea that is a confluence of nature’s conditions. But some outrageous requirements remain that pushes this tea to the edge of impossibility. 70-80 year olds are the only ones dexterous and experienced enough to harvest the top grades, particularly for the competition. Read- some 50 or more years of experience required. Then, every single precious leaf has to be intact without breakage during processing, a crucial aspect of which is the hand oxidation. That takes more than years of experience and skill- it requires talent and extremely sensitive hands. But the difficulty of the production of Taiwan Beauty is in the overwhelming heat under which it is produced. As the top producer of this tea says: it is not a tea that a human can endure to make. So, we savored every drop today.
But, back to tea reporting. We scored a very limited, unique batch of Honey Jialong harvested on May 28. Mr. Chen deemed that it has been aged long enough just now and took it out to share with us. Brighter and even spicier than the more candied citrus peel character of the regular Jialong, with a more kumquat like fragrance and heightened euphoric energetics, this batch will only be available for tasting at the Harvest Party under the ‘Fall Release’ teas, or to the Connoisseur Tea subscribers.
As for Baochong, the typhoon destruction left a question mark as to whether we will have any. I have put my order in the queue, but facing some of the most dramatic climate changes in remembrance, we may not have Baochong for the first time in nearly 13 years.