The tea gods have been kind indeed. In over a decade of tea travels, this year has the best weather, even in Taiwan. Not too hot or muggy, beautiful breezy day, a hint of typhoon but not quite. In Sun Moon Lake today.
At Wenshan, Taiwan. Late night wilting Baochong with Mr.Lee. A good year. Mango and gardenia fragrance fill the cool refrigeration room. Fluffing the tea every two hours and picking out the older leaves, drinking the new crop and the spring honey. At this rate I am going to become immortal.
At Wenshan, Taiwan. The 5 year aged Honey Jialong is beyond amazing- full of aged kumquat peel, honeysuckle, cooked honey, and an incredible finish. There isn’t much left, I will be getting the 2 year aged. There isn’t much production each year, but this year’s spring crop is amazing, so by the fall, Mr. Chen is confident it will have aged adequately. The difference between the young spring crop vs aged is now strikingly obvious. The young ones have a slight grass and more lemon. The aged have the cooked mandarin peel liqueur-like viscosity. There really isn’t another tea like this in the world. We are incredibly lucky!
Survived, out of China. On Xiamen flight, I managed an emergency exit seat which meant I just increased my survival rate by 50%! One less Chinese person who would randomly open the emergency gate ‘to get some air’. I am as claustrophobic as needing institutional care, but never have I entertained opening the emergency escape on mid flight. Other spectacular actions: opening overhead compartments on descent and leaving it open so bags can become trajectiles. Bringing a whole Jasmine tree on the flight and obstructing the walkway. These I witnessed. Ones I have heard: throwing hot cup of noodles on the flight attendant’s face. Assaulting flight attendant because this guy wanted a different seat than he got and refused to give it up, and got upset at flight attendant trying to get him to move . How about smoking inside the bathrooms and setting the plane on fire?
Well, I win some and lose some. My mosquito bites were fewer than 20 this time so far, so a few life threatening actions by fellow passengers should provide other forms of entertainment.
I am ready. One cup was cognac and the other, Guanyin Red. Though worlds apart in taste, the color was exactly the same! Tonight’s Shao Ye was a test to see how much I could drink, but I was toasting with the tea of exact color. Soon the villagers caught on to my scheme.
80% of the population depends on tea for a livelihood in one way or another here in Anxi, the birthplace of Tieguanyin, world renown oolong. To be sure fads come and go every year and a Tieguanyin is not always the most fashionable tea every year. Since the mountain range is so huge, all this raw material has to go someplace. They can get sold to Wuyi to be made into Dahongpao, or Phoenix Mountain to make ‘Phoenix tea’, or even green teas. For most people, they are not going to taste the terroir difference. For Americans, forget terroir- there’s just green tea or black tea in a teabag. Actually, the best example ever- once I was in a restaurant in SOHO, NYC, billing itself as a tea house restaurant. On the menu was: Hot Tea. That’s it. The wine list was a book and coffees were a dozen choices, but this ‘tea house’ had only one option for tea. Phew, glad it was hot. Now, why did I just spend my whole life getting terroir specific tea from the indigenous varietals picked on the perfect day made by the best artisans in the villages, again?