Taiwan Wuyi and Mr. Tsai

The weather has been very cold and I have been craving roasted Oolong. Friends came by and gave me Wuyi Cliff Tea and Roasted Tiequanyin. Besides that, I also drink Taiwan Wuyi.


Taiwan Wuyi is made in Taiwan with a Chinese Wuyi varietal. A friend of mine, Mr. Tsai, had his friend harvest the tea and Mr. Tsai finishes it by roasting it. I asked him if he knows the exact varietal of the tea, but he said he doesn't know. This Taiwan Wuyi tastes very different from the Chinese one. First of all, his friend uses the Baozhong making method to make the tea and Mr. Tsai will do a medium roast to finish the tea. When asked about the percentage of oxidation, he laughed and said:" I don't have a way to measure that. But if you really want to know, I will say it's 20 to 30 percent."


For a medium roasted tea, Mr. Tsai will start the roasting temperature at 100C and will finish roasting the tea at 120C; the roasting takes around 5 hours. In my previous tea roast post, I talked about how he changes the temperature when the roasting smell changes. That's something I have to learn in the near future.

Mr. Tsai has been in the tea business for 18 years. He processed tea for two years and then he couldn't keep up with that along with running a teahouse, so he quit making tea and just focused on running the teahouse.

I met him about 15 years ago. His teahouse is on a hill outside of Taipei. We started to talk about tea varietals and he told me that he has some tea plants on the hill across his teahouse, but that he hasn't gone to harvest it in at least 10 years. At the time, he said that the tea plants might be taller than me. I was so excited and asked him if we could go harvest the tea next time when I went there. He said that it would be difficult since no one had gone up there for 10 years and the road to go up there had disappeared. I told him that's even better and we can call them semi-wild tea plants!

Mr. Tsai told me that he will help me to find some tea that is made from the Shui Xian and Buddha's Hand varietals. I've tasted some Buddha's Hand tea and it had a very big mouth feel. I wonder how that Shui Xian will taste like since it's also made in Taiwan from a Chinese cutting.

Tea Roast

I purchased a tea roaster during my 2004 trip to Taiwan. I used it a couple of times in the tea house, but I never really put it to work. In 2005 I visited my old tea friend, Mr. Tsai. He does lightly roasted Oolong very well. I was with him many times when he was roasting tea. The fragrance of tea roasting was so beautiful.



It takes about 6 to 7 hours to finish a lightly roasted Oolong for him. After a couple of hours, my smelling senses will be numb. One time in the tea roasting process, I asked Mr. Tsai why he went to change the temperature. He said: " Didn't you notice that the smell just changed?" I ran outside of his tea shop and ran back in, hoping that I could really detect any change, but I couldn't. After that, I was paying much more attention to any changes of smell in a tea roasting.
Because of my friend Xiao FengZi, I am drinking more roasting Oolong now. I decided I am going to make my own House Roasted Oolong for the tea shop. And I did! My first batch is only 3 pounds and it took 10 days to roast it to the way that I liked. Many people tried it and liked it so it's all gone now.

I started a second batch about 2 weeks ago. This time I was more ambitious. I roasted 5 pounds. The tea base is a lightly oxidized Jin Xuan. I started the temperature at 70C and when I detect changes in the smell, I stir the tea. I heard that it's very important to stir the tea when there's a change in the smell to make a good roasted tea. In about a week of time, I almost lost confidence because the tea didn't taste right. Its taste was between a green and a roasted oolong. But I didn't want to give up. I continued to roast the tea and the temperature went up to 100C. I tried to play it safe and didn't want to burn the tea. The final product was a chocolate-like, sweet roasted Oolong. It's nothing fancy, but I am very satisfied with the result.