Oriental Beauty

This tea goes by many names. Oriental Beauty (Dongfang Meiren), Bai Hao Oolong (White Tips), Champagne Oolong, Formosa Oolong, Five Colors Tea (Wuse Cha), Braggart's Tea (Pong Hong De). It was the most exported tea from Taiwan to the West in the 1800s. The Queen of England is credited with naming it Oriental Beauty, because loved it so much when she tasted it.

The tea is well known for its distinctive honey sweetness. The story goes that tea jassids (little aphid-like bugs) fly around and bite the leaves of tea plants. The plant produces a secretion at the bite-mark, which apparently gives the tea its sweet taste.

The first time this happened, the tea farmers thought their crops were lost. But a bold farmer turned around and made the tea anyway, and his Western middleman loved the product. He was so proud, he went around telling all the surrounding farmers, hence the tea garnered the name Braggart's Tea.

The tea is highly oxidized, about 70 percent. It is sweet, light bodied, floral, fruity. The bouquet is really exquisite. The dry leaves are tippy, with little silver buds and long brown-red leaves. It's distinctive taste has gotten the attention of tea drinkers across Asia, so there are farmers in Viet Nam, Thailand and China trying to reproduce the taste. But it was first grown in Xin Zhu/Miao Li in Taiwan, and now Ping Lin grows some great Oriental Beauty as well.

Our Oriental Beauty is made in Ping Lin with the Qing Xin varietal. The most popular, original style Oriental Beauty is grown with the Qing Xin Da Pa varietal. And farmers are also making this tea with Bai Mao Hou varietal (White Haired Monkey), which produces a beautiful tea with tiny, fine leaves.

This is a regular daily tea for both of us. It is great in a bowl or mug (grandpa style) for a morning tea. The tea jassids only show up in a big group once a year, so the tea is only produced one season per year. Because Shiuwen doesn't visit Taiwan in the summer, she's never seen it being processed. We hope to visit some great Oriental Beauty farmers and watch them make this tea some day.

We will be drinking this tea live on Instagram next Tuesday 10/24 at 11:30. Please tune in and drink the tea with us! Shuiwen will brew the tea and talk about her experience with it. If you have our Oriental Beauty, that's great. If not, brewing another Oriental Beauty would also be great. We hope you can make it! Our Instagram account is https://www.instagram.com/floatingleavestea/

Written by Noah

*photography by Jake Knapp of Cloud 9 Photography & Design.

A Quick Update On Our 2017 Spring Oolong

It's a colder season so the harvest is later than usual.

We just heard from our Baozhong farmer that he started to harvest QingXin Oolong varietal to make his baozhong on Friday April 28th. And we are getting ready to choose our spring Alishan.

For our lightly oxidized Taiwanese Oolong lineup we carry JinXuan and Nantou Four Season as daily drinker teas. We prefer QinXin varietal for our Baozhong and High Mountain Oolongs.

Here is some information on these three varietals:

-SiJiChun( for Nantou Four Seasons): A tea farmer in Muzha discovered this varietal several years ago. This plant has a strong life force and can yield six harvests in a year! Its feature flavor is like jasmine or ginger lily fragrance.

-JinXuan, aka Taiwan Tea #12: This varietal was "made in Taiwan". It was officially published in 1981, and it's now the 2nd most grown tea varietal in Taiwan. It's often seen in tea fileds under 1200 meters high. When it's grown past that elevation, the young stems contain too much water. In this instance the success rate for producing a high quality oolong tea sharply falls. Sometimes JinXuan will have an osmanthus like bouquet. When JinXuan does produce a milk candy flavor, its broth is round. This is why tea drinkers first called JinXuan milk Oolong.

-QingXin: This varietal was brought to Taiwan from Fujian and it has been a very popular varietal for a long time. QingXin grows slower and yields less than SiJinChun and JinXuan. However, its success rate to produce finer Oolongs is higher. The flavor profile from QingXin Oolong varies. It can be floral, fruity or honey-like.

Since QingXin Oolong grows at a slower pace (and because it's the varietal we prefer for our Baozhong and High Mountain Oolongs) please have patience as you wait for our Spring Oolong harvest to be available. We are hoping to get some of the teas in around the middle of May. For higher elevation Oolong, like Lishan, we are hoping to have it in by the end of May.

Taiwanese New Tea Varietals

I have been meaning to finish the Taiwanese tea varietal post a long time ago, but you all know how life goes. Not everything can go as planned.

Before I finish up the rest of the varietals that I had meant to write, I just found out that Taiwan successfully bred two more varietals: Taiwan Tea Number 19 and 20.

I've never heard of these two varietals until yesterday.

Both of these two varietals were announced in 2006. One nursery in Miao Lin bid on and won the right to grow these new seedlings. They had planned to start selling these new young plants in 2007.

Taiwan Tea No. 19 台茶19號﹝碧玉 - Bi Yu﹞: This varietal is easy to manage and resistant to diseases. It has characteristics from both Chin Hsin Oolong and Jin Xuan.

Taiwan Tea No. 20 台茶20號﹝迎香 - Ying Xiang﹞: It grows fast and yields 20% more than Chin Hsin Oolong. In lower altitude growing regions, this varietal can produce tea with a huge bouquet.

I guess we will be able to taste tea from these two varietals in about 3 to 5 years.

Chin Hsin Oolong and Chin Hsin Da Pa

My tea friend Michael came in with a can of Alishan (阿里山茶). It was a present from from his friend from when he visited Taiwan. Some tea friends were here to try the tea together with us.

I poured hot water and rinsed the tea. I passed the gaiwan around to let people smell the aroma. After that, we all thought that it smelled different from all the Alishan we normally had. We decided to taste it to see whether or not the tea was good. We had the first infusion and still didn't know what to make out of this tea. We all agreed that the tea didn't taste bad, but it was something new to us.

I passed the second infusion around and told everyone that I had tasted this kind of flavor before, but couldn't remember when and from which tea exactly. I took some open leaves and let people look at them. I knew that it was not a Chin Hsin Oolong varietal (青心烏龍), which is what we are more used to in a high mountain tea. The leaves are smaller than in a Chin Hsin varietal and are closer together. The sweetness suddenly reminded me of Bai Hao Oolong (白毫烏龍)and I yelled out loud, "I think this is Chin Hsin Da Pa青心大Pa." Friends looked at me and asked what Chin Hsin Da Pa was.

I took a bag of Bai Hao Oolong and put some leaves in a white bowl. I told them that I wanted to see if my guess was right. After the leaves were infused in the bowl, I took some sets of leaves out. We compared these leaves with the Alishan ones we were drinking. The Alishan ones were bigger and greener, but the shapes looked similar. I told people that it was my first time to have Chin Hsin Da Pa in a high mountain Oolong style.

People in Taiwan believe that Chin Hsin Oolong and Chin Hsin Da Pa are originally from China. In 1895, Japan occupied Taiwan and saw that tea was an important and big business. The Japanese authorities set up a tea research institute (茶葉研習所) and selected Chin Hsin Oolong, Chin Hsin Da Pa, Big Leave Oolong (大葉烏龍) and Hard Stem Red Heart (硬枝紅心) as the four varietals to promote for initial growing in Taiwan.

Chin Hsin Oolong and Chin Hsin Da Pa are now two of the most popular varietals for tea in Taiwan.

Chin Hsin Oolong: It's believed that Chin Hsin originally came from Fujian province in China. A tea expert went to Fujian and believed that he found Chin Hsin's "ancestor plant": Soft Stem Oolong (軟枝烏龍). Chin Hsin Oolong can be said to be the most popular Oolong varietal in Taiwan. You can find this varietal in Baozhong, Dong Ding and High Mountain teas. Tea lovers like Chin Hsin for its delicate and soft fragrance. The price for Chin Hsin is second only to Tieguayin from the original Tieguanyin plants(正樷鐵觀音). Chin Hsin grows slower than lots of other varietals in Taiwan and it's more prone to disease. Due to the high quality tea that it can produce, though, it's still the most popular varietal for Oolong in Taiwan.

Chin Hsin Da Pa: This varietal is also believed to be from China. Chin Hsin Da Pa is mostly grown in Hsinchu and Miaoli. Chin Hsin Da Pa's leaves are more oval than Chin Hsin Oolong. Outside of the the Summer tea season, farmers use machines to harvest this varietal and make restaurant teas. However, in June, after some insects attack the plants, farmers make a special Oolong called Bai Hao Oolong. Chin Hsin Da Pa is the most popular varietal for making this tea. The highest grade of this tea has a very distinct honey, peach and/or apricot note.