Caopintou Natural Farming "Fog Dragon" Black Tea - Summer 2019

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This is a whole new tea production area we never met before. Welcome to Caopintou (草坪頭), an area more commonly known for its “Yushan tea” production.

Yushan is the sacred mountain of Taiwan. It is like Mount Fuji of Japan. The elevation of its peak is 3952 meters high, so you might be thinking “wow the tea here must be super good” right now. Sadly, no tea can survive elevation this high as we know so far, so the tea was grown way below Yushan at elevation of 1200 meters.

So why the tea from this region is called “Yushan tea” then? If you ever climbed Yushan before, you will know that Caopintou will be the place tao pass by before reaching the entrance of Yushan trail. Naturally, when you are marketing a new tea, it is inevitable to use a famous name to go with it. “Yushan tea” was born under the trend of high mountain jade oolong back in 1980s, and eventually failed to take advantage of its own terroir to develop its own character in the red ocean of “jade oolong.” Thus, “Yushan tea” region produces very little tea this day with most of its tea trees abandoned in the field.

For this “Fog Dragon” we did not have to spend lots of effort doing the extra plucking because that is not required for black tea processing. Instead, what we were trying to do was controlling the withering and rolling timing properly in order for a perfect activation of fermentation. The result is a beautiful “small-varietal” black tea.

This is a sister tea of “Fog Phoenix” Oriental Beauty Oolong. By using identical material from same plantation, we processed another batch into a black tea. We hope the creation of this tea can make you experience the “consistency” of terroir. You will be able to notice that despite the taste is quite different, but the backbone of this “Fog Dragon” is identical to what “Fog Phoenix” carries.

Harvest: Summer 2019 / 夏 貳零壹玖
Varietal: Qing Xin Oolong / 青心烏龍
Elevation: 1200 M / 壹仟貳佰 公尺
Region: Caopintou / 草坪頭
Fermentation Level: 85% / 分之 捌拾伍
Roast Level: 0 / 無