Pinglin Natural Farming "Red Monkey" Oriental Beauty Oolong Tea - Winter 2019

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We met Mr. Chen, a friendly farmer in Pinglin by pure luck (most of the great farmer we met are under luck). We were at Pinglin to meet with another farmer who was also known for his tea, and we did not expect to meet Mr. Chen at all. However, under the guidance of destiny, Mr. Chen became our farmer to cooperate.

This varietal “White Fur Monkey” originated from Fujian province of China, and later brought to the northern part of Taiwan in the early 19th century. White Fur Monkey is a rarely seen varietal in today’s market. Not only for its difficulty to maintain organically, its extremely low production yield when growing all natural is the main reason that makes farmers try to “stay out of trouble” when they heard about it. For this reason we were astonished to hear that Mr. Chen is running a plantation with this varietal, and asked him sincerely to allow us process it into our own tea with his winter harvest. Winter is usually not the best season to process Oriental Beauty oolong, but we were very eager to try the potential of this varietal and this plantation!

The harvest quality was supreme grade for Oriental Beauty processing. However, this means the production like mentioned previously, would turn out very little. With such small quantity we treated the material with extra care during every stage. The interesting part was doing “killing green” in the morning, because an unbelievable amount of white fur exploded from the killing green machine during this stage, making the entire room floating with furs of “white fur monkey.”

“This is why my wife doesn’t really like dealing with this tea,” As Mr. Chen noted , “She has to do extra cleaning every time after this whole mess.”

The final result of this tea is not as pungent as traditional rolled oolong at the beginning, so we let the tea sit for two months after the charcoal roasting “refining” stage to stabilize it. It now has a gentle fruity profile only white fur monkey has. Taiwan Sourcing is always excited to discover new place and new varietal. With the discovery of this new place, we hope we will build a life-long relationship with Mr. Chen, and this tea will be the symbol of this new friendship.

Harvest: Winter 2019 / 冬 貳零壹玖
Varietal: White Fur Monkey / 白毛猴
Elevation: 580 M / 伍佰捌拾 公尺
Region: Pinglin / 坪林
Fermentation Level: 75% / 分之 柒拾捌
Roast Level: 0 / 無