Growing up in Taiwan, oolong tea has always been in my daily life.

But I only start to appreciate the uniqueness of Taiwanese tea when I left Taiwan and started to live abroad. In this cup of tea, I can reconnect with my thousands-miles-away homeland. Within a cup of tea, there are several tea leaves which come from the same farm and situated in a beautiful mountain on the Formosa island. These leaves have absorbed the sunlight, the mist, and the rain for several months from this specific mountain. They were took care day-by-day by the farmers until the harvest season had arrived. During the harvest season, Taiwanese grandmas (The average age of Taiwanese tea harvesters is around 70 years old.) enter into the farms with their bamboo baskets and colorful hats. I can imagine them singing in Taiwanese or Hakka languages while they picked up these leaves. Under the intense sun lights and standing above the steep terrain, they were harvesting these leaves with incredible speed and precision like they always have been doing since more than 50 years.

After a long day of harvest, these tea leaves will finally be handled by the tea masters, someone who has no school to learn how to make good teas but to carefully follow his father and grand-father, and this is the only way to pass down the know-how from generation to generation. Because tea leaves are oxidizing every second after pick-up, every decision contributes to the flavor of the tea (the sun exposure, the drying in the shadow, the toasting, the massaging…) Each step is a thought-after vision of the tea makers. What should they do to better express the true essence of this tea tree variety, the terroir of this mountain and his savoir-faire for tea-making. They work consecutively non-stop for 36 hours after the harvest has arrived to their manufacture.

I drink tea to reconnect with my homeland. I look for the cues inside the flavors of the tea that link to the WHYs: it could be specific season, the specific tea tree variety…etc. If I can have connection with these tea leaves in my cup, I can link with the mountain far away. I can experience the life of the leaf.

If you are interested in the rarest and most complicatedly produced tea in the world, you should discover what is Taiwanese oolong. It is absolutely difficult to find a good Taiwanese tea outside of Taiwan. Maybe you have heard before that some best quality Burgundy wines are not even sold outside of the village of production because people want to keep this rare gem to themselves, well a superior quality of Taiwanese tea is likewise. I have the privilege to have access to some of the finest quality tea in Taiwan because of my family’s good taste for tea. Having drunk good tea all my life and having trained for professional wine tasting (WSET), I am able to visit many tea makers and try their tea with deep consideration. I am trying to find sustainable tea with the most unforgettable taste. This website presents you the rarest and best findings from Taiwan.

Chen Yun Hsien - Founder of Taiwan Chayun