Bug Bitten Diva High Mountain Oolong 2024 Winter
This tea comes from a medium sized garden near the indigenous Atayal people's village Smangus, a remote village in Northern Taiwan known for virgin old growth forests and ancient cypress trees. Not many farmers are growing tea up there, and this specific garden is newly planted. Beautiful ecology, with lots of wild animals and plants around the tea bushes. Roughly located at 1500 meters. The 'sea of clouds' and mountain mist are beautiful in the morning.
This year we were very lucky and the Diva garden on Jianshi Mountain was visited by the tiny green tea jassids! In other words, it is a bug bitten oolong. One of those things you can't control, but when it happens everyone rejoices, because within the elegant dressings of high mountain oolong it affords the tea a sweet, gooey muscatel and honey center.
The experience of drinking leads in with the soft cushy broth and entices with its sweet honey taste, eventually blooming into a rich aftertaste of fruit, flowers and sugarcane. The tropical fruit tones of mango and banana play more of a coloring harmony to the core bug-bitten muscatel aroma. Elegant lilac sings out pure on the very top. Broth is particularly rich, almost wine-y as it coats the mouth and throat. On top of that it has a purity which, along with the boozy consistency, reminds me of fine White Burgundy.
This is markedly different from any Diva we've carried in the past, although she is just as bodacious and elegant. And you don't have to pinch us to get us to say it's also our favorite.
Facts
- Harvest Location : Smangus, Jianshi Township, Hsinchu County, Taiwan
- Harvest Date : November 2024
- Cultivar : Qing Xin Oolong
- Farming Method : Conventional, From a garden regularly tested by SGS as having 0% pesticide residues
- Altitude : 1500 meters