FAQ
The questions we get most before someone buys. Short answers, with numbers where numbers exist.
Quick answers7
30–75 g. The most common regret is buying a full jin (600 g) on the first go. Tea is at its best within two months of opening; 600 g outlives that, and you end up drinking it stale. Buy the big bag after you know you like it.
It depends on elevation and region. Everyday low-to-mid elevation oolong runs about NT$1,000–2,000 per jin (600 g); high-mountain tea above 1,300 m, NT$2,500–5,000; top regions like Lishan and Dayuling start around NT$6,000. Every tea page shows its own fair range and the price below which you should be suspicious.
Taiwan produces roughly 10,000 tonnes of tea a year and imports about 30,000. Much of what is sold as "Taiwanese tea" is blended with imports. To lower the risk: ask for origin at township level, not just "high mountain"; look for an origin certification mark; and check the price — high-mountain tea far below the fair range almost certainly is not what it claims.
Usually the water temperature. High-mountain oolong wants 90–95°C; a full rolling boil is 5–7 degrees too hot and pulls the bitterness out with everything else. The second common cause is too much leaf steeped too long. Every tea page lists its temperature, ratio and steep times.
Each of the 107 teas here has its own time; across the site they run from five to twelve hours, and 96 of them sit at seven. Green tea is quickest at five; a heavily fired Tieguanyin wants twelve.
When cold brew turns bitter, the timing is usually what went wrong. Cold water extracts slowly, so drinking it on hot-brew instincts gives you the astringency before the sweetness. For a cup without the bite, take a lightly oxidised tea — those keep their floral aroma cold. Five grams to five hundred millilitres; more leaf does not make it stronger, only harsher.
Airtight, away from light, heat and smells. Skip the fridge unless the packet is unopened and you are storing it beyond six months; once opened, the fridge invites moisture and the tea picks up fridge smells. Best within two months of opening.
Start with Find Your Tea — nine questions, constitution first, occasion second, taste last, ending with a tea you can actually go and buy. Or simpler: follow "today's tea" on the home page. Twenty-four turns a year and you will know what you like.
How to store tea
Sealed, out of the light, away from heat and away from smells. Most of the other advice you will read is surplus to those four.
The four enemies
Light breaks down chlorophyll and catechins, and the aroma goes first. Heat speeds up the same process. Damp lets the leaf reabsorb moisture, and a leaf that has done so tastes stale however you brew it. Smell is the one people forget: tea is an excellent deodoriser, and in a fridge it will faithfully absorb everything in there.
Do not refrigerate an opened packet
⚠️ The fridge is only for tea that is still sealed and will be kept for more than half a year. Once opened, refrigerating causes two problems: taking it in and out produces condensation, and condensation is exactly the damp you were avoiding; then there is the smell. A sealed tin in a dark cupboard at room temperature is enough.
Firing decides how long it keeps
Firing drives out moisture and fixes the unstable compounds, so the more heavily fired a tea is, the better it keeps. 56 of the teas here are not fired at all, and those are for drinking fresh; only 5 are fired to medium or above, and those often round out over a year or two.
A heavily fired tea carries fire when you first get it, and only settles into itself after two or three months.
Which is why a first purchase should be small
An opened packet is at its best within two months. Six hundred grams is a lot: brewing once a day, it takes two or three months to get through, and by the second half most people are drinking something that no longer tastes like the first cup.
Thirty to seventy-five grams. Buy the large packet once you know you want it.
What the data here shows
Caffeine in Taiwanese tea
Oxidation has far less to do with caffeine than most people assume.
A common misreading
“Black tea is fully oxidised, so it is high in caffeine.” “Green tea is unoxidised, so it is low.” Both are commonly said, and they contradict each other.
Caffeine is an alkaloid the plant makes for itself, and processing barely adds or removes any. What oxidation changes is the polyphenols.
The three things that actually decide what is in the cup
One: which part of the shoot. Caffeine concentrates in the bud, and the closer to the tip the more there is. So tender-plucked green and black teas start higher than mature-plucked oolong — all 8 tender-plucked teas here sit at the top caffeine level.
Two: how much leaf. This is the largest variable and it is entirely in your hands.
Three: how long and how hot. Caffeine dissolves quickly and most of it leaves on the first steep; longer and hotter draws out more.
How the 118 actually spread out
96 oolongs sit at the middle level, 5 lightly oxidised high-mountain teas one level below, and the 6 green and black teas all sit at the top. The spread is narrow, and that is the point: the gap between Taiwanese teas is far smaller than the gap your own hand makes when it measures the leaf.
If you want less of it
Discarding the first steep removes some of it, and also removes most of the aroma — an expensive trade. Using less leaf and steeping for less time is the better lever, or switch to cold brewing: cold water extracts slowly, so far less caffeine comes out in the same time.
⚠️ This page is about the properties of the leaf. For your own intake, or questions about pregnancy, heart rhythm or sleep, ask a doctor or pharmacist. We are not qualified to advise on that.
What the data here shows
Oolong, black, green — what differs
The difference is in the making, not in the plant. Leaf from one bush can become any of the three.
One axis: how far the oxidation goes
A picked leaf oxidises by itself. The maker decides where to stop it, then fixes it there with heat.
Stop at zero and you have green tea; let it run to the end and you have black. Everything that stops in between is oolong. Oolong is therefore a stretch of the spectrum rather than a single thing — the 101 oolongs here run from twenty per cent to seventy-five.
A second axis: whether it is fired
Firing happens after oxidation and is independent of it. The same light high-mountain oolong, fired, tastes like a different tea — yet its oxidation has not changed.
⚠️ This is where confusion sets in: when a tea tastes dark and smoky, most people read that as heavy oxidation when it is heavy firing. 56 of the teas here are not fired at all, including several oxidised to seventy per cent.
Where Taiwan sits
101 of the teas here are oolong, 2 green and 4 black. That ratio is the shape of Taiwanese tea: the middle of the spectrum is worked deepest and finest, and the two ends are thin.
Green tea is made in Sanxia alone; black tea is concentrated around Yuchi and the east. In the oolong stretch, though, Taiwan has built a density that is rare anywhere — from twenty-per-cent Baozhong to seventy-five-per-cent Oriental Beauty, every step has someone making it, and a name for what they make.
What the data here shows
What competition tea is
The one thing to know first: awards from different organisers cannot be compared with each other.
Who runs them
Most Taiwanese tea competitions are run by local farmers’ associations, production cooperatives, or community organisations in the district itself. In Lugu alone the farmers’ association, the cooperative and the Yonglong-Fenghuang community each hold their own, once in spring and once in winter.
Each sets its own judges, entry rules and grading proportions. A “special grade” at one is not the same thing as a “special grade” at another.
Why it costs what it costs
The price of an award tea reflects scarcity as much as quality. A competition takes in thousands of samples; there is often exactly one special grade, and the top places together come to well under one per cent.
24 of the price notes here mention competition tea, and the highest ceiling on the site reaches 30,000 NT$ per 600 g — a figure that belongs to the competition market rather than to everyday drinking.
Three questions to ask
⚠️ One: which organiser, and which year? If the seller cannot say, the award is not worth much.
⚠️ Two: is there a seal and a certificate? A genuine competition lot carries the organiser’s seal, which cannot be resealed once broken, and a numbered certificate you can check.
⚠️ Three: how much of this lot is left? Competition tea is finite, and “always in stock” is itself a signal.
An award tea is not necessarily the tea you will like
Competitions judge against a fixed standard: appearance, liquor colour, aroma and taste each carry a set weight, and what is being measured is conformity to the category. Whether you enjoy drinking it is a separate question.
Which is why the lower awards are often the better buy: the gap in the cup is usually smaller than the gap in the price.