Taiping TeaTaiping Tea
Flavour
Delicate aroma, mellow and sweet
Taiping is at 1,300 metres in Meishan township, home to the Taiping Suspension Bridge and the thirty-six hairpins.
This is a good place to talk about the first pour. A rolled high-mountain tea is wound tight, and the first infusion mostly serves to loosen the leaf; not much flavour comes out.
A clean high-mountain tea does not need rinsing — the aroma of the first steep is worth having. If you want to wake the leaf, pour a short one, fifteen seconds, and drink it rather than throwing it away.
Unfired. Clear honey-green, fresh mountain florals.
Fair priceverified
One jin is 600 g. Below NT$1,200, be sceptical.
A reasonable range is NT$2,000–4,000 per 600 g. Below NT$1,200, ask more questions. Competition-grade lots command a large premium. Ask which association ran the competition, which year, and for the seal.
What to ask when buying this
One region can span 700 m to 1,700 m, with several times the price difference. The same name does not mean the same grade.
Grading standards differ between associations, so awards are not comparable across competitions. Genuine lots come with a seal and certificate.
Spring and winter lots fetch the highest prices and the best aroma; summer and autumn are a step down in both.
If they will not let you taste but want you to buy 600 g of something expensive, walk away. It is the simplest and most effective filter there is.
Specifications
About the origin
Taiping sits at the centre of Meishan township, on the ridge of the Alishan range closest to the Chianan plain at a thousand metres. The thirty-six bends of the road up are well known, climbing from eighty metres to a thousand. The Taiping suspension bridge has become better known still — 281 metres across between Taiping and Gui mountains at about a thousand metres, looking out over the plain, the city lights and the sea of cloud, with queues at weekends. The rock is shale interleaved with sandstone; streams and waterfalls have cut out the caves and hollows the place is known for.
These figures will be updated if they change.
Brewing
Why this temperature
Ball-rolled oolong is tightly wound, and the first pour only reaches the outside of the pellet, so it needs water close to boiling to open at all. If it does not open, the later steeps swing between thin and heavy. The first and second steeps often take the same time or less, because the leaf does not truly unfurl until the second.
Temperatures follow the official category guidance. Source: TRES — Effects of water quality and temperature on tea liquor
Common mistakes with this tea
95°C or above. Too cool and the roast aroma never opens, leaving it flat.
Rolled-ball leaf needs the first infusion to open up; the second is then shorter.
Best drunk within two months.
The most common beginner regret is buying 600 g on the first try. Buy a jin only after you know you like it.
What to eat with it
A chilled jelly has almost no flavour of its own; a heavily roasted tea would bury it. A fragrant, lightly oxidised tea lifts it instead.
This one is Taiwan-only — not available overseas
Here are the closest teas we can actually ship you:
Alishan High Mountain TeaAlishan 1700m 1700 m Milky Osmanthus2.0–4.0kLocation accuracy: named locality (23.5730, 120.6400). This marks the growing area, not one specific garden.
Alishan Tea Region9
What there is to do here
6 routes Two days possible Meishan: Ruili, Ruifeng, Taixing, Taihe・Zhuqi and Shizhuo・Dabang, Tefuye, Lijia — Tsou villages
This district has the most itineraries, and nearly all of them run two days. Ruili, Ruifeng, Taixing and Taihe in Meishan are threaded together by old trails, bamboo, waterfalls and suspension bridges, and the guesthouses are the tea growers themselves. Further up are Zhuqi, Shizhuo and the Tsou villages. Every month of the year has its own crop.