Longtou TeaLongtou Tea
Flavour
Light-fragrance style
Longtou is at 900 metres, with a moderate day-night swing.
This altitude is where price and description part company. Tea below nine hundred metres is not usually sold as high-mountain; above a thousand it enters that bracket. So the band from nine hundred to a thousand is the same plant, the same method, and a few dozen metres between having the name and not.
For a buyer this band is often good value: quality close to the tier above, price still in the tier below.
Unfired. Clear honey-green, clean florals with a woody edge, lively in the mouth.
Fair priceverified
One jin is 600 g. Below NT$800, be sceptical.
A reasonable range is NT$1,300–2,800 per 600 g. Below NT$800, ask more questions.
What to ask when buying this
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.
A scannable producer record beats any verbal assurance.
Production date, expiry, origin of raw material, seller name and phone — if any is missing, do not buy.
Specifications
About the origin
In the Longtou area of Fanlu Township, Chiayi, at about 900 m, along the Alishan highway. A moderate planted area.
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 (23.4800, 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.