Thursday, June 11, 2015

SanHsia Breeze




Ever taste Taiwan BiLoChun and Taiwan LungJing (Dragon Well) ?

While we all enjoy Oolong from Taiwan, many might not be aware that Taiwan used to export big volume of pan-fired green tea gunpowder and chun mee to Middle East and Northern Africa before China raised the bamboo curtain. Taiwan also used to be a major steam-fired green tea sencha and bancha producing country outside Japan before 1975...

Nowadays, very limited green teas (steam-fired or pan-fired) are producing...except out of this unique tea district - SanHsia Breeze.   By the way, while Cutting propagation is popular for breeding new tea plants in most Taiwan tea districts...here in SanHsia, our 2011 TOST members are lucky to see the demonstration of Layering propagation.

SanHsia Breeze -

Near Taipei city, beautiful mountains and hills with many creeks there.  Traditionally, a very unique cultivar, Chinsing Ganchong (青心柑種) is adopted there. Great cultivar that can be made green tea and pouchong. I remembered in old days, my father has to contract the leaves from this district to be transported back to our ShaKeng factory at Henshan, Hsinchu. (Back then, we only have another cultivar - Huang Ganchong (黃柑) which is more suitable for making black tea.).