The rebirth of a tea garden, part one: The death of the previous one.

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the tea garden shredder in action

For those of you who landed here attracted by our tongue in cheek Halloween themed promotion of this post, you may be disappointed not to hear us reveal stories of Taiwanese haunted tea gardens or evil spirits lurking along the rows of bushes in our tea growing town, although I am sure the local folklore must have a full repertoire of them. Rest assured, our post remains entertaining and reveals not often seen images of how tea gardens die, cruelly we admit, but sometimes, get a new lease on life like in the case of this one. The element of surprise is present, horror is also there but not through primal emotions. The story we are telling today exemplifies the consequences of the prevailing conventional ways of tea farming that rely heavily and systematically on fertilizers and pesticides and, in a soon to be published second part, how new approaches to tea farming are making their way with practices that have a good foothold in tradition but also consider new ideas like sustainability as a guiding factor. This is a story that we’ve followed closely for the last year as it concerns one of our family’s newly leased tea gardens.

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A thousand guests for tea on the lawn, part 2: The children of tea

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Children and tea, two words that are not frequently associated and certainly not in ways that implies a positive connection in certain western countries. Curiously, it is usually those same countries that consider normal to serve high sucrose content beverages and other processed concoctions from the food industry to their children… and here ends our social commentary. Our aim is not to condemn the idiosyncrasies of the West and certainly not to issue a moralizing critique of it. We aim today to celebrate, by way of example, how tea is an all-inclusive beverage here in Taiwan drunk by all generations, children alike.

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A thousand guests for tea on the lawn at dusk in Nantou, Taiwan

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Today, a post of a few words. Pictures will dominate and hopefully do the work in conveying the essence of my thoughts. Not that there is nothing to say about this event, on the contrary. It’s finding the right words to express what this entails to me that is more than arduous. There’s nothing heavy here, all is good and positive. Very simply put, the event pictured in this post, represents, to me, what tea is all about, what Taiwan is all about, and especially what the wonderful people of Nantou County are all about and how all this combines into one distinctive holistic entity. It is why I now live here. It is why I have chosen, through Taiwan Tea Crafts, to try to be the humble emissary of this country’s dynamic tea culture.

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A comprehensive calendar of arrivals for Taiwan’s spring teas

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Father and son walking through Bagua tea garden

You must have heard it by now, spring teas are now upon us. Many of you, I am sure, are experiencing physical and emotional waves of anticipation for the festive pleasure in tasting the freshness of spring in your cup. The new tea arrivals listing you can find on our welcome page and individual product catalog pages is growing day by day as soon as new lots are confirmed. Another sure sign that spring is in the air is the flow of emails/messages coming in asking when such and such a tea is expected to be in. As much as we like to give a personalised answer to all of you, we felt this gave us an opportunity to explain some of the guiding principles that explains the scattered arrival of teas from different areas of the island. Based on these and with fresh reports coming from the gardens themselves, we’ve prepared a graphic chart giving you a schedule of expected arrival dates for the spring of 2014. Read more

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Lunar New Year Day in our Taiwanese tea growing village

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Chinese New Year Day is not a day of rest for everybody in Taiwan. Commercial activity thrives on that day. This is particularly the case in our small tea-making village of Songboling up on the western edge of the Bagua ridge in central Taiwan. Many families from the surrounding cities flock-up to our village making the population swell 10 folds. And on beautiful sunny days like this year, if feels more like 20 times! What are they here for? To visit our famous temple, first and foremost, but at the same time enjoy a leisurely stroll on the main street of our picturesque village while nibbling on the many street food offerings from all the vendors lining up the street, or maybe perhaps trek down the 400 m ridge to go and visit the colony of Formosan macaques that inhabit the escarpment. Whatever brings you here on that day, our shop owners and other enterprising folks are happy to find a way to get you to spend some of the money received from those red envelopes handed out the night before.

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