#ali mountain

[draftingit]

Tea and cherry blossoms near Ali mountain, Taiwan.

[aidendelo]

The train station at 4am 

Alishan (Ali Mountain), Taiwan 2014

[aidendelo]

A Foggy View

Alishan (Ali Mountain), Taiwan 2014

[aidendelo]

Alishan (Ali Mountain), Taiwan 2014

[aidendelo]

Alishan (Ali Mountain), Taiwan 2014

[ecol-ist]

Trochodendron aralioides Siebold & Zucc.

An Ice Age relict in Taiwan, distributed only in cloud forests of East Asia. This tree species has survived from Cretaceous Period.

昆欄樹, Bird-lime tree, photo taken by cywhale, 2013

[wee-spot-of-tea]

WHAT'S MY NAME?

Soo... it's been like infinity years since I properly updated this. I have excuses! Like moving and travelling and working and being lazy! But no 1 curs, i no... Anyway! I was recently in SE Asia, where I was fortunate enough to find all kinds of good places for tea. It's actually pretty tricky to weed out the quality tea from the shit tea from the wily street vendors, but I managed to find a pretty reputable teahouse in Bangkok where they had one of my absolute favourite teas, ali shan jin xuan. I was so excited I almost burst into tears. I was also pretty massively sleep deprived.

Today’s choice: Ali Mountain (ali shan) [阿里山茶]

Type: Oolong tea, Taiwanese style

Because: I was so excited to see it on the menu I cried.

Directions: Approximately 4 grams for a ~12oz pot, very nearly boiling water, let the first one sit 1-2 minutes, able to be used 6+ times- just let each subsequent infusion sit a bit longer.

Actually, I learned something interesting from this place. Apparently, in China, semi-oxidised teas are actually known as "blue tea", where as the name "oolong" only refers to a specific type of "blue tea" (as the word "oolong" means "black dragon", I assume it's referring to the tea that is shaped like that... darker, longer, and rolled and twisted length-wise instead of ball-shaped, like ali shan). 

Comparative processing methods for tea. I'm sure this is very informative. If you speak Thai. Which I regrettably do not.

Taiwanese "oolongs" (I guess I should use the term "blue teas"), from my limited experience, generally tend to be very lightly oxidised. Ali shan teas are probably the most famous of the Taiwanese tea varieties and an excellent example of this. It's so lightly oxidised that it tastes more like a green tea than like most other oolong teas I've had. Green tea is 100% unoxidised and sometimes too little oxidation of a tea can upset the stomach, but, despite this, some producers still try to minimize oxidation of these teas in order to achieve the specific grassy-yet-buttery-and-milky taste or to allow the tea leaves to be easily rolled into the spherical shape.

Proof that size doesn't matter.

Basically, Taiwan is an awesome place for tea, especially "oolongs" (I should probably use "blue" again). Ali shan is mostly picked during the winter months from the Ali mountain, which is basically right in the middle of the island. Of course it depends on personal taste, but of all the ali shan teas, maybe the "best" one (certainly my favourite) is jin xuan, which is the name of a cultivar developed in Taiwan during the 1980s (totally just learned that from Wikipedia right now.)

Among the endless amounts of names, the tea is apparently also called "winter tea" (because of its picking time) and "milk tea" (because of its milky flavour). Good ali shan jin xuan, to me, doesn't really taste so much like milk as it does butter. It really tastes like buttered green vegetables! Maybe that's not particularly appetising for some, but for me it's fucking delicious so let me get that.

Whole, unbroken leaves. Fuck yeah.

Like I said, Thailand was rife with shit tea masquerading as the real deal. I'm sure it's like buying meth and finding out it's not the blue glass that Heisenberg makes on Breaking Bad, but some reddish-brown shit that's mostly caffeine and/or something worse. I mean, what? Regardless, this tea was the real deal. There are a few ways to check the quality, like smelling it (it better smell fresh and fragrant, but not perfumed) or looking at the leaves (they should be unbroken and clean), but the best way to tell is to just have a cup and see what it tastes like because, in the end, as long as you like it, who really cares what the quality is?