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Moon Festival Tea Sale
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Why do we call this Shiiba blue?
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Getting a good harvest from a wild mountain tea (yama-cha) that originated in the Japanese island of Kyushu and transplanted by our Nepali producer in his tea garden on the Himalayas has not been an easy task. We have been tracking the development of this Nepali Shiiba for many years and in every harvest, we have witnessed some adaptation in the technique in attempts to make the most of these precious little leaves.
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The conclusion to the semi-oolong technique used in the current batch is logical. It bring out an optimum profile that perhaps only a Shiiba grown in this foreign terroir could have the potential for — the savoury richness of a Kyushu green tea wok roasted like a Chinese Longjing delivered through the elegant bouquet overtone of a Taiwan oolong with accents of a fine Darjeeling.
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Before the 19th century in this part of the world, oolongs that were not deep baked for export and that were meant for the local markets were popularly called “Qing Cha”. It was to differentiate from the more elaborated and young pluck green tea or export red tea (known as black tea in the West).
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The character for “Qing”—青— in Qing Cha, is synonymous with blue. Old forms of non-deep baked oolongs, such as Shiguping, Paochong, etc can sometimes look turquoise in colour and be categorically thought of as “blue” in the Chinese language context of those era.
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Indeed the term Qing Cha is still used today amongst certain groups of tea people to loosely define teas that are not green tea, not black tea and not deep baked oolongs.
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To us this Shiiba is indeed a Qing Cha. We think it borders around the categories of white tea, oolong, black and green teas. It tastes like a cocktail of a tea yet exceptionally coherent with its bright and yet sophisticatedly complex profile. We even keep it in cold storage as we do with our green tea and green oolongs.
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I hope you will appreciate this wonderful little gem as I do.
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