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November, 2025
This month we have filled this box with some teas we found at our annual visit to the 2025 Nantou Tea Expo. This year’s show was decent, not the best ever, but we still found some fun teas to fill up this year’s box.
What are the teas we will look at this month?
Included this month are:
1 - 2022 Purple Bud Sheng Cake, 800m elevation, 0% Oxidization, machine picked in Spring, 2022, Dong Ding, Nantou, Purple Bud Cultivar
Tasting notes: Soft florals, dark grape/berry flavors, very strong
2 - #21 Black Tea, 400m elevation, 100% Oxidization, hand picked in Spring, 2025, Sun Moon Lake, Nantou, #21
Tasting notes: Strong ‘black teaness’, cherries, spice
3 - Berry Black Tea, 900m elevation, 100% Oxidization, hand picked in Spring, 2025, Zhushan, Nantou, Qinxin
Tasting notes: Dark Berries and rich, smooth malts
4 - Hybrid Wild Cultivar Tea Cake, 1000m elevation, Sheng Processing, hand picked in Spring, 2025, Alishan, Chaiyi, Hybrid formosensis
Tasting notes: Light florals, buttery, leaf litter, dark fruit
BONUS #1: Two heavy roasted Dong Ding Oolongs, very traditional!
BONUS #2: Cinnamon Herbal Tea (Taiwanese Wild Cinnamon, Goji Berry Root, Reshi Mushroom)
Are Tea Shows Worth Visiting?
At a tea show, it is rather hard to find exceptional teas. You have to know a lot about tea to make it past all the glitter and fancy packaging. Concentrating on tea tasting in a crowd is a hard skill to master, too. As this was our 8th year visiting the show, it is getting easier and easier to find the exceptional stuff. The show itself is like so many things in life, empty flash, glitter and marketing hiding some true gems to discover.
The Nantou Tea Expo is one of the very best tea shows to visit, as the booths are filled with the farmers themselves. Our yearly trip to the 2025 Nantou Global Tea Expo was an enjoyable success, but we did see some disappointing trends emerge. There seems to be a growing divergence between the expensive 'premium' and cheaper teas which has been challenging for many companies. While not unique to Taiwanese tea by any means, the divergence did seem to accelerate this year. ‘Premium Teas’ got much more expensive and a lot of the more experimental and marginal produces disappeared this year.
But it wasn’t all bad, more younger farmers were noticeable and the teas seem to get cleaner and cleaner each year. Overall, the Taiwanese tea industry seems resilient and strong. The challenges are not unique to Taiwanese tea, but we seem to be at an inflection point. It will be very hard for many companies to survive without innovating and finding a unique niche. The days of offering generic 'High Mountain Oolong' seem to be drawing to a close.
The Teas
1. 2022 Purple Bud Sheng Cake(Experimental):
Made by the same farmer as the Dongding Tea Cakes (2020 and 2012) that are now sold out, this one is a lot of fun. We didn’t buy them last year because this tea was just too strong, but the years have mellowed out this tea to give us some great dark berry and fruit flavors. Unique and fun, it isn’t quite aged to perfection yet and needs a soft hand brewing, but we bought a bunch of it. We are sure that it will just get better with age!
2. #21 Black tea: We finally found a #21 cultivar harvest black tea to bring to the site, but we couldn’t get enough as the harvest this fall in the Sun Moon Lake area were not good due to too much rain. This is a strong one! A hybrid made from the Assamica and Chinese Qimen cultivars, the beautiful fruit and spice flavors are best brought out with a gentle brewing hand.
3. Berry Black Tea: A beautifully fruity mid elevation black tea from the Zhu Shan area, we bought some for its unique dark fruit taste.
4. Alishan Wild Hybrid Tea Cake: We are used to unique teas but this one is even a special one for us! Grown from wild Camellia formosensis seeds cross pollinated with Qinxin Oolong genetics, Planted 80m years ago and grown in the perfect tea growing conditions of Alishan, the flavors of this one fascinating. Classic florals and buttery thickness of the sinensis cultivars mixed with the rich leaf litter feel of the formosensis, we have never had a tea quite like this one.
5. Taiwanese Cinnamon Herbal Tea: Our family’s favorite herbal tea, this mix of Taiwanese wild cinnamon, goji berry root and Reshi mushroom the dominant sweet and spicy cinnamon flavor is wonderful. If there is a demand for this one, we would be happy to bring more to the site.
**BONUS: The tea show can be overwhelming and these two teas were a buy that we are not putting on the site. Great tasting, classic heavy roasted teas by a multigenerational family, they are a little too ‘conventional’ for us. While each tea at the Tea Expo has to be tested as agrochemical ‘safe’, these teas are not as clean as our usual stock and you can tell when you brew them. We included them as great examples of conventional teas in the Taiwanese tea industry, and teas that we avoid putting on the site. Can you feel the difference between these and the cleaner teas we put on the site?
One is a charcoal roast from the Dongding area grown at around 800m while the other is from Shanlinxi and is an electric roasted tea grown at the 1400m mark. Both are Qinxin and have a very traditional and classic flavor profile.
The Mystery Tea
The Mystery teas this year are the Bonus Teas. One is a higher elevation, electric roasted more expensive tea. One is a lower elevation Charcoal roasted more affordable tea. Can you tell then apart?
The December Box
The December box will be filled with the freshest and best winter picked teas we can find! The thicker leaves grown in the cold weather give these teas a rich floral that you can’t get in any other season.
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