Do You Drink The True High Grade Oolong Tea From Taiwan?

The Dragon Boat Festival of year 2009 has just passed, it was reported that the spring crop of Lishan high mountain oolong tea was sold out at the tea distributing center in Taipei. In the past, the Lishan spring crop is available until the Mid-Autumn Festival, and then restocked by the winter crop. This year, the spring crop ran into a shortage much earlier than before. Local tea wholesalers can not even acquire it as it was all bought up by China's merchants. The spring crop of Lishan oolong tea was not ready to go downhill but has went across the strait to mainland China already.

China's merchants bought up Lishan tea at USD 25 millions

Moreover, the serious shortage of Lishan tea is nothing related to the increasing demand from Chinese tourists, but some experienced merchants find that they can make a fortune through hoarding all Lishan oolong tea as a rare commodity. This incurs a strange phenomenon that local tea drinkers from the oolong tea hometown (Taiwan) can not drink the true Lishan oolong tea but the fake ones from Vietnam, Indonesia and even mainland China.

According to local tea farmers' statement, China's Fu Chun tea group paid USD 25 millions to buy up the said Lishan high mountain oolong tea at the price around US$ 312 per kg via a trading company from Hong Kong. Fu Chun purchased around 78,000 kg in total. They are going to resell it in Hong Kong about Hong Kong Dollar 14,813 (USD 1,980) per kg and China Yen 16,666 (USD 2,552) per kg in China. The resale price is 6 times higher than the purchase price. The news has highly drawn the attention of the high mountain oolong tea lovers and become a headline in the tea market.

Lishan is a direct translation from Chinese pronunciation which means Pear Mountain. It is located in Taiwan's Taichung County and is a popular summer resort noted for its production of peaches, pears and apples. In recent 10 years, it is gradually famous for it high quality oolong teas grown here. Lishan is still a new but the highest tea growing area in Taiwan. Tea from here is usually regarded as the top grade one and only available in Spring & Winter 2 harvest seasons. Therefore, the price of Lishan tea is higher and its output is limited.

The purchasing fever is spreading from Macau's gambling houses to mainland China

The craze for Lishan tea is contributed to the gambling houses from Macau. Last year, the Venice group of Macau recruited Taiwan's experienced tea masters to manufacture oolong tea directly at the original area of Lishan tea. These teas are returned to Macau to serve the VIP clients after completion. The feedback of their clients is quite positive. They gave some teas to high officers of China as gifts and won a very good reputation, too. This leads to a craze of buying and experiencing Lishan tea's elegant flowery scent and unique ripe-fruity flavor between 2 sides of the Taiwan Strait.

This year, Fu Chun tea group intensifies the fever; it targets on China's billionaire market and bought up Lishan tea directly through a trading company. To secure the tea's high quality, they recruited some security guards to monitor the entire manufacturing progress from tea leaf's picking to finished packing. If Fu Chun tea group indeed bought up all Lishan spring crops, then what's going on for these Lishan tea still available in local tea market? As a matter of fact, Taiwan imports some high mountain oolong tea from Vietnam, Indonesia and China every year. These teas are planted and managed by Taiwan's tea farmers. Although the place of origin is not Taiwan, while the manufacturing skills make up part of tea's quality. Therefore, if you are not a critical tea drinker sometimes you can not tell from real and fake. Taiwan��s top grade high mountain tea is exported to China, while local tea market is flooded with high mountain tea from Vietnam, Indonesia and China. It is hard to say that someday we have to fly to Beijing or Shanghai in order to drink the true high grade Taiwanese oolong tea in the future.