Eco-Cha Tea Club #22: Gold Medal Award Jin Xuan High Mountain Tea

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The Gold Medal Award is given to the top 15% of all entries in the competition. This month’s batch tea was entered into this spring’s “New Strain Tea Competition”, which represents Jin Xuan (Tai Cha #12), and has over 1000 entries. This complements the Alishan High Mountain Qing Xin Oolong Tea Competition, which boasts over 2000 entries — the second largest tea competition held by a Farmers’ Association in Taiwan.

The batch of Jin Xuan Tea leaves shown above were carefully selected, roasted and de-stemmed to attain their optimal quality and value. Due to a shortage of manual labor in recent years, the majority of competition tea batches are de-stemmed using a computerized machine specially designed for this purpose. However, whenever we visit the source of this batch of tea during competition season, 2-4 family members are sitting around a card table draped in black cloth, painstakingly inspecting and selecting only the best quality of the leaves and discarding the rest.

The leaves were delicately roasted to meet the competition quality standard, offering a mild, smooth, well-balanced, buttery-sweet brew. The light roasting can be observed in the color of the brewed tea above, which is more golden than an unroasted High Mountain Tea. We have very much appreciated this standard set by the Meishan Farmers’ Association Competitions, as it offers a flavor profile that is between a fresh, green, floral unroasted High Mountain Tea and a rich, bold, complex traditionally made tea, such as Dong Ding Oolong.

It can be seen in the appearance of the brewed leaves above that the leaves have not been substantially altered by the level of roasting they have undergone. Still maintaining most of their green hue, with signs of oxidation evident, but not “shriveled” or “browned” by extensive roasting.