Taiwan Tea Guy

We didn’t have a real big Christmas here this year – the Teaboy and I were both a bit sick, and besides, there’s never any snow! Luckily, Santa was pretty good this year. He brought me an iron kettle set so I can start working on my charcoal water boiling here at home. Now I just need some coal in my stocking and I’m all set!

 “Hey dad – there’s a hole in your bowl”

“That makes a big pot of tea!”

I’ll be blogging about my charcoal adventures as I go along, so stay tuned for more, and happy holidays!

On our trip to make Black Tea with Master Tsai, we took time out for a well-deserved break in Suei Li, a small farming community just south of Sun Moon Lake. Among other things, the town is famous for its ice cream, which we naturally just had to sample!  Read the rest of this entry »

On the second morning of our Black Tea Workshop, we  went up to some of the Assam tea fields in the Yu Chr area to pick tea.  It’s in a very unassuming area – just a narrow concrete road winding into the hills. There wasn’t even room to turn the car around! Read the rest of this entry »

No, not that Route 66! On our trip to make Taiwan Black Tea with Tsai Lao Shr (see Making Black Tea), we stayed at a small bed & breakfast in  Yu Chr Township, near Sun Moon Lake. Since the big earthquake in 1999 (I was here for that!), the area has struggled to recover, but eco-tourism is becoming popular now, so things seem to be improving in the area economically.     

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Master Tsai offered me space in one of his Nantou tea-making workshops, so of course I jumped at the chance. We rode the high-speed train to Taichung, then by car to Yu Chr, a black tea growing area around the north end of Sun Moon Lake.  The first day consisted of actually producing our own hand-rolled organic Assam tea in the local style, a group dinner, and then a late-night tea session at a local bed & breakfast. The second day we picked tea in the mountains, toured the Sun Moon Lake area (including a visit to the Tea Research Center near the lake), then held an informal competition to taste and discuss our tea before heading back to Taipei. This post focuses on the actual processing of our black tea. Read the rest of this entry »

To those of my loyal readers who’ve been wondering what happened to me the past few months, thanks for your concern. No, I wasn’t on an extended tea-picking trip to Nantou (although reports on that are coming soon), and no, I wasn’t flattened by a city bus running a light on Chung Shan N. road (almost – I was just a bit too quick for him!!). I was, in all honesty, hanging out around the house. We’ve moved into a new place, and I have been converting the main living room and balcony into a tea room, which is now open for business! 

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Teaguy is very happy to let you know he now has his own line of organic teas from Taiwan available through this site. You can check out the Mystic Grove Teas under the ‘Tea’ heading on the left side of the page there.

We are also going to carry ChaTei brand teas, and the prices & descriptions for those will be added soon. ChaTei is the flagship line of Master Aliang’s Hsi Tang Tea Company. They are all hand-selected personally by Aliang to meet his high standards, and  include:

          Alishan and Shan Lin Hsi Oolongs

          4 Seasons Oolong

          Jade Oolong

          Jin Xuen (Silk or Milk Oolong)

          Wen Shan Baojong

          Oriental Beauty (Dong Fang Mei Ren)

          Mucha Tie Kuan Yin (Aliang’s signature tea)

I’m very excited about these new additions to the website, and I’d like to thank all of you who have supported the Teaguy since it’s inception. Your comments and patronage have been a great inspiration to me, and I look forward to expanding and developing this site. I look forward to helping you with your tea needs in the coming year!!!

Ran across these photos the other day, and realized I hadn’t posted this up from last June! The Mucha Farmer’s Association sponsored an event to showcase the area’s agricultural goods, so of course Aliang and I were there representing Tie Kuan Yin (Iron Goddess) and Bao Jong teas. Read the rest of this entry »

After getting the tea samples ready and delivering them to the Mucha Farmer’s Association offices (see Part I), it was simply a matter of hanging out while the judges made their decision.

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I recently (actually, several months ago – hey, I’ve been busy!)  helped Aliang get his TKYs ready for the Spring Competition. I had stopped by for an after-tutorial cup of the world’s favorite brew, and ended up bagging tea samples until 2:00 in the morning (which is one of the things I do love about living in Taiwan – it’s perfectly normal to be up at all hours of the night doing stuff). Read the rest of this entry »