From fashionable iced coffee to elegant dining! 4 new ways to taste oolong!

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For fifth-and sixth-graders, yellow-brown tea with charcoal-roasted fragrance and a hint of bitterness may be the earliest tea memory in life. It was a popular feature of frozen-top oolong tea in the 1970s, when life was inseparable from making tea, and many people spent their childhood in the fragrance of tea.

Shen Min-fu, founder of direct living stationery, who has two stores in Taipei and distributes stationery from well-known foreign brands, recalls his childhood life in his hometown of Tainan, and tea is a must for family and friends parties. My father is engaged in the construction industry and always has at least six kinds of tea at home to greet guests. "my father starts drinking tea every day after breakfast, and he must personally make tea to entertain visiting businessmen, almost all of whom soak Dongding Oolong Tea; some relatives who serve in the police force also drink tea and socialize with each other at work, virtually tasting all the good tea and talking about the Tea Sutra, one is sharper than the other."

Under the influence of osmosis, Shen Shih-fu is also particular about drinking tea. he will order alpine oolong tea (produced in the industry known as Gaoshan tea at an altitude of more than 1 km) at the Fushou Mountain Farm in Lishan, Taichung. In the early years, the tea was only used by the president as a gift to foreign guests, but now it is often in short supply, and experts have asked about it one or two months before the harvest season.

The unique fragrance of white flowers "mountain atmosphere"

Modern Taiwanese are most familiar with "oolong tea," but they have little knowledge of how to appreciate the beauty of tea. Langcha specially selects single alpine oolong (single production season, tea style and producing area) from Taichung, Nantou and Chiayi. The fragrance is so sweet that even if the customer is junior in drinking tea, he can easily understand the characteristics of Taiwan tea. Founder Hsiao Yi-wen said: "the taste focuses on the fragrance of the white flowers, reflecting the 'mountain atmosphere' of the planting place." This is a jargon often spoken by tea lovers, which seems abstract, but in fact, just like the "local conditions" mentioned in wine, tea is affected by the geography and climate of the tea garden, resulting in a unique aroma similar to that of wild ginger, betel nut and even magnolia. Xiao Yiwen said that Japanese guests are often impressed by Alpine Oolong, which not only tastes as refreshing as green tea, but also has an amazing fragrance of flowers.

Spread out the map is not difficult to understand why Taiwan tea has the advantage. According to a study by the Tea Industry improvement Field of the Council of Agriculture of the Executive Yuan, most of the world's tea areas are concentrated within 50 kilometers of the north and south sides of the Tropic of Cancer, including Assam in India, Fujian in China, and Yunnan Province. Alishan, which is famous for its oolong tea in Taiwan, is also among them. With an average annual temperature of about 10 degrees Celsius, clouds can resist direct sunlight, which can reduce the content of catechins that cause bitterness in tea, and the leaves are thicker and more bubble-resistant than those at low altitude and high pectin content.

Tea is interesting in mash-up.

If it is difficult for young people to understand the elegant and delicate fragrance of alpine tea, they might as well try "blended tea" with distinctive taste. Most people inevitably have some prejudice against "blending", and their intuition is that inferior tea can be mixed together. In fact, blending can be selected by professional tea masters, and the logic is similar to that of blending whisky. Tea varies from refreshing to full-bodied due to different degrees of fermentation. Mash-up to create a pleasant style is also a common method for the industry to design tea style.

The industry is designed for the tea set, in order to attract young people to get started, it is called to play with tea. Green, yellow and red tea cans represent non-fermented, partially fermented and heavily fermented tea respectively, making it easy to understand the taste characteristics first. Unfermented tea is as refreshing as Biluochun, some fermented tea like alpine oolong has a floral flavor, and heavy fermented tea has the most prominent personality, just like Yingxiang black tea with cinnamon flavor. Huang Shuzi, manager of the peddler promotion department of Buertang, suggested: "match two at a time. If you want to challenge and innovate, you can mix green tea with black tea and use unfermented tea with heavily fermented tea." For example, the jade oolong is elegant and pleasant, but the taste is weak, adding the sweet and solid flavor of black tea at the right time to cater to more people.

Cite coffee extraction techniques

There are individual products of tea, matching can be selected, drinking tea should not be limited to hot soaking, the new topic is "iced tea". The ten teahouses in Taipei's Songshan Wenchuang Park are the strongholds that lead the trend. The design of the store is simple and neat, hanging a row of curling kettles to extract orange-yellow oolong tea with a rhythm of 1 drop per second. Combined with the ice drop method and Oriental tea that reverberated in the coffee industry in Europe and the United States, the innovative idea came from Zhang Jifang, a fifth-generation tea man from Mingjian Township in Nantou. He spent two years watching foreign coffee and tea brands and thinking about how to grab the attention of young people. Iced tea is a new attempt that he has been thinking about for a long time.

As there is no precedent for extracting tea with ice drops, Zhang Jifang tried it for nearly 2 years. First find a suitable ice drop appliance in Tainan, where the throttle valve can adjust the flow rate; it takes more effort to choose tea: "Tea cannot be ground by machine like coffee beans, and it is easy to produce the smell of scorch or fuel consumption. It has to be carefully selected to fit the leaf size of the curling kettle, which is only 1 jin for about 1,000 jin, which is rarer than coffee beans. " After trying many kinds of tea, he thinks that Alpine Oolong is the most suitable for ice drops. At present, oolong tea from the Hongxiang tribe of Renai Township in Nantou is used at an altitude of 1600 meters: "there is a lot of pectin in the leaves at high altitude, the sweetness is good and the taste is fresh."

Since Taiwan tea can learn from ice droplets, teacups can also go against tradition and switch to tall cups with meals, causing sparks on the taste buds.

The cup enhances the concentration of tea.

Hsueh Shundi, 34, is the founder of Yongxin Fengcha. His family runs a Taiwanese restaurant in Kaohsiung. Tea used to be a warm-up before a meal and a supporting role after a meal. Growing up with his elders drinking Dongding Oolong Tea, he has been thinking about how to serve tea to highlight the connotation of tea. "I have a habit of drinking wine. Once in a fantasy, I put cold tea into a wine glass to shake and smell fragrance, and I found that it made some sense. On the one hand, it appreciates the brown color of different degrees of fermentation, and the other is the narrow design of the mouth of the cup, which makes people subconsciously want to smell incense. The goblet changes the behavior of drinking tea, from cow drinking to drinking tea. " Xue Shundi also chose a thin-walled crystal cup to make it feel better.

It is convenient for someone to help pick and make tea, but if you still want to go to the tea garden to buy tea, how should you choose? Chen Yijun, who has a certificate of sensory evaluation of tea, created his own tea brand Shan Zangfu, and won the "Qingxin Oolong" group in the 2015 cross-strait tea competition, offered advice: "you can find tea from tea competitions held by peasant associations all over Taiwan. For example, the Meishan Township Peasant Association and the Alishan Township Peasant Association in Chiayi County have an average of more than 3,000 applications for tea competitions such as Qingxin Oolong and Jinxuan, and their participation in the evaluation has also been recognized by the tea market, and the quality of winning the prize is guaranteed. " In addition to paying attention to large-scale competitions, tea produced in the tea area has official certification marks, such as "Lugu Frozen Top Oolong Tea" or "Alishan Alpine Tea", which can be found on the official website.

Shen Shih-fu advises not to put pressure on yourself when drinking oolong tea: "you don't have to have a complete set of tea-making props. Mugs or even French filter pots can be brewed quickly and instantly." Drink tea to enjoy the quiet dialogue with the tea soup, save red tape, leaving more spare time to experience.