Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Oolong
Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Oolong
A light oolong from Mt. Shan Lin Xi, Taiwan. Rolled leaf, barely oxidised.
High on Shan Lin Xi.
Shan Lin Xi sits in the mountains of central Taiwan and is one of the island's great addresses for light oolong. Taiwan makes the style better than anywhere, and this is one of the places it is made best.
We buy it from a couple who have grown and sold tea most of their lives.
The pale end of oolong.
Oolong is not one thing. It is a span, from barely oxidised and green to heavily roasted and dark, and the two ends taste nothing like each other. This one sits at the pale end. Its opposite, the Anxi Roasted Oolong sits at the other. Both are in the house on purpose.
The leaf is rolled tight into pellets. Water opens them slowly, which is why one sachet is worth more than one pour.
Rolled leaf needs room.
A tightly rolled oolong cannot open inside a flat paper bag, which is why those bags are filled with tea cut almost to dust. The pyramid exists so the leaf can unfurl, and the extraction is measurably better for it.
Ours are made from a non-GMO sugar-cane PLA rather than the corn-based material most pyramid sachets use, and the material is certified to Japanese organic standards and by TUV Austria. Paper is not the clean option people assume: flat bags are sealed with a thermoplastic worked into the paper fibres.
One sachet is worth brewing more than once. The second pour is often the one worth waiting for.
Two oolongs, because one would be a lie.
Most houses carry one oolong and call it "oolong". That tells a customer nothing, because the word covers a range wider than the gap between a green tea and a black one. A single entry forces a choice of which half of the category to pretend does not exist.
So there are two. This one pale and floral-leaning from Taiwan, the other roasted and dark from Fujian. Drink them a week apart and the point makes itself.