Meet Tea Master Lily: Honing her palette and craft since the 1980's, Tea Master Lily knows her stuff! She can discuss tea for hours regarding the categories of tea and ceremony styles, but what she can't tell you is what quality tea tastes like. That is why she selected only the best of Boutique Farm Oolong Tea to share with her Son, co-owner of Silk & Jade.
Boutique Farm Mountain Tea: Tea Leaves (scientifically known as "camellia sinensis") are comparable to the grapes used for wine. The location, soil, weather, and elevation of land seeps into tea plants and modifies the taste. Taiwan, a volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean, has become the Tea Capital of the world for high elevation tea cultivation.
The mountainous terrain of this beautiful subtropical island is covered in jade green foliage. The side of mountains are hidden by dewy clouds in the morning, and the cultivation of high mountain tea hides in plain view. The infusion of conditions permeates High mountain tea with a unique sweet lingering floral taste.
On these small boutique tea gardens, generations of high mountain tea farming methods are preserved and improved by the present generation of family tea farmers.
Oolong Tea: The tea process refined with technology is wilted, bruised, oxidized, fixated, yellowed, shaped, dried, or cured according the the specific tea desired. In all of the land, Oolong Tea is the treasured "champagne of tea."
Oolong tea has all the benefits of green tea, but the flavor of red tea (red tea is called 'black tea' in western culture). There is a spectrum of tea by way of processing, and more specifically by oxidation. If green tea is 1, and red tea is 10, then oolong tea is 2-9.
Green tea skips the bruising and oxidation to instead fixate the tea before shaping and drying tea.
Red tea is wilted, bruised, and fully oxidized before being shaped dried and cured.
Oolong tea is wilted, tossed, and partially oxidized and then rolled, dried, and sometimes fired. The partial oxidization is what creates and range of tea, and the harvest from a particular land, from a particular time, with a particular processing method results in rare boutique teas.
Tea Master Lily: Tea Master Lily has studied and refined her palette for tea for over 30 years. Selecting only the tea treasures of Taiwan, she is bringing the best of farm-to-teapot Boutique Oolong Tea, and each vintage grows rarer and finer with age.