I received this tea as a free 4 gram sample that was kindly included in my May order over at House of Tea.

Say the word “Taiwan” to a tea head and more than likely their first thought will be “Oolong“, although it has to be said that the island is also home to some rather fantastic black teas, too, but as House of Tea say in their notes for this tea, Taiwanese green teas are somewhat unusual.

Indeed, this tea is the first green from Taiwan that I’ve had the opportunity to sample, and I was keen to see how I got on with it.

The raw material is of the Chin Xin Gan Zhi cultivar, and was harvested in March of 2019, in Ming Jian township of Nantou county. House of Tea go on to inform us that a Mr. Chen was responsible for production of the leaves, which was done without the use of pesticides.

Sometimes when dealing with small samples, you get the distinct impression that you’re only scratching the surface, so to speak, and this was one of those teas.

Having said that, the impression I got was a favourable one. That pale, pale liquor was a somewhat plain, unassuming front for an interesting taste experience.

Imagine the cereal sweet nuttiness of a Longjing, but without any trace of grassiness or a typical green tea astringency, and then wrap it all up in a “where did that come from…?!” milky body, and you have about as concise a description of my three rounds with this sample as I can cobble together.

This is one of those samples that begs for that all important question to be answered, namely “just how well will a larger cargo of these leaves respond to some gong-fu TLC?”

Now that spring well and truly has its foot in the door and my tea-taste pendulum is once again swinging back towards lighter teas for those warmer, longer, lighter days, I might just have to wave the magic plastic wand in the general direction of these leaves.

Watch this space, etc…