La La Shan

If you are looking for a tea to impress even your most refined and sophisticated friends, look no further! Let them admire the beautifully crafted leaves in shades of gold, green, and purple, and breathe in the nutty-vegetal aroma reminiscent of green asparagus. You will have won them over even before they take their first sip. The delicately light, yellow-green liquor has a milky quality, providing a refreshing and salivating effect at the same time. Finally, the intense sweetness of honeysuckle, paired with notes of baked chestnuts, will surely leave your friends - and yourself, of course - with nothing but satisfied smiles.

Written by Sven

About the farmer and sourcing

La La Shan is a famous hiking area in Taiwan, situated only a 2-hour drive south of Taipei and home to a national forest with giant trees. The mountain is also well-known for its peaches, attracting Taiwanese tourists to the area. Less known is its role in high-mountain tea production. Tea cultivation started fairly late here, about 20 years ago, and even today there are only a few tea fields on the mountain. Although it is less high than more famous mountains in Nantou County, its position in the northern part of the country results in a high-mountain climate even at lower altitudes. It is common to associate the La La Shan climate with that of the Nantou mountains above 2,000 meters. In fact, as we were told by some producers during our sourcing trip, it is common to ship La La Shan tea to Li Shan and sell it there, pretending it is from Li Shan.

The farmer, Ho Yu Ru, is originally from Nantou and cultivated tea there until the large earthquake in 1999. He subsequently decided to move to La La Shan and start producing tea there, using the same techniques employed for Nantou's high-mountain tea. Even today, the entire tea picking and processing team comes from Nantou, spending the entire harvest season in La La Shan. The farmer says that labor from Nantou is more expensive, but the pickers know best how to pick the leaves. In addition, his tea master, who oversees the production, has a lot of experience that he doesn’t want to give up. Gabriele visited the garden this tea comes from himself, where he took this this video.