Lalashan Hongshui

There's something magic about this plot of land and the tea it produces. The field is small, a beautiful high elevation garden with wild grasses growing between the tea bushes. The hillside looks out over a vast expanse of Taiwan's mountainous country. And the farmer does a great service to his land by not adding any kind of amendment, allowing the tea to fend for itself and root deep into the earth. He says 'the bugs eat first, and then I get to have what's left'. This is the same base tea as our teacher's Lalashan Hongshui that has been one of our all time hall-of-fame teas here at Floating Leaves. We spent a week with the farmer -- a bearded, plump, joyous man we call Taiwan Santa Claus -- last Spring. We were incredibly lucky to get a small amount of his GABA Oolong, AKA Lalashan Hongshui, directly from him.  However, because we got it from the farmer we got the chance to take care of the roasting end of it ourselves. We finished it at our shop in our dual bamboo basket roasters ov