Li Shan Wulong

Li Shan — pear mountain — is the high benchmark of Taiwanese gaoshan, high-mountain oolong. Its gardens climb from sixteen hundred to twenty-six hundred metres in the central range above Taichung, among the highest tea on earth; only a handful of gardens in Nepal, Bolivia and Kenya sit higher. Up there the cold, the mist and the mineral soil slow the bush and concentrate the leaf.

The result is tenderness above all. Made lightly oxidised and rolled into tight pellets from the Qing Xin cultivar, the cup is silky and buttery — orchid and gardenia over cream, pear, peach and lychee, with the faintest acidity and a long, cool sweetness that keeps returning. The higher the garden, the softer and sweeter the tea; the famous Fushou Shan estate gives an almost velvet texture.

In the cup

Brew it gongfu, just off the boil, and give the tight pellets a little time to open across the early steeps. A white gaiwan keeps the high fragrance true. Winter and spring pickings are the prize, after the bushes have rested — sometimes under snow — for three or four months.