The Story Behind the (Non) Frozen Peak

“I have been here several times now, even in the winter, and it’s never cold.  Why is this place called 凍頂 – the cold peak?  Also, why is it called a mountain when we’re not that high up?  The name doesn’t make sense to me.”

I had been sitting in the tea room of a new friend’s house on Dong Ding with some old-timers – farmers & roasting experts - when I felt comfortable enough to bring up these curiosities that had been bugging me.  My Dong Ding teacher’s cousin said it never gets very cold, and as far as he can remember, it has never snowed.  It’s also not very high (definitely not high enough to be considered a high mountain).

The gathering chuckles together.  Taiwanese chatter erupts for a few minutes, heads shake, more chuckles pass around and the tea in the pot is changed, a good sign that I’m in for a nice story. 

One of the old masters bent over in his chair and scraped around the pile on the floor. He picked up an old sheet that was the calendar page for a past day, turned it over, and reached for a pen.  On it, he wrote in 4 vertical columns and then drew what looked like a 3-legged stool.  This brief history behind the naming of the mountain, as told to me by my Dong Ding teacher, his cousin, and several other mountain old-timers, is what I’ll pass along today.

As far back as they know (probably early Qing Dynasty), 崠頂 – Dong Ding (different “Dong”) – was possibly named after a village in Fujian province, possibly where some early Chinese settlers came from (they say possibly because none of them have written records, although the National Archives probably do somewhere).  As the area was settled, it was discovered that the region’s soil was quite fertile.  To this day, the region produces famous red yams (紅薯), bamboo shoots (冬筍) and a plethora of fruits and veggies.  The greater Nantou county is home to many of Taiwan’s major tea producing mountains and is a major agricultural production center.  As the population grew, the name for Dong Ding mountain changed to Fu Ding Feng (覆鼎峰).  The name refers to a ceremonial urn that has 3 legs, which is then overturned.  The new name reflected an abstract interpretation of the topographical appearance of Dong Ding mountain.

 

(Imagine this upside-down; image from the Harvard Chinese Rubbings Collection)

“We promise we’re not lying to you, the mountain does look like an upside-down bowl with 3 short legs.”  One of the old-timers thought it was funny to talk about the mountain that way.  In Chinese, this type of ceremonial urn can be used as a funeral accompaniment and thus, doesn’t allude to the most fortuitous of events.  The old-timer thought it was strange that his ancestors were so senseless as to name such a special mountain after a burial urn.

(My pic of Dong Ding as seen from Shan Lin Xi; the 3 stubs of the inverted 鼎)

Possibly realizing that the especially fertile area needed a better name than “upside down urn,” the inhabitants changed it again.  Still called Fu Ding Feng, they replaced the first two characters with similar-sounding, but more auspicious ones.  Fu (福), meaning good fortune/blessed, and Ding (頂), meaning, among other things, the top or extreme of.  Feng was possibly also changed to ”豐”which alludes to abundance, but the gathering could not agree on this.  Thus, the new Fu Ding Feng name implied extreme prosperity and good fortune. 

Why and how the name was later changed to its present moniker, 凍頂 – the cold peak – no one gathered seemed to know for sure.  It had somehow come full circle, though why Dong was replaced with “凍” is not clear.  My teacher joked that maybe everyone was too busy accumulating good fortune to think straight.

With an average temperature in the 50s to 70s and an elevation of 1500-2000 feet, Dong Ding mountain is neither very cold or very high (it is roughly 1/6 the height of Yushan).  The area of the mountain is also very small in relation to how much “Dong Ding” tea is sold, so chances are, precious little of the actual tea from Dong Ding mountain is sold around here.  That’s nothing particularly alarming, though, as the same can be said of Longjing, Biluochun, Alishan, Da Hong Pao…. 

Cold Peak?  Frozen Summit?  Frosty Mountaintop?  Nah, but it is pretty close to being the Extreme of Coolness – for tea, that is.

Drink good tea and enrich your life.

How many times does that Bush get picked?

“How many seasons are there for oolong?”

I came across this question a while back in an article that was intended to help tea buyers better understand the products for purchase.  My guess is that the author has a specific number in mind.  The honest answer is that it depends.

Dong Ding, for example, has two prime seasons – spring and winter.  However, there are often 5 harvests – 1 for each season, twice in the summer.  Further, there may be an additional picking after the main winter picking, called Dong Pian, for a total of 6.  Why might one not know about the non-main harvests?  It’s often mixed in with main harvest teas, or can be used to produce other types of teas as well.

Oriental Beauty, on the other hand, has only 1 official harvest that is used for production of that tea, around late May – June.  There may be multiple pickings during the main harvest, though.

However, each farmer works differently.  Some may harvest year round, and some may only harvest twice a year for production (and either leave tea to grow on the bush or pick and discard the other seasons…).

You have permission - buy it based on its looks

Many tea lovers also appreciate beautiful teaware and antiques.  At many tea stores, you'll find a selection of unique and/or antique teawares for collectors.

Sophie of Wistaria in Taipei is a collector and admirer of the arts.  She also has quite an eye for antique pieces.  There are many such teaware pieces at the teahouse.

"How do you know a piece is real?  What are the signs, say, for this cup that tell you its an antique?"

I was holding in my hand a thick celadon cup that was likely from the late 1800s, one of the many types of tea cups that are sold in the shop.

"I don't know for sure.  I tell customers to buy what they like.  No one can guarantee the age of an antique.  The prices are based upon our belief of the age of the piece, the beauty and the rarity.  If a customer ever buys an antique item from us and decides later that they think it's not really old, they are free to return it."  Sophie's answer is direct and honest.  You can't know with absolute certainty, and the fakes are getting so good.  The factories can take bits of authentic antiques, mash them up, and put them in commonly-checked spots of a replica piece - such as the bottom of the cup.

"Many of the big auction houses have sold many, many fake items without knowing it.  They only continue to do so because so many people don't know better."  Zhou Yu agreed that antiques should be viewed as an object of personal desire.  Whether new or old, its biggest value is in personal enjoyment.

They opened up their antique cabinet and pulled out a stack of cups, eggshell Dehua porcelain that are likely from the early 1900s.  Mr. Zhou put one on the table, rinsed it with hot water, and then filled it with tea.  He pushed the cup in front of me for a sip.

"This is thin and beautiful.  I know such a piece takes the work of a skilled artist."  My ceramics classes were helping me to better understand and appreciate teaware.  To be able to shape clay into such a level of thinness is a master-level skill.  I admired the beauty of the piece, but it didn't make the tea taste better.  For me, the greatest value of antique pieces is neither its beauty nor its rarity, but its ability to improve the taste of my brews.

"So you don't like it more than the other cups you have?"  Mr. Zhou and Sophie watched as I took another sip from the cup.  It was Dehua pottery from way back when Dehua still had lots of good clay.  Nowadays, there are more fakes and the industrialized process can produce lower-quality pieces.  I still prefer my oval-shaped Dehua cup to any other piece I own, and that was made in 2008.

Drink good tea and enrich your life.

The eroding landscape of high mountain teas

"The more fake a tea is, the more fragrant and delicious it can be.  The more fake a tea is, the more it can sell, and for a high price.  This is the world of tea that we live in." 

My Dong Ding teacher's viewpoint on the eroding landscape of tea is reflected in what happened to Alishan late last year, when typhoons destroyed 1/2 to 2/3 of the winter crop.  It is natural that higher demand results in increased production and/or increased prices.  The demand for premium Taiwan high mountain oolong is insatiable, made even more so by its rapidly growing popularity in China that's fueled by deep-pocketed tea enthusiasts. 

Alishan has been so heavily farmed and terraced for tea that its soil is increasingly unstable.  Trees on mountains grow deep roots that anchor the soil.  Remove the forests and grow shallow-rooted plants and there is no stability in the landscape.  I've seen it everywhere; on Fenghuang mountain, Shanlinxi, Longfengxia, and Dalun mountain.  Beautiful tea terraces that encircle entire mountainsides.  Where is the excess moisture to go?  It's no wonder heavy rains can wash away entire sides of a mountain.

I met some old tea farmers in Taipei as I was having tea with the Younger one day.  The farmers said that tea needs space to breathe.  It needs the natural landscape to balance its environment.  It needs to be trimmed and hacked every once in a while so that it can fight to grow back.  Sometimes a bush must forego the harvest for a few seasons to produce good leaves again.  Trees, fruit bushes and other types of vegetation add to the unique characteristics of tea.  Plants thrive, they think, when their natural environment is left as pure and natural as can be.

The Dude’s Good Dirt

The Dude rolls out of bed at dawn.  He boils water to fill a pot of tea that he’s already brewed from for a few days; farmers don’t tend to waste anything.  His wife’s been awake for nearly an hour and has made a simple breakfast of rice porridge and leftover chicken that is hearty and sustaining.  She sets a serving in front of The Dude, grabs her sweatshirt and paddy hat off of the stool in the corner, and sets off to join the rest of the tea pickers in the field as they prepare for the morning harvest.

Meanwhile, The Dude finishes his meal and picks his teeth clean with his pinky nail.  He meanders over to the courtyard where the tea pickers will offload their baskets of leaves and begins to sweep the cement floor with a straw broom, shooing away the dogs that lay there.  A blue tarp is unfolded and placed in a corner of the courtyard, upon which leaves will later rest.

After a morning of picking, the workers gather for an early lunch.  A pot of rice and some veggies & meat complete another hearty meal.  Bones – even chicken bones – are thrown at the dogs that pace around, still eying their previous sleeping spots that are now covered with leaves.  One dog scampers across the courtyard, running over the tea as he hurries to catch a food scrap. 

After the tea is dried outside, it’s placed on racks inside to continue to oxidize/wither.  Other batches of tea, some being made into cold brew or lightly-oxidized fragrant tea, are in various stages of being processed.  A big, metal, cement-mixer like machine heats the leaves to 140 degrees+ celcius as it rolls around, its function to halt the oxidation of the leaves.  A very green and raw scent lingers thickly in the air. 

We test the tea that comes out of the cement mixer, just for fun. The Dude grabs a wet porcelain bowl and puts in a big pinch of steaming-hot tea leaves.  The bowl is black wherever he touches it – extra flavoring from the broom dust/lunch/bug squashing….  The aroma is floral & fresh, the taste is raw & vegetal.  I smile at The Dude and drink without hesitation – it’s good dirt in there, I tell myself.

We dump out the leaves from the oxidation-stopping machine and haul it over to a belt-driven drying machine, whose function is to remove the bulk of the moisture from the leaves.  We dump the leaves into the top of it and wait as it dries the leaves and moves them out via a belt at the bottom of the machine. 

The Dude reaches down and grabs a handful of hot, dry leaves that have accumulated in a pan.  He fills a small bag and tells me to take it home to drink later.  “Freeze it and brew it while still frozen – it’s very refreshing,” he instructs me before adding, “do you think it smells kind of like Marijuana?”  Grateful, I take the bag from him whilst unable to stop staring at his hands, which show all the signs and by-products of the day’s labor.  I’m surprised by his comment and can only muster a lame and nervous response of, “The tea smells good.  Heh heh.”  He carries on with ball-rolling the tea for later roasting.

I always rinse my tea leaves and offer up that first brew to the dirt from which it came.

Drink good tea and enrich your life.

Invincible, infallible taste-buds? No such thing

There are too many factors to consider in tea tasting for there to be any one person that can set an absolute standard for what is “the best” or what is “right.”  Don’t think that the competition judges get it right, either.  When you have to taste hundreds or thousands of teas in one afternoon and only have a few moments for each one, it may be the luck of the draw for the producer whether he gets a prize or not. 

If you’ve read the reviews of teas in the “Art of Tea” magazine, you’ll know that the experts that review are mostly experienced, “master-level” tea people.  However, not only do they never completely agree on which tea tastes best, but they can’t even agree on what each tea’s flavor, aroma or energy are.  Depending on the tea, temperature, brewing vessels, water, our own health and qi, our individual tea experiences will vary (this proclamation also serves as my official, public disclaimer to write-off all my past and future tasting errors!).

I often say drink good tea, with “good” being defined by yourself, and your own definition coming from experience, guidance (through well-intentioned tea educators, tea houses, books…) and your innate spring of wisdom.  Naturally, each tea will have a signature taste that you can learn to appreciate as well.  “Good” will change for you over time. 

I will also say that there are tastes that are NOT correct and are NOT good.  I’ll use charcoal as an example.  A good charcoal-roasted tea is hard to find in the US.  Few produce it anymore; it’s labor intensive and costly. 

I had the good fortune of being in Taiwan at the right time and meeting the right tea craftspeople to see actual charcoal roasting being done.  I’ll detail it more in a later roasting post, but it takes longer to charcoal roast a tea and it takes more diligence, since the temperature changes often and one must watch closely to prevent the tea from burning.  A properly roasted tea of any sort should have some fire, but should NOT look shiny in the light.  A lot of so-called charcoal roasted oolongs have an immensely strong taste of fire that covers the body of the tea.  Some may find the immense taste of fire to be enjoyable, not unlike overcooked bacon that is black, smoky and crunchy, but that’s not tea that has been roasted correctly.  There are issues if the leaves fail to open.  I have canisters of tea on a rack that, very fortunately, have a strong enough tea base to withstand the over-roasting that I’ve applied.  A small batch of Alishan, though, was over-roasted until some of its base flavor was replaced by fire.  It’s shiny, dark and fails to fully open in boiling water.  Experts in Taiwan say it can be fix, but the base is dead and it will not produce good tea.  A good charcoal roasted oolong – even recently fired - will open and showcase the tea’s flavor; this I’m positive of.

As a student of the roasting craft, I have a passion for learning and then passing on the essence of tea love.  I’m lucky to be able to enjoy extraordinarily unique teas, and I want others with such a penchant for it to be able to try and understand what I think is good as well.  A well-roasted charcoal tea, even a recently roasted one, will have fire and smoke in the taste, but it will still be round and delicious.  The charcoal is not meant to supplant the tea’s taste, but to augment it.

When I parted ways with Mr. Zhan of the Nine Pots Manor, I left with the feeling that the lingering questions I had about tea roasting, the energy of the brew and learning to master one’s own skill would be answered by his tea water.  As I left, he placed into my bag a present, one that I feel he thinks might further my learning.  To share the spirit of tea love and my commitment to spreading the virtues of good tea, I will send the first three people to comment/email/knock on my door a 5g sample.  It’s aged, it was once charcoal roasted, and it will be quite unlike anything you’ve had before.  If you have the affinity to be able to enjoy this brew, I hope that you will be able to share this tea with a friend(s) and will continue to contribute positively to the movement for good tea and tea knowledge.   

Drink good tea and enrich your life.