The Yun Hai Taiwanese Tea Collection represents an ongoing collaboration with farmers, roasters, and masters of tea. First up is BANGtea, who sources directly from tea masters producing Taiwanese oolongs so good that they sell out before they even make it to market in Taiwan.

This loose leaf, ball-rolled black oolong has a smooth, creamy character and a fragrance that carries caramel and fresh soymilk aromas. Brewing produces an amber broth with notes of honey and plum, rounding out into cacao and barley.

Made from the jinxuan 金萱 cultivar, it’s produced with heavy oxidation (90+%) and a 15 hour roast, which leads to a rich headiness reminiscent of black tea.

As you brew, you’ll notice the tea balls unfurl to reveal whole leaves, stems, and buds—an indication that the farmer has handpicked the youngest tip of the plant, and an affirmation of quality.

Origin: Alishan Township, Chiayi County, Taiwan
Elevation: 1300 meters
Cultivar: Jinxuan 金萱 "milk oolong"
Oxidation: 90+%
Roast: Slowly roasted for 15 hours
Tasting Notes: cacao, honey, plum
Brewing: 5g per 150ml water / 210 degrees / 50 sec / multiple brews

How to Drink It

We recommend brewing 5 grams of tea with 150 ml of water at 210 degrees Fahrenheit for 50 seconds, but truthfully, it’s so good, you can’t go wrong. When starting with high quality tea, brewing can be as simple or as complex as the individual prefers, with a variety of different results, all enjoyable.

You could brew gong fu style, with a gaiwan or clay teapot. Or, go “grandpa style,” as BANGtea suggests, and toss some leaves into a beaker with hot water, no measuring. We love it as a cold brew, too: add 8-10g of this tea into a 16oz water bottle, and let it steep in the fridge overnight.

Serve this black oolong alongside herbaceous dried wax apples for an afternoon snack. For a hearty breakfast, we recommend pairing it with our tart passionfruit jam spread over buttered milk toast.

Though delicious on its own, this tea has a rich, coffee-like quality that pairs well with milk.

How to Taste It

While we are brewing-method agnostic and feel that great results can be achieved in many ways, we do feel strongly about using your senses to experience the tea in all of its stages.

Try:

• Rolling the leaves around in your hand to appreciate the color, shape, weight, and density.


• Smelling the leaves before and after brewing—dry and wet—for a completely different experience. We recommend putting your nose into the brewing vessel, breathing out hot air, and then inhaling. The heat from your body warms up the leaves and activates their flavor and scent compounds.


• Tasting the broth by rolling it around in your mouth before swallowing. Notice the parts of your mouth being activated. Is it juicy along the sides of the tongue? Chalky on the palate? Lingeringly sweet in the back of the throat?


• Tracking the flavors and smells as they develop throughout the drinking experience. How does the aroma linger while you drink (retronasal olfaction), and how does that smell impact the experience?


• Appreciating the color. We love to brew tea in clear glass to see both the leaves and the hue as they transform throughout the brewing process. The color of tea is expressed on a wide spectrum: the black oolong leaves have an inkiness to them from the oxidation, while the milk oolong offers just a wisp of flax in the first brew.

How Our Tea Is Made

This oolong is grown naturally at an elevation of 1300m in the misty high mountains of Alishan, Taiwan.

After hand picking the tea leaves and buds, the producers wither the tea under the sun to dehydrate them and make them more pliable.

Then, they tumble the leaves in a large cylindrical basket to encourage oxidation. The agitation bruises the cell walls of the leaves and allows the amino acids, polyphenols, and enzymes to interact, causing the flavor of the tea to develop. To continue the oxidation process, they lay the leaves out on bamboo plates and periodically toss them by hand.

Once the desired level of oxidation is reached, the tea undergoes "kill green" 殺青, a critical step in the oolong-making process that halts flavor change by tumbling the leaves in high heat for a short period of time. They then roll and dry the leaves over the course of a few hours, targeting a 2% moisture content.

If the tea is meant to be unroasted, production stops here. If it’s meant to be roasted, the dried leaves are exposed to heat until their final flavor is achieved.

Tasting Notes and Usage

Caramel and fresh soymilk on the nose with tasting notes of cacao, honey, and plum

Brewing:
5 g per 150 ml water / 210 degrees F / 50 seconds / multiple brews

When brewed this way, each box yields about 10 pots of tea that can be brewed 3-5 times each.

Ingredients and Instructions

Jinxuan 金萱 "milk oolong"
Product of Taiwan

Store in a dark place, not exposed to sunlight and in a temperature-stable location. After opening, close the bag with a clip to limit exposure to oxygen.

About BANGtea

BANGtea was established in 2018 by Samantha Tilney to bring the highest quality Taiwanese oolong tea to the U.S. She works directly with tea masters to produce the top 1% of oolong that never makes it to market, even in Taiwan. She strives to highlight the variation in flavors across seasons and processing styles.

About the Yun Hai Tea Collection

Our name, Yun Hai 雲海, means “sea of clouds”—it describes a phenomenon that happens high in the mountains of central Taiwan. In the afternoon, the clouds settle lower than the mountain peaks and cover the land in a blanket of mist. When viewed from the highest summits, the mountaintops appear as islands in a rolling sea of vapor.

This atmospheric effect is important for growers of high mountain tea. To us, it symbolizes how Taiwan’s populations have come together with the terrain to produce the unique culture and cuisine we love so well. Centuries of skill and craftsmanship are stewarded by Taiwan’s tea masters, and the taste of Taiwanese tea continues to define the cuisine.

The Yun Hai tea collection gathers the finest Taiwanese tea we can find, and represents an ongoing collaboration with farmers, roasters, and masters of tea.

Specifications and Dimensions

Net Weight: 1.8 oz / 50 g
Gross Weight: 2.4 oz / 68 g

Box Dimensions: 2.3" L x 2.3" W x 2.3" H / 5.8 cm L x 5.8 cm W x 5.8 cm H