Excerpts from spring 2020, spring 2025, and summer 2025 tea letters from the Seasonal Tea Journey
Expansive
When you first look at a High Mountain Oolong from Taiwan, you see little tightly rolled balls. As you steep them again and again they expand, filling the vessel. Take a sip and the flavor and aroma expands in your mouth too. Energetically, they fill the upper part of the body and draw my senses out into the world around me, rather than into my interiority.
The expansive quality of High Mountain Oolong allows for one step beyond gentle optimism, imagining completely unexpected things of all kinds—and ideally releasing you from the binds of boring predictability, fearful inevitability, and illusory control—a more creative approach.
Tea Drunk
Now I know what you’re thinking. Wait, Michael, are you just high? Well basically yes, I’m intoxicated. Have you heard the expression tea drunk before?
Here’s an excerpt from the tea compendium that picks up at the point of a tea party when everyone is getting a little tea drunk:
When you look at the tea, it looks back at you. Soon you and the tea are inseparable and you begin to look out at the world together. When a single tea produces this kind of effect, it is said to have strong qi. It may leave you feeling spacious and positively complacent, or energized and ready to move around. There are any number of metaphors that could be used to describe different styles of immersion in the energetics of tea. One though is just the most memorable, and I think captures the experience of relaxing into the social gathering of a tea party, and that is called being tea drunk. The tea has charmed us into a delightful intoxication.
Alishan and Shan Lin Xi
Alishan is the name of the mountain where this tea grows at 1200 meters. If a shop has an unspecified high mountain oolong, most people will ask, “Is it Alishan?” It is one of the oldest and also one of the highest producing areas. It is known for a straight forward burst of flavor.
Shan Lin Xi is the name of a forest recreation park that grows this illustrious tea at 1600 to 1800 meters. It is actually one of the largest areas growing high mountain oolong varietals. I find this tea dependably good season to season. Its excellent climate and terrain have helped it become a favorite in Taiwan. It is known to be more nuanced than your typical Alishan.
Both of these teas share a lot in common. I think of them like two music notes on the same line, but one with the tail going up and the other with the tail going down. I think you’ll enjoy both of them. But I wonder if you’ll have a favorite?
Alishan: Blooming Sweetness
In this year’s Alishan’s aromas I notice herbs and minerals, giving me a sense of a cool breeze carrying messages of spring. The herbal quality shows up prominently in the flavor too—a unique mark of this harvest that I hope you’ll find worthy of savoring sweetly.
After drinking a cup, I experience a familiar fullness in my head. It quiets me. I feel lightly restored, replenished, and lifted up. In this soothing and energizing place, my tea time is already relaxing into something nourishing and supportive.
The sweetness of the tea kicks in strong on the third or fourth steep. The early steeps are like the first hints of spring rising up through the cracks, making use of their inner percolation to grow into sunlight, before revealing their sweetness in a sudden blooming burst.
After many steeps, I feel properly percolated by this herbaceous Alishan. It’s bubbly. It keeps sending little pockets of qi and circulation up to my head. It’s trying to get things moving up there, which I appreciate. When I relax, it’s joyful.
A Summer Jaunt with Shan Lin Xi
This year’s Shan Lin Xi appears on the horizon as majestic as a ship to one stranded on a desert island. A bit dramatic? Ok, maybe not stranded, just done seeing the sites and ready for a new adventure. Either way, upon my first sip of Shan Lin Xi, my taste buds leapt up and eagerly enlisted me in a voyage I didn’t even know I’d been longing for. How long had I been here on this oolongless spit of land in the sea of tea? The tea picked me up and took me on a splendid gongfu cha journey—the kind that makes tea appreciation such a joy: surprises around every turn; nuance, depth and movement even in a single sip. Elegance and flash. small flourishes and Big acrobatics.
As you sail the steeps of this Shan Lin Xi, the charts suggest you’ll encounter an initial swell of bold herbaceous waves in the high tide. As the tide recedes the oolong reveals a reef of winter melon sweetness that was hidden beneath the water all along. As you approach the coastline, the white waves breaking upon the shore might surprise you with unexpected frothed milk—seemingly out of nowhere. What a day drifting amidst the archipelago. In this oolong, both nuanced and bold, you can taste their peaks and their depths.
Ups
and Downs
In the body, energy ascending is half of the equation. Having an open passage from the head down to the lower body is just as imperative. I wouldn’t say that Shan Lin Xi is grounding—but it gently opens the passageways and corridors that allow qi to descend freely. When I enjoy a pot, first I feel energy moving up, restoring circulation in my eyes. Then, the softening of the front part of the body—jaw, throat, chest. It is not technically warming, and yet I feel warmth throughout when circulation is allowed to move freely. Even my belly relaxes.