The 2015 Taiwan National Aged Tea Quality Competition held by the Taiwan Tea Merchants Association attracted 225 contestants. The only participant from Hsinchu County, Datong Tea Shop of Guanxi Township, was strongly affirmed by winning a silver medal and Merit Prize. The shop owners Peng Qing-yong and his wife Zou Mei-cheng said that they were overjoyed and surprised that after decades of caring, the tea “didn’t sell well” in beginning emerged as a dark horse in the competition. After winning this award the tea multiplied in price.
Zou Mei-cheng hails from Emei Township and has many family members who produce Eastern Beauty Tea. After her marriage to Peng Qing-yong, they bought basic tea making equipment and made tea for sale at home. They were supplier of Ten Ren Tea Co for a while. Peng had an elementary school classmate who knew a lot about making aged tea and who passed on his knowledge to the couple, where Datong Tea Shop repositioned itself as an aged tea specialty store, becoming one of the few aged tea businesses in Hsinchu County.
Boss Peng hides no secret to winning the prizes, which is storing the tea in a dark, cool, dry and well ventilated environment. The tea can be placed in an unglazed earthenware jar and sealed with cloth to allow the leaves to breathe or it can be wrapped in two cloth sacks and then placed in a large tea bucket. The tea shop’s aged teas range in age from 20 to 40 years. The older they are the more fragrant and good to drink they are, and the higher the sales price too.
In the competition, 40% of points are awarded for the taste of the brewed tea, 20% for fragrance, 20% for color, 10% for appearance of the leaves and 10% for leaf base. Mr. Peng said that, when brewed, high quality aged tea is smooth and fully flavored, with a light plum sourness, and has an aged, plum, ginseng and woody fragrance, the best colors being clear, opal, orange-brown or brown; the surface of the leaves and stalks should be brown with a red tint and the leaf base should fully open.
Most of the customers who bought aged tea 10 years ago bought it to make traditional herbal medicine but, in recent years, a retro fashion has arisen and more and more tea lovers are buying it, and the age of customers is also falling. Mr. Peng said that as they are growing old and his children were not interested in inheriting the business, he sold his tea making equipment, but still occasionally buys tea leaves from tea farmers and makes aged tea to share with old friends and old customers.