Taiwan is a mountainous land, rich in those peaks that seem to incessantly support the weight of the world, they are the vertebrae of the backbone of a country, the reflection of a collective history written on the skin of the earth.
The island has a completely autonomous historical path compared to what is thought and has been affected over the centuries by flows of different cultures whose destinies have been inextricably intertwined with those of the aboriginal populations.
Nantou is the county that has perhaps been the home of this intricate cultural fabric more than any other, hosting the tattooed faces of the Tàiyǎ, the Shào zú animal and head hunters, the Bùnóng with their polyvocal music and the Zōu with their hats adorned with eagle and blue pheasants feathers.
In the main village of Dong Ding there is an 80-year-old master still able to work the enchantment, to orchestrate that transformation born of time and tradition, of those invisible threads that bind the present generation to those who have seen the last sunset and those who have not yet been nourished by the first dawn, to create a tea that would have made even Edmund Burke smile more than once.
When I tasted this Mountain Stream Teas roasted QingXin small batch oolong for the first time I found that magic, that alchemical matrix that Oakeshott defined as “practical knowledge”, a form of knowledge that cannot be explained or reduced to explicit rules but that manifests itself in doing, acting and being. Making a tea like this is not only a work of technical mastery but is a delicate art that feeds on habits, abnegation and rites, it is an order that transcends mere human will, an echo of a higher truth.
The sip, which finds its roots in those sedimentary and volcanic soils, has a deeply complex character, with hints of mango, wild honey and light resinous nuances. In those subsoils rich in silicates, feldspars and volcanic clay, the concept of tea as a symbolic substance is shaped, leaves like these are imbued with poetry, they become ceremonies of knowledge, extracts of life, and it is this poetic principle that restores the pleasure of existence to sacrifice.
In its notes of chestnuts, poached pears, cooked lychees the taste shows off a plastic clarity that does not allow itself to be intimidated by any rhetorical exercise, it shows an almost unexpected, vibrant, sharp purity, a sort of historiography of the soul, silent and secret.
Wild Harvested 
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