High on the ridge at Ali Shan, the tea pickers are out before the tour buses arrive. The air at 1,400 metres has a particular quality — cool even in midsummer, slightly thin, carrying the smell of soil and damp vegetation. The leaves that grow here slowly, under persistent mist, have a floral character that lower-altitude teas cannot replicate. Taiwan's high-mountain oolongs are among the most sought-after teas in the world. Getting here took about three centuries.
The Fujian connection: tea arrives with the settlers
Tea cultivation in Taiwan is traced by historians to the migration of settlers from Fujian during the late 17th and 18th centuries. Fujian Province, on the southeastern coast of mainland China, had been producing oolong and partially oxidized teas for generations. When settlers crossed the Taiwan Strait, many brought seeds and cuttings with them as a way to make a living, not as part of an agricultural experiment.
Records suggest that by around 1796, during the Qing Dynasty's rule of Taiwan, organized tea cultivation was already underway in the northern parts of the island. A merchant from Fujian named Kacho is credited in some accounts with bringing oolong seedlings across the strait and establishing the first commercial tea plots near what is now Taipei. The teas produced were made in the Fujian style — partially oxidized, rolled, fragrant — a style that would remain central to Taiwanese tea identity for the next two centuries.
By the 1860s, Taiwanese tea was attracting international attention. A Scottish merchant named John Dodd established a trading company in Tamsui (now Danshui) in the mid-1860s, importing large quantities of tea plants and seeds from Fujian and organizing a network of farmers across the Taipei basin. By 1866, Taiwanese tea was being exported to the United States and Australia. By the late 19th century, exports traveled under the name "Formosa Tea" — formosa being the Portuguese word for beautiful, the name Portuguese sailors had given the island centuries earlier.
The Japanese colonial era and industrial transformation
Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895 brought Taiwan under Japanese rule, where it remained until 1945. The colonial government transformed Taiwan's tea industry through standardization, applied research, and industrial-scale processing — a methodical approach that built the commercial infrastructure still underpinning Taiwanese tea production today. It also entangled the industry in the structures of colonial rule, a tension that Taiwan's tea history cannot separate from its technical achievements.
In 1903, the colonial administration established a dedicated tea research station to study cultivation and processing methods suited to Taiwan's diverse growing regions. The goal was both agricultural improvement and commercial development — Taiwan's teas needed to compete internationally.
One of the most significant arrivals of the colonial period was Mitsui Bussan, the Japanese trading conglomerate. Mitsui established a branch in Taiwan in 1908 and began introducing British-style black tea processing methods — the same high-volume fermentation and drying techniques that were driving India's export success. Tea factories followed at Daxi, Miaoli, and other northern Taiwan sites. By the 1920s, Mitsui was producing and selling canned black tea under the brand name "Mitsui Black Tea" — later renamed "Nitto Black Tea" — a product that would eventually become one of Japan's most recognized tea brands.
The legacy of that period is complicated. Japan's domination of Taiwan caused significant harm, and the tea industry benefited from systems of colonial extraction that are not easily separated from their context. At the same time, the research infrastructure, processing technology, and export networks established during the Japanese era formed the foundation on which Taiwan's post-war tea industry was built. When the Taiwan Agriculture and Forestry Corporation took over Japanese-held facilities after 1945, it inherited a developed industrial base that smaller, less technically equipped industries did not have.
Oriental Beauty and the gift of a mistake
Oriental Beauty — known in Mandarin as Dongfang Meiren, also called Bai Hao oolong — is Taiwan's most distinctive tea precisely because it depends on a small insect. The tea leafhopper (Jacobiasca formosana) bites the tea leaf; the plant responds by producing terpene defense compounds that transform during oxidation into an unmistakable honey and muscat sweetness. Without the insect, the tea cannot be made. Taiwan's tea farmers learned to work with what other growers were fighting.
The tea is produced in Hsinchu and Miaoli counties from leaves that have been bitten by tiny leafhoppers (Jacobiasca formosana). When the insect punctures the leaf, the tea plant responds by producing terpene compounds as a defense mechanism. Those compounds transform during oxidation into a distinctive muscat-like, honeyed sweetness that cannot be replicated any other way. For decades, farmers tried to control the leafhoppers as pests. At some point — accounts vary, and historians suggest the story may have been embellished over time — someone realized the insect-bitten leaves were producing something remarkable.
Oriental Beauty is a high-oxidation oolong, closer to black tea than to most oolongs in its processing. The leaves display a distinctive five-color appearance — white tips, red, orange, yellow, and green — and the finished tea has a rich amber color and a flavor that surprises people expecting something vegetal. Sweet, fruity, with a honey-like finish. The story goes that the tea was once presented to a European royal who called it "Oriental Beauty," though the exact origin of the name is not verified.
High-mountain oolong and the modern era
Taiwan's post-war tea industry made one of the more consequential pivots in modern tea history: moving from high-volume colonial-era black tea production to high-altitude oolong grown for quality rather than scale. As labor costs rose through the 1960s and 1970s, Taiwan could not compete with India, Sri Lanka, and Kenya on price. It chose not to. The move upward — into the mountains above 1,000 metres — produced something no competitor could easily replicate.
The response was a pivot toward quality. Tea farmers moved up the mountains — literally. High-altitude growing above 1,000 metres, particularly in the ranges of Ali Shan (Alishan), Li Shan, and Shan Lin Xi, offered growing conditions that no competitor could easily replicate. The cool temperatures slow the growth of the tea plant, allowing flavor compounds to build gradually. The persistent cloud cover and mist provide natural shading that increases amino acid content and reduces astringency. The resulting teas have a floral elegance and a lingering sweetness that put them in a different category from lowland production.
Dong Ding oolong, grown in the lower foothills of Nantou County at around 600 to 800 metres, became a benchmark for medium-roasted Taiwanese oolong — its amber cup and toasted-floral balance well understood by tea drinkers across Asia. Ali Shan oolong, at higher elevation, became the standard-bearer for the lighter, greener, heavily floral style that now defines "high mountain Taiwan oolong" globally. Li Shan and Da Yu Ling, even higher still — at elevations of 2,000 to 2,500 metres — produce teas with an almost otherworldly delicacy that attract collectors willing to pay significant premiums.
Taiwan's tea varieties today
Taiwan produces a wider range of named tea cultivars than most producing countries its size, the result of a century of active breeding research by the Tea Research and Extension Station. The key varieties serve distinct markets: Taicha No. 18 (Ruby Red) targets specialty and export buyers with its cinnamon-mint character; Taicha No. 8 is designed for milk tea; while the Qingxin cultivar remains the gold standard for high-mountain oolong. Several newer releases — Taicha No. 22 and No. 23 — are aimed at younger consumers and floral specialty markets.
Taicha No. 18, known as "Ruby Red" or "Sun Moon Lake black tea," is perhaps the most internationally recognized of these. Its cinnamon and mint notes come from a hybrid of Assam and local wild tea species — a combination unique to the island. Taicha No. 8, by contrast, produces a richer, fuller cup well suited to milk tea preparations. More recent releases like Taicha No. 22 (floral) and Taicha No. 23 (citrus and yuzu-like) are targeted at younger consumers and specialty export markets.
On the oolong side, the Qingxin cultivar (sometimes romanized as Chin-Shin) remains the dominant variety for high-mountain production — slow-growing, finicky to cultivate, but capable of producing the finest expression of Taiwan's mountain character. If you want to brew these teas at home, our guide to brewing Chinese-style oolong tea covers the equipment and approach.
What Taiwan shows us about tea's adaptability
Taiwan's tea history is, in some ways, a story of continuous adaptation. A tradition transplanted from Fujian. An industry reshaped by colonialism. A post-war pivot from commodity black tea to high-value specialty oolong. A research culture that keeps producing new cultivars and techniques. At each stage, the tea changed because the people growing it needed it to.
We think that adaptability is part of why Taiwanese tea has such range. The same island produces a brutally tannic, leafhopper-assisted oolong and an almost translucently delicate high-mountain cup. That span — from the earthy and rustic to the ethereal — is hard to find in a single origin anywhere else in the world.
For a deeper understanding of how oolong is made and how oxidation level shapes the cup, our guide to semi-oxidized oolong teas covers the full processing spectrum. And for context on where Taiwan's tea tradition came from, the history of tea in China traces the Fujian origins that shaped everything downstream.