品 Phín. 2018 Summer Aged Black Tea

"Same craft; Different hands" is a Taiwanese saying, a reminder that even a craft which looks simple and easily replicated can turn out remarkably differently depending on who's making it. Every maker brings their own sense of aesthetic, their own level of mastery, their own physical intuition, and those differences show up in the finest details.

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Master Hsu, who crafted this black tea, specializes in oolong. What amazes us most is the sheer finesse of his roasting: even leaves that were poorly picked or harvested past their prime can be coaxed, through his roasting, into something quietly enjoyable.

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Back when Taiwan's tea industry was built on exports, it was precisely this near-impossible knack for rescuing difficult batches, paired with the blending skills of the tea factories, that kept the industry thriving. Today, as single-cultivar teas have come into fashion, both crafts are increasingly hard to find successors for. It's difficult not to feel a certain sadness watching them gradually fade.

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Black tea was never Master Hsu's specialty. But he's always been someone who likes to challenge himself, and once he starts studying a craft, he has trouble putting it down. In the summer of 2018, looking at the abundance of the 28th cultivar growing around him, an idea took hold, and with it began a season-long journey of experimentation.

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How much time does it take, how many batches of fresh leaves must be sacrificed, how much sweat shed, and how many more white hairs must appear, before someone learns to craft a tea they've never truly mastered? We've never quite dared to ask.

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But the Master Hsu we know is someone who can listen to vinyl records while tending the temperature of a roasting basket for twenty-one hours without shutting his eyes. So when he told us he was going to craft a black tea, we already knew it would be no ordinary one.

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This tea is that tea, "Same craft; Different hands."

The liquor is mellow yet clean and sweet, carrying notes of goji berry, date, sandalwood, and nectar. The finish brings hints of forest honey and cocoa, leaving behind a sweetness that lingers on the lips.

There's something deeply reassuring in that. Whether in the early days of Taiwan's export-tea trade or today, as long as there are still hands capable of this kind of near-impossible craft, we believe Taiwanese tea will endure for generations to come.