Tai Cha No. 8
An assamica selection developed from the large-leaf stock brought to the Sun Moon Lake basin under Japanese administration, and the cultivar behind much of Taiwan’s conventional black tea before Ruby No. 18 overtook it. It gives a straightforwardly malty, full-bodied cup in the Assam idiom rather than the aromatic, menthol-inflected style Taiwan later became known for.
Where it sits in the botany
Tai Cha No. 8 is recorded under Camellia sinensis var. assamica, the variety group one level above cultivar. It is associated with Taiwan, which is where it was selected or is most widely planted rather than the only place it grows.
Registration code: TRES No. 8. A breeding or registration code identifies the selection in an institutional register and is often the name a grower uses when the trade name is not.
Also transliterated as: tai cha ba hao, taicha 8.
Where it came from
Selected from assamica material introduced to the Yuchi area in the Japanese colonial period and released in Taiwan’s numbered TRES series.
How firm this is: Inferred rather than taken from a primary breeding or registration record. The registration number and the Sun Moon Lake association are genuine; the release year and specific parentage were not verified against a primary source.
What the plant is like
Large-leaf, vigorous and heat-tolerant, giving a full, malty black tea. Grown mainly around Sun Moon Lake in Nantou.
Why a grower plants it
Yield, hardiness, when it buds, what it resists and whether a machine can cut it. This is the half of a cultivar’s identity that decides what is actually in the ground, and it is usually left out of writing aimed at drinkers.
An assamica selection grown in a warm lowland basin rather than on the high ground the island's oolongs come from, and it needs that heat: large-leaf material is vigorous and productive in it and would not survive the exposure of a high-mountain plot. It is grown at modest scale around one lake basin.
What it does in the cup
Reported as straightforwardly malty and full-bodied in the Assam idiom rather than in the aromatic, menthol-inflected style Taiwan later became known for.
How much of this is really the cultivar?
Worth knowing as a counterweight to the story Taiwan tells about itself. Before the island's black tea acquired a distinctive character it made a conventional one from imported large-leaf stock, and this cultivar is what that tasted like. A national style is a commercial achievement rather than an inevitability, and the plant that preceded it is still in the ground.
Cultivar, growing site and processing all shape a cup, and the cultivar is very often the smallest of the three. It is also the one that fits on a label, so almost every commercial incentive runs toward overstating it. This section is on every cultivar page that has been reviewed for it, including the ones where the honest answer is “less than you would think”.
What it is usually made into
The categories this cultivar is typically processed into. It is a statement about common practice, not a limit — processing decides the category, and a cultivar can be taken down more than one route.
- Black tea — Tea taken deliberately through full enzymatic oxidation, giving the dark leaf, amber-to-red liquor and malty or brisk character most Western drinkers think of as simply 'tea'.
Teas in the catalogue made from Tai Cha No. 8
Other cultivars in Camellia sinensis var. assamica
- Assam indigenous jat
- Benifuji
- Benihikari
- Benihomare
- Benikaori
- Betjan
- Camellia sinensis var. assamica
- East African seedling tea
- Fengqing Da Ye
- GMB 7
- Kiara 8
- Lingyun Baihao
- Manipuri jat
- Menghai Da Ye
- Mengku Da Ye
- Miang landrace
- PH1
- Shan Tuyết
- Sri Lankan seedling tea
- TRFK 301/4
- TRFK 303/577
- TRFK 306/1
- TRFK 31/8
- TRFK 6/8
- TV1
- TV23
- TV25
- Yinghong No. 9
- Yunkang 10
- Yunkang 14
- Yunnan Da Ye Zhong
- Zi Juan
- Zi Ya
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No breeding register or institutional record stands behind the account above, which is why the origin note carries its confidence in the open rather than reading as a citation.
Written comparisons
Where TeaHQ has set this cultivar against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.
- Tai Cha No. 8 vs Hong Yu (No. 18) — The two black-tea cultivars of Sun Moon Lake, and the reason Taiwanese black tea comes in two quite different forms. One is straightforward large-leaf assamica; the other is a hybrid whose mint-and-cinnamon note is genetic and is constantly mistaken for flavouring.