Jassid-bitten black tea (mi xiang hong cha)
An orthodox black manufacture whose defining condition happens before the pluck: the leaf must have been fed on by the tea green leafhopper, which rules out spraying.
What makes this route what it is
The only route in this catalogue whose first step is not performed by anybody. Everything downstream is ordinary orthodox black manufacture, and the entire identity of the tea rests on a condition satisfied in the field by an insect — which is also why it can only be made where nothing has been sprayed, and why the least valuable pluckings of the year are the only usable ones.
The route, in order
Each note describes what the step is doing in this route. The same operation does a different job in a different chain.
The condition the route exists for, and it happens in the field. Jacobiasca formosana feeds on the young shoot; the plant responds; the leaf is changed before it is picked. Taiwan's national research station requires that ALL the raw material has been fed upon. It cannot be applied, only permitted — and permitting it means not spraying.
Summer and autumn, when the leafhoppers are active — the pluckings a conventional garden values least. Bitten shoots are visibly smaller and slower, so yield is part of what is being traded away.
A long wither, reported at eight to twelve hours in ventilated conditions. Ordinary black-tea practice; nothing here is specific to the bite.
Conventional rolling. From this point the route is indistinguishable from any orthodox black manufacture.
Taken to full oxidation. The research station investigated several fermentation levels; the fully oxidised member of the family is this tea.
- 6.
Drying
Ordinary drying finishes it. The result is a low-tannin black tea, which is what lets the honey character sit on top rather than compete.
How it differs from its neighbours
A route described on its own teaches very little. The useful fact is always which other route it is nearly identical to, and where it leaves it.
The two routes are the same tea up to a point. Everything before the divergence is shared; everything after it is not.
The catalogue's two jassid routes, identical for two steps and different thereafter. Oriental Beauty takes the same bitten leaf into an OOLONG manufacture — bruising, a standing rest, partial oxidation, fixation in the middle. This one takes it straight through a black-tea route. Same insect, same field, two categories.
Orthodox black tea
One step addedThis route inserts an operation the other does not have. Nothing is substituted and nothing is removed.
Orthodox black manufacture with one condition prepended. Everything from the wither onward is the same route, which is exactly why the honey character is attributable to the material rather than to anything done in the factory.
Where it goes wrong
The failure is agronomic rather than industrial. Spray the field and there is no tea to make; leave it unsprayed in a year when the leafhoppers do not arrive in numbers and there is a crop with no honey character and no premium. A grower committing to this is committing to a yield they cannot forecast.
In full
Taiwan's Tea and Beverage Crops Improvement Station developed this at its Taitung branch in the late 1990s, and states the requirement in one sentence: the raw leaf must all have been fed upon by the small green leafhopper. Everything else about the route is ordinary black tea. What is unusual is that the operation that defines it is not an operation at all — it is a condition on the material, imposed weeks before anyone picks anything, and satisfied by an insect rather than by a worker. A grower cannot schedule it, cannot intensify it, and cannot spray the field, because the insecticide that would protect the crop is the thing that makes the tea impossible. The summer and autumn pluckings that would be the year's least valuable in a conventional garden become the only ones usable here, which inverts the usual seasonal hierarchy of a tea estate.