Li Shan
One of Taiwan’s highest commercial tea areas, planted among fruit orchards well above two thousand metres. Growth is very slow at this altitude and there are only two harvests a year, which is much of why Li Shan tea is among the island’s most expensive.
Elevation
Recorded at 1700–2600 metres.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
When it is picked
Two picks a year and no more, which is the direct consequence of altitude. Spring comes late and winter comes early on the high Central Range, so the growing season is short, the leaf accumulates slowly, and yields are a fraction of the lowland districts'. Spring and winter lots are both sold at a premium and the small summer growth is largely not made as high-mountain tea at all.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How production is organised
Small farms on very steep ground at the legal and practical limit of cultivation, several of them former orchards. High-mountain planting is contentious in Taiwan on soil-stability and watershed grounds, so the area is constrained by policy as well as by climate.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How the name is written
Also transliterated as li shan, lishan, pear mountain. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.
Teas this region is known for
- Li Shan — The thickest and sweetest of the Taiwanese high-mountain teas, with a fruit character the lower mountains do not reach. The cooling throat sensation practitioners call hou yun is at its most obvious here.
Other teas recorded from here
Other growing regions in Taiwan
The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.
Written comparisons
Where TeaHQ has set this region against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.
- Da Yu Ling vs Li Shan — The two highest commercial tea areas in Taiwan, and the point at which altitude stops being a marketing adjective and becomes an agricultural constraint. Both crop once or twice a year rather than four or five times, and both are priced accordingly.