Yuchi
The basin around Sun Moon Lake in Nantou, and the centre of Taiwanese black tea rather than oolong. Assamica stock was introduced here under Japanese administration in the 1920s, and the area later produced Taiwan’s best-known bred cultivar, Ruby No. 18, whose menthol-and-cinnamon aroma is unlike any mainland black tea. Lake mist and warm, humid summers set the district apart from the high-mountain oolong country immediately around it.
History on this page: TeaHQ synthesis
TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.
This district’s description dates something — a founding, a first planting, a period of expansion. The label above says on what basis, and it applies to the historical statements rather than to the elevation, climate or soil claims below, which carry their own confidence separately.
Elevation
Recorded at 600–1000 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
A summer-weighted black-tea calendar, which is why the district sits outside the high-mountain oolong logic entirely. Assamica and the bred cultivars planted here grow strongly in the lake basin's warm humid summers, and black-tea manufacture has no reason to avoid the season an oolong district discounts.
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 yu chi, yuchi. 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
- Ruby 18 — Smooth and honeyed with an unmistakable mint-and-cinnamon lift that is entirely natural to the cultivar. Once tasted it is impossible to confuse with any other black tea.
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.
- Yuchi vs Assam — Taiwan’s black tea basin and the valley its plants came from. Assamica stock was introduced to the Sun Moon Lake area under Japanese administration in the 1920s, and what the two regions did with the same botanical material afterwards could hardly be more different.