Tost day 3

Day 3 we headed to the Taitung area to visit the Taiwan Research Extension Station (TRES).

Here’s a little background on TRES.

TRES is a government-sponsored agency for tea in Taiwan and is affiliated to the governmental Council of Agriculture.

The station was originally named Tea Manufacture Experiment Station under the Production Bureau of the Formosa Governor-General’s Office, and was established in 1903. It was reorganized in 1968 as Taiwan Tea Experiment Station and added new branches in Wunshan, Yuchih, Taitun and Tunding to better promote Taiwan tea. It reorganized again in 1999 as Taiwan Tea Experiment Station. In 2003, the name changed once more to Tea Research and Extension Station (TRES).

On August 1, 2023, the name was changed to the Tea and Beverage Research Station (TBRS) of the Ministry of Agriculture in conjunction with the government’s organizational transformation (which I just found out about as I wrote this post).

The station and its 4 branches are the research and development center of Taiwan tea. It is responsible for the study and experiment to improve tea plantations, improvement of cultivation to develop new and better cultivars, improve processing technology, and to educate the industry and consumers.

Saturday 9/16
Visit tea farm and teahouses in Taitung
Visit Ling Wang tea factory
TRES/TRBS Taitung Office
Travel back to Taipei

We left the hotel shortly after breakfast. Typhoon Haikui had struck Taiwan earlier in the month and did some considerable damage to the area, as evident with the trees.

We stopped at Ling Wang tea factory in Luye Township, Taitung. They were processing tea when we got there. Outdoor and indoor withering is the second stage of tea manufacturing. Withering starts the drying process of the leaves. The screen overhead is used when the sun is too intense to give the leaves a little shade. The roller helps speed up indoor withering.

Of course, we tasted some teas. The first was Chun oolong (formerly known as Cognac oolong), also known as red or red water oolong. It was Ying Xiang cultivar harvested December 2022. It was 70-80% oxidized with a heavy but gradual bake at 90-110°c for 30 hours.

The second was Pomelo. It’s made by hollowing out pomelos and filling them with oolong. They go through a steaming, drying, and baking process to finish. The tea can be drunk immediately or aged.

The third was another Ying Xiang cultivar but a Jade oolong. It was 20-25% oxidized with a very low bake at 70-85°c just to dry it.

After a quick lunch in town, we stopped for some tea at Biluoyuan Tea House and watched the workers withering and fluffing tea leaves at the nearby factory.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the research station. There was typhoon damage in this area as well. It was an extremely hot day and we saw paragliders in the distant mountains.

We stopped at a small garden where the research station was creating new cultivars. The taller bushes were the ones chosen as “suitable” and would be given a number assigned as an official TRES cultivar. For example, TRES #12 is Jin Xuan cultivar.