Honey Aroma Tie Guan Yin (蜜香鐵觀音, Mì Xiāng Tiě Guān Yīn, "Honey Fragrance Iron Guan Yin") is one of three teas we recently acquired through a longtime friend of the teahouse who lives in Táiwān. He originally sourced them for another, now-defunct, tea company, and they've been legally imported and tested for pesticides. Of the three, this is the only one where I've actually met the tea farmer, nearly a decade ago while on my first trip to Táiwān. I tried Master Xie's traditional hand-roasted Tiě Guān Yīn in the workshop of a potter in Yīnggē. He served it to us and me and my friends immediately fell in love with it. When I asked where he got it, he rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a business card. "He's really old," he said, "I don't know if he's still alive or not."
Master Xie did turn out to be alive, and after taking a bus to Shímén north of Taipei, calling the number on the business card from the phone of a shop, and speaking to his daughter, we found ourselves at his farm and processing operation. His farm is on a hill overlooking the Strait of Táiwān to the north - you can see the ocean from the tea fields. He grows and processes Tiě Guān Yīn, an oolong originally from Ānxī, Fújiàn just across the water, using traditional hand-roasting techniques. I purchased a few kilograms of his tea and brought it back to Texas with me and for a few months we sold it under the name Māzǔ, the Chinese goddess of the ocean who is sometimes syncretized with Guān Yīn after whom the tea is named. Unfortunately, the permits and infrastructure needed to import tea from Táiwān are totally different than the ones we use to import tea from China, and we've been unable to order more of this tea since then.
One of Xie's specialties is that to rub honey in between the layers of cloth at the bottom of the basket where the tea is dried over charcoal. This tea is an example of that method. The flavor is akin to a rich, medium-high oxidized Tiě Guān Yīn with dark honey notes and a gentle, but discernible, roast. This batch is from 2022 and its flavor should continue to deepen and mature with age for the next few years.