Let's talk about that "Run Dry" and "Light Roast" options in our offering from this year.

At this point, you might notice already that some tea, especially high elevation oolong such as "Alluvial Devil" have two versions, "Run Dry" and "Light Roast". We feel there is a need for the introduction of this new term called "Run Dry" in case of any misunderstanding. 

In fact, if someone knows Taiwanese tea culture quite well, you will hear this term "Run Dry" very often. Its Mandarin characters are "走乾," which literally means "dry thoroughly." This process will have roasters involved, but it is not a roasting process since the temperature are relatively low. And unlike "roasting," "Run Dry" process will not create a roasting flavor to the tea, instead it simply refine the draft tea after their initial drying process in the A-machine. This final stage is normally referred as "refining," and only after the teas were being "refined" can they be sold to the customer. 

This is the reason we kept emphasizing on the fact that all our oolong teas from the spring of 2018 went through a very sophisticated "Run Dry" or "Light Roast" process, because these process, especially the "Run Dry" process, were normally done by a electric roaster. We however, sent all our teas to a charcoal roasting room for the refining process without any electric roaster involved, which is an unusual move to today's market trend. Normally, tea that apply such method were either inferior tea or none-Taiwanese tea to enhance the flavor while covering the true quality up in order to sell it at a higher price. We are glad that all our teas were being "refined" by Mr. Zhuan, who is a master at applying charcoal roasting method to teas. 

You might ask at this point: "Does it make a big difference between machine roaster and charcoal roaster?" Our answer is it certainly has a difference, and it is a huge difference. Lots of active element inside the tea tends to fade out when being refined by a machine roaster, while charcoal roaster will not only keep the activity but further enhance it. We did an experiment back in the winter of 2017 on our "Overlord" to see how big the difference was, because if the difference is not much, why bother applying a more costly method to the already costly tea?

That being said, we cannot not be more proud to offer the new teas from this spring, not only because the took lots of effort and time to create (we supervised most of the tea ourselves at the scene), but also the result from this spring is what we have been waiting for in the past three years. We have sourced lots of great teas, but this time, we are creating something of our own to the world, and no matter where you are at the world right now, we want you to join us with a cup of these teas at your side.