Today, the communiTEA is drinking...

Rare and delicate, this Formosa Superior Fancy Bai Hao delights the senses with its fragrant, tippy leaves and elegant aroma. Grown at 650 meters in Taiwan’s Wen Shan region, each cup unfolds soft notes of peach blossom and a lingering honeyed sweetness. Light, floral, and irresistibly smooth, it’s a refined taste of Taiwan’s high-mountain oolong tradition.

Bai Hao, or Oriental Beauty is a Taiwanese oolong unlike any other. Its notable reddish color gives away its high oxidation, sometimes as high as 80%. Often un-roasted, it is dried using prolonged withering process. Perhaps most interestingly, Oriental Beauty producers may even encourage an insect known as the 'leafhopper' to bite the tea leaves. The insects' saliva produces a unique chemical reaction within the leaves, the only way of achieving its distinct flavor profile.