High Mountain Purple Black Tea 2020 is Now Available | HOJO Online Speciality Tea Shop

We have released High Mountain Purple Black Tea 2020. It was unexpectedly well-made this year. I am truly delighted by its outcome.

About Purple Tea

The High Mountain Purple tea is made from the specific type of tea, the locals called it “Zi Cha”, that means purple tea in English.
It is a rare tea in Yunnan province because it only occupies a very small amount compared to ordinary tea.
It is normally found in high altitude areas at about 2000m, such as Lincang and Baoshan region.

Strong Aftertaste

We emphasize the aftertaste and clarity in taste when we select the garden.
Therefore HOJO uses purple tea that is grown without pruning, no fertilizers and no pesticides. The garden is located at very high elevation at around 2100m. Thanks to the high altitude, the taste of tea is very thick, dense and creamy.

Purple tea black tea is very rare

Most of the purple tea is generally processed locally into raw pu-erh tea. Our tea manufacture was surprized for the first time when we asked them to process it into black tea. It is very rare that purple tea is made into black tea. We are probably the pioneer for making purple tea black tea.

High Mountain Purple Black Tea is rich in anthocyanin

At first glance, purple tea leaves look almost the same as ordinary tea, but if you look closely, you can see that some parts of tea stem are purple.
It is known that purple tea contains a lot of anthocyanin, a component similar to polyphenols found in red wine. After tea is processed into dry tealeaf, it turns into dark colour like raisins.

Sweet flavour that reminds us of Shiso

The well-processed purple tea has a refreshing scent like shiso, the Japanese herb that gives a cross between mint and cinnamon with a hint of fresh cloves flavour. In order to bring out a stronger scent, we arranged withering for longer hours.

Longer withering makes tea harder to process

With longer withering, the tealeaf lost moisture at the same time. So, during the heating process which the purpose is to halt enzyme activity, tealeaf may easily get scorched. The long withering makes the subsequent process very difficult to manage. Thus, I was nervously waiting for the arrival of tea. I was extremely happy when I confirmed that tea was well made.