T-18 Red Jade ‘Mermaid Medicine’
T-18 is a cultivar with a very interesting aroma when produced into a black tea (I’ve hoped it would carry into other styles such as white or green tea, but alas I haven’t encountered any yet that are as distinctive as T-18 ‘Red Jade’.
There was a time in history around world war 1 that Japan became an aggressive world superpower and started to occupy parts of Asia. They colonized Taiwan, Philippines, and had their eyes set on China. Drinking tea in the English style was the height of civilized western culture, but these teas were produced by China and India, neither of which were on friendly terms with Japan at the time.
Japan took Assamica tea bushes (the type of bush that is making the bulk of European tea) from Myanmar, planted them in central Taiwan around Sun Moon Lake, and had the occupied Taiwanese farm tea for export to Japan.
After WW2, Japan had to give up its colonies in Asia, and once the Japanese left, Taiwan stopped farming the Assamica bushes. Fast forward to the year 1999, central Taiwan was devastated by a huge earthquake with the epicenter near the Japanese tea plantations.
The rebuilding after the earthquakes is done by everyone, but it would inevitably be by younger people who didn’t hold as much bitterness towards the Japanese. The abandoned Assamica bushes were ‘rediscovered’ during the reconstruction, and brought to tea research stations for programs with cultivating new varieties. This research is ongoing to this day.
Tea research is done for many reasons – Taiwanese tea culture and the livelihoods of farmers depends on their tea getting to market, and the consumers enjoying it. That being said, there is more to this than just flavor. The harvest abundance, speed of growth, budding date, cold hardiness, drought hardiness, etc. are ultimately just as important to the farmer as flavor is to us as consumers. There should be a balance struck between what is practical and what tastes good.
T18 and T21 are culturally iconic cultivars. T18 when made into red tea has such a peculiar and rare fragrance in tea – very much like mint or menthol. On top of that it’s fruity in an ambiguous way, like coconut water blended with peaches, the flavor is consistent with the fragrance.
It’s a tea that I’ve never seen with pekoe, T18 has invariably been just black, and the leaf size on average seems more mature than the best of what is harvested in mainland china. From appearance alone it could be compared to a high quality lapsang souchong.
This offering is pre-qingming (pickings before April 4th 2025) and represents the best T-18 that I know about.
In the early days of 2026 I had an abundance of free time that I spent sleeping and drawing. The slime girl label (she is a mermaid princess) for this tea was the first one made in 2026. The motif was born from the GABA oolong, and I think will carry over for most Taiwanese teas in the future. It’s fun, cute, and allows me to utilize vivid colors well. T-18 has a very turquoise colored fragrance. The name of this tea is ‘Mermaid Medicine’ as I can relate it to a mermaid character in a story I tell at the shop called ‘The Monkey and the Jellyfish” — I recommend you ask me about it when visiting.
I hope you like it!
