2023 Dong Pian Sweet Winter Tea / 75 Grams

Grown Without Pesticides

2023 Dong Pian

Dong Pian tea is a special tea that is harvested after the winter harvest. If the weather is warm enough, the tea plants will start to sprout after the winter harvest, a time when the tea plant usually goes into dormancy.

These weather conditions do not occur every year, so Dong Pian tea is a rare tea available in limited quantities.

This tea is from Lishan tea area of Taiwan, grown at about 2100 meters above sea level.

Dong Pian has a sweet flavor and can be steeped almost indefinitely without any bitterness.  The tea leaves are thick and slower to unfurl during steeping,

The recommended steeping time for Dong Pian tea is 3 minutes for the first brew, with each successive brew perhaps a minute or two longer than the previous. Water temperature should be approximately 95C or 200F. Please adjust these suggestions to your own preferences.

Etymology

The Chinese characters for Dong Pian are:

冬片

pronounced dōng piàn.

The first character means "winter" and the second means "slice" or "piece", and refers to the small bud on the tea plant.

As a play on words this tea is sometimes called:

冬騙

which has the same pronunciation of dōng piàn, but in this case the second character means "trick".

So this tea is sometimes called "winter trick", referring to the winter weather tricking the tea plant into believing it is springtime, causing it to produce new shoots.