Mi Xiang Honey Oolong (Bug-Bitten)

Mi xiang means honey fragrance, the farmers' name for Taiwanese tea whose leaves were bitten by tiny green leafhoppers before picking. The bites make the plant produce the honeyed, fruity aroma that gives the tea its character. Heavily oxidized and brewed at about 90°C.

Origin & Story

A tea farmer in the hills of Hsinchu finds his summer crop chewed by tiny insects, and a sensible farmer would curse his luck. The story of Oriental Beauty, the best-known bug-bitten oolong, says this one picked the damaged leaves anyway, made tea from them and sold it for twice his usual price. When he went home and told his neighbors, nobody believed him, so the tea was nicknamed pengfeng cha, braggart's tea. It is a popular legend rather than a documented event, as is the tale that Queen Elizabeth gave the tea its name, which nobody has ever sourced.

The insect is the tea green leafhopper, Jacobiasca formosana, about 3 mm long, which thrives in warm gardens below roughly 800 meters. When it pierces a leaf to feed, the tea plant answers with defensive compounds, among them monoterpene diol and hotrienol, and those give the finished tea its honey and ripe-fruit smell. The tea can only be made where growers do not spray, because pesticide would remove the insects.

Mi xiang, honey fragrance, is what Taiwanese farmers call bug-bitten tea in general, and it covers several styles. Oriental Beauty, also called Dongfang Meiren or Bai Hao for its white-tipped buds, comes from the Hakka hills of Hsinchu and Miaoli, where it is made from the bud and two leaves picked in summer, and only 40 to 50 percent of the bitten leaf is usable. On the east coast, Hualien County around Ruisui is the best-known source of mi xiang tea, often made as black tea.

Bug-bitten oolong is heavily oxidized, to around 70 percent, which puts it near black tea, and it is not roasted. The liquor is amber to reddish orange and the cup is sweet with almost no bitterness: honey, ripe stone fruit and muscat grape, with orchid behind.

Steep 3 g of leaf in 240 ml of water at 90°C for about three minutes, and use the same leaf again for a second cup.

Reading the Flavor Profile

These values are comparative editorial positions within our own catalog, calibrated so entries can be ranked against each other. They are not laboratory measurements.