Meet the Farmer: The Wu Sisters | Yuchi, Taiwan | Red Jade

Farmers: The Wu Sisters
Location: Yuchi, Nantou, Taiwan
Tea: Red Jade

At Plantation, we champion female-led enterprises, and many of the tea farms we work with are run by women, like the Wu sisters in Nantou, Taiwan.

They are second-generation Red Jade tea growers whose patriarch played a critical role in a small tea revolution that took place almost a century ago.

Wu Chin-Hsi worked with a Japanese entrepreneur during occupation to start cultivating Indian Camellia Assamica tea trees in Taiwan. Years later, in 1999, tea researchers in Taiwan built off that early work and developed a new cultivar called Taiwan tea #18.

Wu invested in this cultivar, and his conviction paid off. Taiwan tea #18, or Red Jade (紅玉紅茶), as it is endearingly called, is now considered the crème de la crème of Taiwnaese black tea.

Red Jade is a sweet black tea, with a strong fruity aroma. It gives a unique tingling sensation on the tongue, similar to the effect of mint or eucalyptus. 

Today, Father Wu having long passed, the Red Jade tea farm is run entirely by the Wu sisters.

If you haven't already, we highly recommend you try our Red Jade produced by the Wu sisters.

As a female-led enterprise ourselves, we champion other women in the industry. See the other women-led farms we source our teas from.