BUG-BITTEN OOLONG - MYSELF SURRENDERED

A bug-bitten oolong (Bai Hao/ Oriental Beauty) with a light amber liquor imparting hints of peach, honey and sweet floral cream. 

Oriental Beauty (Bai Hao Oolong) Tea

Often called “champagne oolong,” Oriental Beauty, also known as Bai Hao, is one of the most distinctive and luxurious teas in the world. Grown in the highlands of Taiwan, this tea is famous for its naturally honeyed sweetness and rich, aromatic complexity.

What makes Oriental Beauty truly unique is its origin story. The leaves are nibbled by tiny leafhoppers (Jacobiasca formosana), triggering a natural defense response in the plant. This process transforms the chemistry of the tea, producing exquisite notes of wild honey, ripe stone fruit, muscat grape, and soft floral undertones—without any added flavoring.

Hand-picked at peak season, the leaves display a beautiful spectrum of colors: white buds (“bai hao”), green, yellow, and deep brown—then carefully oxidized to develop their signature depth and smoothness. The result is a tea that is both full-bodied and remarkably gentle, with no bitterness and a lingering, nectar-like finish.

Tasting Notes:
Honey · Peach · Muscat · Floral · Soft spice

Why You’ll Love It:

• Naturally sweet with no bitterness

• Highly aromatic and complex

• Crafted using traditional, labor-intensive methods

• A rare and sought-after oolong experience

Enjoy it as a refined daily tea or a special offering for moments of stillness and reflection. Oriental Beauty is more than a tea, it’s a living expression of terroir, craftsmanship, and the delicate interplay between plant and insect.

Myself Surrendered

The name of this tea, Myself Surrendered, is inspired by the following poem by St. Teresa of Avila:

"On Those Words / Dilectus Meus Mihi"

Myself surrendered and given,
The exchange is this:
My Beloved is for me,
And I am for my Beloved.
When the gentle Hunter
Wounded and subdued me,
In love’s arms,
My soul fallen;
New life receiving,
Thus did I exchange
My Beloved is for me,
And I am for my Beloved.
The arrow he drew
Full of love,
My soul was made one
With her Creator.
Other love I want not,
Surrendered now to my God,
That my Beloved is for me,
And I am for my Beloved.

--

There’s a surprisingly rich parallel between the spiritual vision of Saint Teresa of Ávila and a bug-bitten tea leaf like Oriental Beauty that becomes sweeter only after being wounded.

St. Teresa’s mysticism, especially in works like The Interior Castle, is rooted in the idea that the soul is transformed not despite suffering, but through it. She describes the soul as passing through “mansions,” where trials, dryness, and even wounds become the very means by which divine intimacy deepens. 

The tea leaf follows a similar logic. When the leafhopper bites it, the plant undergoes stress; it is, in a sense, wounded. But instead of producing bitterness, it responds by generating aromatic compounds that result in honeyed sweetness and complex fragrance. What could have been damage becomes transformation.

St. Teresa often speaks of the “wound of love”—a piercing by divine presence that is both painful and ecstatic. This is not destruction, but a reordering of the soul toward a higher sweetness. In the same way, the bitten tea leaf is marked by an encounter that alters its nature, making it more expressive, more alive, more itself.

There is also a shared theme of hiddenness. To an untrained eye, a damaged leaf might seem inferior, just as a soul undergoing trial may appear diminished. Yet both conceal a deeper richness that only emerges through time, patience, and proper “steeping.” St. Teresa insists that the deepest spiritual realities are often invisible, unfolding quietly within. The tea, too, reveals its full character only when given the right adversity and a discerning palette able to recognize and appreciate the sweetness of a resilient leaf that appears to be superficially imperfect.

In both cases, sweetness is not the absence of wounding, but its fulfillment. The insect’s bite and the mystic’s trial become unlikely gateways: what pierces also perfumes, what wounds also sweetens.

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Origin: Taiwan

Steeping time: 250 ml of water per 1 tsp of tea at 95 degrees C for 3 minutes. Can be rebrewed several times. 

20 g