COMMODITY, NATURE, AND TASTE: THE MAKING OF TAIWAN’S HIGH-MOUNTAIN TEA

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores Taiwan’s high-mountain tea as a commodity as well as a cultural product centering on the notions of nature, place, and taste. High-mountain tea, or gaoshancha, started in Taiwan in the 1980s, grew quickly in production and popularity, and has now become a signature Taiwanese tea. I will examine the process in which Taiwan’s tea sector connects gaoshancha with the fresh taste of the high-mountain’s natural environment, and how such a connection has led to the “greening” (lighter level of oxidization) of gaoshancha, which unwittingly narrows the tea’s taste, reduces the agency and skill set of tea makers, and even bring about negative effects on the consumers’ body. At the same time, some tea makers produce a variety of teas outside the gaoshancha-centric commodity grid, engaging in tea-making based on their sensitive interactions with the tea leaves, allowing agency of both themselves and the tea leaves. Both modes of tea-making are nature-constituted and place-based, yet with constraining effects when nature and place are reduced into “green” and “mountain,” or enabling effects when the tea leaves’ complex materialism is engaged fully. This case study sheds light on the importance of cultural meanings of nature and place, including the particular ways cultural meanings are produced and exercised, in the future of food.