Luo's Qiushui Tea Honpo

Review

Luo's Qiushui Tea is a local herbal tea that many Taichung residents have drunk since childhood. Reports trace its roots to Peilan Hall in Fujian, founded in 1847 during the Qing dynasty. The family practiced medicine for generations, and Luo Qiushui used to boil a cooling herbal brew every summer and leave it outside the door for passers-by, which is how the name Qiushui Tea arose. In 1945 the grandfather of third-generation owner Luo Meng-zhi settled in Taichung and combined the family herbal recipe with Nantou oolong, turning a cooling soup into a tea for everyday drinking. The shop on Lianwu Road in the East District has been the only store in Taiwan for over seventy years; after renovation it has a nostalgic look, seating and murals of the old shop.

The recipe centers on five herbs plus oolong, and earlier versions used grass jelly, bitter melon, mint, hawthorn and dried tangerine peel. Most herbs grow in summer, so each summer the shop stocks a full year's supply and insists on sun-drying; reports say machine drying, infrared and roasting were all tried, but the aroma was never right. Boiling and canning are largely done by hand. Packaging has moved from glass bottles to foil pouches to easy-open cans, and boxed tea bags have been added in recent years.

Opinions are split. Longtime customers say it is the taste they remember, and one who moved to Kaohsiung more than forty years ago still comes back to buy it; the brand describes it as fragrant and mellow. But a tasting post on Dcard found the herbal flavor very strong, like medicinal wine and denser than herbal grass tea, with rock sugar that did not soften the bitterness but made it stand out more, and the writer was glad to have bought only one can. In short, herbal-tea lovers will enjoy it, while first-timers may find it hard to get used to.

Reports say prices have deliberately stayed unchanged for years, and the tea is mainly sold wholesale to snack shops and betel nut stands, mostly within greater Taichung, since the business cannot afford supermarket listing fees. Our data gives hours of 9:30 to 18:00, closed Sundays, but sources say little about prices or hours, so check before you go.

It suits anyone curious about a Taichung-only traditional herbal tea or the story of an old brand. Buy a single can at the shop or a snack stall to try first, and if you like it, take tea bags home to brew yourself.