Lugu Judges Its Dong Ding in a Six-Minute Cup
Lugu's Dong Ding competition, whose top lot sold for about NT$300,000 a jin in winter 2023, judges its entries by steeping 3 grams in 150 cc of boiling water for six minutes.
In December 2023 the China Times reported3 that the top prize in the Lugu Township Farmers' Association's winter competition traded at about NT$300,000 (about US$9,500) per jin. The township is in Taiwan, the tea is Dong Ding oolong, and the prize is called the special grade. A jin is the Taiwanese catty of 600 grams (about 1.3 pounds). That season drew 4,833 entries.
Lugu's entries are judged in a test brew: 3 grams of leaf in a 150 cc (about 5 fluid ounce) cup of boiling water, steeped for six minutes, Rhythms Monthly reported in 20121.
ISO 31032, the international standard for preparing tea liquor for sensory tests, specifies 2 grams of leaf per 100 ml of freshly boiling water, steeped six minutes for black tea. That is the ratio of Lugu's 3 grams in 150 cc. Gongfu brewing uses 1 gram of leaf per 15 to 20 ml of water with short steeps. Lugu's test cup works out to 1 gram per 50 ml, left for six minutes in boiling water.
Who judges, and how many cups
Early contests used experts from the Tea Research Station as head judges. By the 1991 winter contest, 24 local young farmers had been trained as judges, teatasting.net reports7. The first competition, in 1976, drew 104 entries. The winter contest of 1991 drew 4,048.
In the spring 2018 contest, which drew 6,707 entries, the first round cut 45 percent. At the end the judges took 18 of 26 samples and brewed them again and again in the judging cups, comparing each with a teapot brew. They then chose the special grade and the ten ranked first grades by consensus, Jalife reported8.
Ten entries of one tea
Ball-rolled competitions generally take 21 to 23 jin per entry, of which Lugu's Farmers' Association buys one jin, according to the tea520 blog's account of the process6. Registration ran NT$1,500 to 3,000 (about US$50 to US$100) in 2014, depending on the competition, and NT$500 (about US$16) was usually refunded to an entry that did not qualify.
About 16 percent of entrants win third grade or better, tea520 and teatasting.net both report; the plum-blossom ranks sit below that. The Lugu ladder, as tea520 sets out, starts with special grade and first grade ranked one to ten. Below them come first, second and third grades, then three plum blossoms and two plum blossoms.
MarshalN, who writes A Tea Addict's Journal, wrote in 20169 that someone told him of entering a competition with "ten entries, all with the exact same tea." In his words, "three got rejected and the rest, some scored higher and some scored lower." He called it all "a crapshoot to a certain extent."
What a place sells for
In the same winter of 2023, the China Times reported that awarded tea sells for at least NT$2,500 (about US$79) a jin. Tea that qualifies starts at NT$2,000 (about US$63). Ordinary Dong Ding at the association's office might sell for NT$1,800 to NT$2,600 (US$57 to $82) for a 600 gram package, Leafhopper reported in 20265. Low-ranking competition teas may go for NT$3,000 (about US$95).
MarshalN also wrote that many Lugu entries, "if not most," use tea from higher elevations as their base. Since at least 2023 the association has sent every competition sample to the Tea Research and Extension Station for DNA identification, to catch tea grown outside Taiwan, the China Times reported. Tea from Vietnam has been sold as Dong Ding in Taipei.
The spring 2026 contest took 3,711 entries and eliminated 47.43 percent of them, as the 2026 results set out. The special grade went to Su Yu-lun (蘇煜倫), a young farmer, ETtoday reported4.