Vietnamese Tea Sold as Dong Ding Reached a TWG Counter in Taipei 101

A 60-year-old Taipei tea house sold tea it labeled Taiwan Dong Ding oolong that had been blended with Vietnamese leaf, some of it reaching the Singapore luxury brand TWG and its counter in Taipei 101, Taipei prosecutors said.

Dong Ding, a roasted oolong from Lugu in Nantou, is one of Taiwan's classic names, and one of its dearer ones. The firm, Jianyu Tea House, bought Vietnamese tea from two suppliers in Nantou's Mingjian and Taoyuan's Daxi, reblended it, and had an unwitting customs broker apply to the Bureau of Foreign Trade for a certificate of origin, a maneuver known in Taiwan as xi chandi, "washing the origin," prosecutors said.

TWG bought the tea as Taiwan Dong Ding from December 2020 to June 2024, about 27.5 kilograms (roughly 60 pounds), repackaged it in Singapore, and shipped it back to its Taiwan distributor for sale at department-store counters including Taipei 101. Investigators bought samples from that counter twice, on Dec. 6, 2022 and Jan. 18, 2024. The Tea and Beverage Research Station found both contained foreign leaf.

The firm's second-generation owner and its manager admitted the blending. Taipei prosecutors granted deferred prosecution and ordered donations to the treasury of NT$500,000 and NT$200,000 from the two men and NT$1 million from the company, about US$52,000 in all. The charges included fraud, false country-of-origin labeling, and selling falsely labeled food. TWG, treated as an unwitting buyer, did not respond to a request for comment on consumer trust, Eastern Broadcasting reported.

The case turned on a method the Tea and Beverage Research Station developed and the Ministry of Health and Welfare certified as an official test in 2022, reading the trace-element signature that a region's soil leaves in the leaf to separate Taiwanese tea from foreign, results United Daily News described as evidence as firm as iron. The pressure behind the fraud is arithmetic: Taiwan grows about 14,000 tonnes of tea a year (about 15,000 US tons) and imports more than 20,000 (about 22,000), most of it cheaper, and the station's deputy director, Qiu Chuifeng, said foreign tea's lower labor costs are one reason it competes so well on price. Since 2023 any tea labeled "Taiwan" must carry a traceability code, a production record, or an organic mark. The station said the share of sampled tea found mixed with foreign leaf fell from 23% to 18% after enforcement began.

Sources: United Daily News, 以越南茶混充台灣凍頂烏龍 老茶行認了 (Feb. 2, 2026, in Chinese); United Daily News, 混充台茶價差大 檢嚴打難堵漏網之魚 (Feb. 2, 2026, in Chinese); Eastern Broadcasting Company, 老茶行以越南茶混充台凍頂烏龍 賣給101「TWG專櫃」 (Feb. 3, 2026, in Chinese).