The 39 Steeps

Red Wine, Green Tea, and Pseudoscience

2012-01-12T11:25:00.000-06:00

{ Red wine, green tea, and pseudoscience }

Oh, for crying out loud. Red wine researchers apparently faking data about resveratrol, which is hoped to be a substance that can slow down aging and aid the body's ability to heal itself. There's big money in the health claims made by food and drink people (and I'm looking at you, green tea and pu-erh sellers), which can be undercut by these kinds of shenanigans.

(Photo found on a blog called, "Bloody Students," written by Merys, who is a newly minted pediatrician.)

TEA CONVERSION RATE: 1 in 7 billion. A personal record!

2011-11-27T15:13:00.001-06:00

{ Radar and Thumbelina: Two other record holders }

I've been drinking tea with growing seriousness for over 20 years. (Of course, readers of this blog may argue whether seriousness is a term that can be used to describe me at all, but we'll have to argue about that later.) In all that time, I've never, ever, converted someone to becoming a tea drinker. It's been strictly inside-baseball, preaching to the choir, kicking at open doors, biting the wax tadpole.

{ "I love flower tea!"
Kate gushes embarrassingly }

But my record is now officially 1 in 7 billion. My sister-- my annoying, bratty, smart-aleck sister-- has blogged about how she loves flower tea. "Loves," she captions, and she even uses an exclamation point under the photo she helpfully supplied. Not unlike certain feminine fans of Justin Bieber, who love him to, like, eleventy!!11!!!!

Throughout the years, Kate has mocked my tea obsession in earnest. But she "loves" flower tea? Bwa-ha-ha! Please go over to her blog and cause her to repent her Snidely Whiplash routine whenever I talk tea, and because she has publicly outed herself as a tea drinker-- nay, luuuuuver.

{ Kate Prouty Hearts Justin Beaver }

Something Beautiful: Happy Birthday, Karen Wray

2011-11-22T17:38:00.001-06:00

{ Karen Wray, "Purple Iris," 20" x 20", oil on canvas }

I have talented siblings. My older sister, Karen Wray, lives in Los Alamos, NM, and she creates quite beautiful regional art, focusing on local (hopefully nonradioactive) flora; haunting landscapes from the area in which she lives; and gorgeous, photorealistic representations of basset hounds in tutus, or playing the guitar, or dancing flamenco. She sells her work and that of other local artists at her studio, Karen Wray Fine Art Gallery. If you ever get to the greater Santa Fe area, look her up. Los Alamos Laboratory and the town that supports it are about a half hour or so from SF. You can also buy her work online at her website, which includes pricing and so on.

Karen is 10 years older than I am, and I'm happy she did not kill me when she had the chance. She had the unfortunate job of babysitting me when I was a kid, and I remember saying to her so often, the moment my parents closed the front door as they left, "You're not my Mom. I don't have to listen to you." From that point on, it was war.

But eventually we grew out of it. In college sometime. She moved to Los Alamos, and as a family, we fell in love with this lovely region, so different from the Southwest suburbs of Chicago. "Look! Non-flat rock things! Non-gray skies! The color brown! It's a dry heat!"

{ Karen Wray, "Summer Thunderclouds," 18" x 24", oil on canvas }

Karen opened her gallery a couple years ago, and she's been filling it with works by talented friends of hers from the pretty vibrant Los Alamos arts community.

You know, I never imagined Karen would end up as a painter when I was a kid. She worked at the lab, doing horrible number-crunching work as a budget analyst or something like that. When she left her position at the lab because the rheumatoid arthritis she struggles with became too much of a problem, she reinvented herself as an artist. She's faced so many medical procedures, operations, pharmaceutical regimes, therapies, and so on; and yet, she doesn't complain about it. She doesn't whine, or act self-pitying, or let herself off the hook for living a full and happy life with her dogs, her husband Bill, her beautiful home, and her paint. And her dogs. Really, she's a superhero to me, and one of the most brave, admirable, smart, and tenacious women you'd ever meet. I miss her, and New Mexico is a long way away.

Karen, happy birthday! XOXO

(And thank you in advance for not suing me because I posted your pictures without your permission.)

NOT Karen Wray's Painting.
I'm just sayin', they'd be a cash cow!

Something Beautiful: Teaboard by Mirko Randová

2011-11-22T16:01:00.001-06:00

La Voie du Thé, a French-language tea blog, features a lovely tea table today, which was created by ceramicist Mirko Randová. Just beautiful to look at, no? Hit the link above and look at the table (lovingly photographed) from a variety of angles. Look at how the circular holes are echoed in the surface design. The artist can be contacted here.

End of Days Predicted as Coffee Becomes Rare and Expensive

2011-11-21T18:04:00.001-06:00

{ Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! The Zombies Are Nigh! }

At Forbes online magazine, tech writer Alex Knapp (Repent! the End of Cheap Coffee Is Nigh!) is in a dead panic. And by dead panic, I mean that he's having nightmares of a slow-zombie apocalypse slouching toward his cubicle to be born. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Alex; for it tolls for thee, the rest of the coffee-drinking world, and thus, civilization as we know it.

(Strangely enough, IMDb has no record of any movie entitled, Dead Panic. With all those zombie apocalypsi (fast or slow), sparkly vampires, and other delightfully sexy undead creature features, why has no one written a direct-to-DVD thriller with that name? I blame the exquisitely marbled Michael Moore, who would make a great entree in Dead Panic.)

What was I talking about? Oh, yes, a zombie apocalypse brought on by "peak coffee." Alex's nightmares began when he read an article by Zak Stone, editor of The Daily Good. Stone starts by discussing the high-end coffee market, where at Intelligentsia Coffee, in Venice, California, their baristas and "coffee groupies" sound just like tea drinkers displaying their obsessive-compulsive side. They have a "Slow Bar," where they do coffee in much the same way as my tea-drinking friends and I.

The idea of the Slow Bar is to “give the customer an experience that expands their idea of what coffee is,” says Charles Babinski, who trains the staff in different brewing techniques and hosts educational events for customers. It’s a place where customers can sit down and ask questions about coffee, but it’s “not meant to be beating people over the heads with education as much as just creating different coffee experiences.”

See? Doesn't that sound just like us? And here, we've been thinking that coffee swillers just slam their way through their vente cinnamon chokeaccinos without noticing the subtle nuances or using language such as the following: “Lychee, persimmon and botanical notes bring a weightlessness to the muscular and expansive Tegu. Marmalade and sweet herbs float in the background while the finish hangs onto a hint of spice.” Doesn't that sound like something Wojciech Bońkowski might have written on his blog, Polish Wine Guide, which-- name aside-- discusses tea with his rare and discerning palate?

Stone notes that for those willing to spend $5 or $6 for a cup of coffee, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. But for those unfortunate enough not to be willing to spend that kind of dough, they're likely to find that the cost of coffee is going to skyrocket to the point that they'll have to either cut back how much they drink or live with lower-quality stuff than they're used to. Increasing demand plus decreasing production volume equals extinction-level event. We're all gonna die.

Consider: What would Western civilization be without coffee? Would Bach have written those finger-tangling toccatas and fugues without a caffeine buzz to keep him going? Would Picasso have spent his life creating art objects like, Still Life from One Angle at a Time, Thank You Very Much? Would the sainted Steven Jobs have discovered the secret to making sleek, shiny objects that can hypnotize mass audiences into giving him all their savings?

I doubt it.

{ Peak Coffee: Batten Down the Hatches }

Stone points to anthropogenic climate change (predictably) and not enough high-mountain acreage as the culprits for the decreasing supply of high-quality arabica beans. What he doesn't take into account are the possibilities that the decrease in volume may be a temporary aberration, or that human ingenuity may allow us to develop new cultivars in much the same way that the chocolate or tea geniuses have done. Or that people may just switch to drinking other beverages entirely, so there may be hope, after all. Nevertheless, short-term supply problems may trigger the zombie apocalypse predicted by jittery fanboys.

At the exact moment that rare beans are becoming all the rage, all beans are becoming rarer. The price of a cup of coffee—whether it be a $6 pour-over, a $2.50 dark roast at Starbucks, or a $1.50 mug of diner swill—is being driven up by a complex combination of weather events, pest and fungus outbreaks, speculation on commodities exchanges, an unstable labor market in the developing world, and an unprecedented thirst for good coffee among a growing global middle class. The problem, in simple economic terms, is that supply has gone down and demand has gone up.

Now, tea drinkers deal with some similarly troubling reports. A couple seasons ago, the Taiwanese dealt with horrible landslides that killed many, because the high-mountain Li Shan tea farms had increased in number and acreage to the point that the topsoil could not withstand a terrible storm. A burgeoning Chinese middle class is starting to demand coffee and tea (as well as other luxury items), which puts pressure on international markets. Unsustainable farming practices endanger some Indian tea-growing plantations' ability to produce high-quality leaves over the long term. And don't even get me started on the fake aged puerh phenomenon. And so on.

The upshot is that the very, very high-end Chinese teas are kept in-country for the consumption of Chinese millionaires and Party members; wonderful-enough-to-satisfy-everyone-else teas are still widely accessible, especially through the wonder of the Internet, for those willing to spend a premium; and cheap teas will probably follow in the path of coffee and have some kind of temporary spike in price (along with other comestibles), until markets react and come to a new equilibrium.

But until that point, when I'm around coffee drinkers, I'll still watch my back.

Kate writes about "Fictional Food" and other nonsense

2011-11-20T14:20:00.001-06:00

{ Kate Prouty Flute Studio takes no prisoners }

My younger sister, Kate, writes something like a blog, Some of This May Be True. It's better than mine, though, because she's funny, and she swears a lot. Plus, she writes about food, which is a broader subject than that of tea, and the topic tends toward a whole-life approach to writing. Perhaps I'll write about food-life on this blog more, and then ALL HER BLOG TRAFFIC BELONG TO ME. (The skull-and-flutebones picture above is the logo she created for her flute studio. It gives you a good idea of what kind of person we're dealing with, here.)

But she knows bally-all about tea, so that's one point for me, I suppose.

I hereby commit copyright infringement by copying a goodly chunk (with a picture) from her blog, a post entitled, "Clean Eating vs. Sloth: My Dilemma." Within the post, she mentions how she wants to write a series about this journey from sloth and despair to . . . whatever is one slot above that, I suppose. I hasten to say, a sluggard is quite unlikely to create an actual series about anything. Instead, I predict she'll write maybe one or two more posts about it before she gives it up. If you want, you could go over there and give her some encouragement to keep writing. Or to hang up the writing thing entirely and just stick to Shutting Up and Playing Her Stupid Flute, Already.

P.S.: I've made some typo corrections on her blog post, just to keep your eyes from bleeding. You're welcome.

"food"

4: FICTIONAL food. This is stuff that bears no resemblance to food, but is still marketed as edible. Cheetos. Fruit roll-ups. Kool-Aid. Pretty much anything with a cartoon character on the label falls into this category.

I rarely branch into the Fictional Food category, because even at my most slothful, I realize that this is unacceptable. It's like trying to tell yourself that it's ok to eat Play-Doh because it's nontoxic. Crayons in tacos! Newspaper smoothies! Um. Don't think so.

UPDATE: For Alex Zorach (who was kind enough to comment below), here's a product I think might just be a great Christmas gift.

{ Alex Z., call your office. }

Panda Poop Tea. Just what we've been waiting for!

2011-11-14T14:37:00.001-06:00

{ Pandas make the best tea }

For the last several years, coffee drinkers would rub our noses in their supposed superiority by throwing their Kopi Luwak coffee at us, by saying, "Ha! We Coffea arabica connoisseurs are willing to drink something a civet cat pooped out, just to prove our dedication to coffee, glorious coffee! You tea poseurs, just keep drinking those Camellia sinensis leaves. You are nothing to us."

Well, tea drinkers, do not despair. We can now drink tea pooped out of an endangered species. An endangered species, I tell you! Stew on that, coffee jerks! Nobody tries to one-up a tea drinker, you espresso-stained morons. Until civet cats are an endangered species, or until you can train white rhinos to eat coffee beans, consider yourselves pwn3d. We're connoisseurs of an entirely higher order than you are. In your face!

Mr. Yanshi, who has begun marketing his product, says the following:

"Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 per cent of everything they eat. That means their excrement is rich in fibres and nutrients."

Yanshi - seem here wearing a panda costume - plans to sell his most expensive blend for nearly £50,000 per kilo and aims to secure the Guinness World Record for the planet's priciest cuppa.

"It has a mature, nutty taste and a very distinctive aroma while it's brewing," he explained.

{ Mr. Yanshi marketing a nice, steaming load of panda tea }

There. Nearly $80 grand for a kilo (that's European for a pound, or something) of Panda Poop Tea. Now, the discerning (and pedantic) among us might say, "But that's not really a tea, is it. I mean, it's not made of Camellia sinensis, but probably some combination of the leaves, stems, and shoots of the bamboo plant. Thus, more properly, it should be called a Panda Poop tisane." To this I reply, "But it's panda-poop tisane, so stop whining unless you want those coffee-swilling weasels to civet-cat us out of the top spot in the connoisseur food chain. Plus, it's good for you, and it keeps you regular, which is more than one can say about civet cat poop. I can only assume your complaints come from a diet lacking sufficient bamboo nutrition, and I pity your ignorance and despise you." For your edification:

[Bamboo] is low in Saturated Fat, and very low in Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Protein, Riboflavin and Zinc, and a very good source of Vitamin B6, Potassium, Copper and Manganese.

{ Bamboo Yixing tea pot would be perfect for panda poop tea }

I only wonder which of my treasured Yixing pots I shall use for my first taste. Perhaps this offering from Primatea, which is like unto a stack of bamboo shoots? I shall post further once my shipment of hot, steaming panda poop tea arrives on my doorstep. You won't want to miss that review, I assure you. "A mature, nutty taste and a distinctive aroma," indeed.

My new tea timer: The 10,000-year clock

2011-11-13T17:46:00.001-06:00

As some of you may remember, I have appalling time sense. To me, a day is as a thousand years, a thousand years is as a day, and the three minutes it takes to make a typical cup of Darjeeling is an incalculable duration that my interior time-sense can make nothing of. So I've always got to keep counting in my head, or I have to employ a timekeeper to ensure I don't under- or oversteep a tea I'm working with.

BUT what will I do 10,000 years from now? I mean, once the Singularity has meshed us with computers, and we are living an incomprehensibly long life with all the tea browsing sites we could ever want just downloading into our brains, how will I keep track of tea-steeping time then? I must assume that digital watches will have gone out of style, and that living for thousands of years will make our routines like keeping tight schedules seem quaint and out of date. So what about tea, then?

Well, I have just the answer. I've decided upon the 10,000-year clock as my tea timer of choice, if only for pure aesthetic reasons. It's beautiful, designed to be so, so that people deep in the future would have reason to wind it up and keep it going for another century or so, even after all memory of us has vanished from the earth. (Except for the grudge the cockroaches will probably still be carrying about us.)

"And what is this 10,000-year clock," you might ask? Well, first, it's gigantic, and it's buried in a mountain to keep it safe and sound. It takes two people to wind it up. and it's designed to be functionally beautiful and make us think about what the world might be like in the deep future, so we take better care of things now.

{ finally, a worthy tea timer }

If your heart does not ring at the thought of your Space Darjeeling being carefully timed by such a lovely timepiece as this (the small-scale mockup of the real thing), then there is no help for you.

Lu Yu would approve. For those of us who can't keep count, that is.

Rick Bayless's Xoco. I have never had hot chocolate before now.

2011-11-09T20:28:00.001-06:00

{ Xoco looks good on Suzanne }

A couple weeks ago, my most excellent and lovely wife packed up the kids and bundled them off to my brother's house, and then arranged for us to drive into the City. The City, for those not in the know, is Chicago. I used to live there for quite a number of years, but now I'm out at the bleeding-edge of the suburbs, making it quite time-consuming and expensive to get there regularly. I work from home, don't commute to work, and thus miss out on Chicago's lively culinary scene. More's the pity.

So the wonderful Suzanne got us set up in a couple of nice hotels, and we went to town. And one notable moment: Xoco, which is Rick Bayless's street-food restaurant. I'll get back to that in a moment.

{ Rembrandt's drawings are remarkable }

When I was about eight years old, I had my first culinary experience. That is, I remember eating at the local Ponderosa Steakhouse, an inexpensive place, and I had . . . Teriyaki Chicken. Hoo, boy. For a kid from the 'burbs, this was an entirely new flavor experience, and I can still remember it as if it were yesterday. I'd never tasted anything like that before! It was much more complex than the food I was used to eating-- nay, demanding, from my mother. The chicken was there, but then the sauce, made with real soy (for which I was just growing out of a severe allergy), and rice wine, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, red pepper-- I had no idea what I was tasting, but it was perfectly in accord with my tastes. I always have loved subtle and complex things and ideas: sunsets in New Mexico, where every cloud explodes with a different shade of pink; Degas pastel drawings; Bach chord changes; the amazing broth in a bowl of Vietnamese pho soup; Mark Helprin novels; Rembrandt pen-and-ink or Conté crayon drawings.

Ever since that moment at Ponderosa, whenever I'd enter a restaurant, I'd make sure to order whatever seemed to be the most exotic or unfamiliar item on the menu. And every once in a while, I still have one of those eye-opening moments, where I taste something I had never previously encountered, and a new palate opens before me like Dorothy's doorway when she entered Oz. I treasure these moments. The first time eating Thai. Cambodian chicken soup. Good dim sum. Chicken Pojarsky at Russian Tea Time. Cinnamon Basil ice cream from Out of a Flower (sadly, out of business). My first cup of true Darjeeling. Dan Cong oolong. West Lake Dragonwell. A perfect bleu cheese salad. And now hot chocolate, courtesy of Chef Bayless.

Rick Bayless, for those not familiar with his work, recently won the hearts of fans of Top Chef Masters with a rendition of a mole dish that he said he took 20 years to learn how to make, and which had been an inspiration for him to become a chef. His story was genuine and touching as he explained his passion for the food of Mexico, and particularly the cuisine of Oaxaca province. I won't go into detail about his several restaurants nor his commercial success with his Frontera-brand salsas or TV shows and appearances. Instead, I want to focus on one single cup of hot chocolate.

{ XOCO by Rick Bayless }

Now, like you, I grew up with Swiss Miss Instant Cocoa, with mini-marshmallows floating on top of the cup, to warm me on many a winter's day, spent outdoors in the snow. (It seemed to snow more when I was a kid than it does now, for some reason.) Snow angels, snow in my boots and collar and mittens, then Mom making hot chocolate and plopping us in front of the crackling fireplace to get toasty. We would stir our hot cocoa with candy canes, giving them a peppermint flavor and turning our canes into deadly, eye-puncturing daggers of doom. I've had Giardelli's hot chocolate at their shop in San Francisco. I thought I knew everything there was to know about hot cocoa. As it turns out, I knew nothing.

{ Liquid chocolate }

Hot chocolate. It's not tea, is it. But chocolate is easily as complex a substance as tea is, with so much chemistry involved, it boggles the mind. Now, most of the chocolate we taste-- particularly the good German and Swiss chocolates, which are entirely smooth and creamy-- are highly processed. And in the processing, much flavor is lost. As it turns out, a less sophisticated way of processing the chocolate is more conducive to making a cup that will contain multitudes of flavors. (And, like tea, there are a host of chocolate varietals just now coming to the attention of buyers in the West, as our palates develop.)

Xoco. My wife and I entered, and there was a line out the door, as we had expected. Service moved fairly quickly, though; and I asked the server what was her favorite item on the menu, and I ordered that. My wife had her own ideas, of course. Anyway, along with our meal, I ordered the Hot Chocolate, Mexico City Style, which the menu indicated was thick. I ordered several churros to go with this for dipping. (I'd seen this on TV! I was going to taste something authentic, darn it!)

We sat at a charming, winding counter facing a tiled wall in a room with lots of window light. Surprisingly, this was quite an intimate setting as my wife and I sat huddled close together, rather than staring across a table at one another. And we dug in. She took pictures with her iPad plaything, carefully arranging the dishes to her satisfaction before snapping. And then I had my cup of chocolate.

Describing it now, a bit too late afterward, I struggle to remember the flavors. But I hasten to say: flavors, not flavor. Like a good puerh or a complicated 2nd-flush Darjeeling, this stuff was to be experienced in layers. High notes, low notes, sharp notes, smooth notes. Fruity, woodsy, heartbreakingly delicious. I only had one cup. I wanted one cup only, because this experience with Suzanne, sharing this bit of delight, was something I wanted to savor in memory rather than overindulge in all at once. The entire weekend with my Suzanne was like that: heartbreakingly delicious.

{ XOCO has food, too }

Bayless buys his cocoa beans raw and whole, and his team roasts and grinds them on the premises. This is why they retain that complexity I'd never imagined before. Chocolate, in its pure state, is remarkably wide and deep in its taste impressions. Like an excellent tea, flavoring it with strawberries, or hazelnuts, or passionfruit glace would be both unnecessary and a shame, because those flavors-- while melding perfectly with the chocolate-- would cover up its own complexities. Why put fruit in it, when the chocolate has fruit notes of its own? Why combine it with anything at all? Like Lady Godiva, it's much better naked.

So, here on this tea blog, I rant about a cup of chocolate. If you're in Chicago, hasten over to Xoco and allow yourself to be stoped in your tracks as you experience something extraordinary.

Thank you, Chef Bayless, for letting this tea drinker have such a nuanced, complex, delightful cup of chocolate. This goes into my permanent memory bank of Culinary Moments I'll Remember Forever.

And you've ruined me for Swiss Miss, I'm afraid.

"Honey, I poisoned the kids!"

2011-11-09T14:41:00.001-06:00

{ An Evil Bee Walks into a Bar* }

Bears love honey
And I'm a Pooh bear
So I do care
So I do care

Why do you people insist on drinking honey with your tea? Are you mad? First, it masks the flavor of the tea so thoroughly, it's nigh impossible to discern the actual leaves you're drinking from. Second, if you have to sweeten your tea, you're doing it wrong. And third, well, I can't think of anything, but just don't!

Oh, yes. Third: "Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey." Apparently, it's poisonous and evil, China's little way of saying, "Hello," to their friends on the other side of the world. They microfilter their honey to hide its origin, so people don't know what they're getting. And what they're getting is honey chock full of illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. If the honey you're buying doesn't have natural pollen in it, it's not honey, per se, but something else.

"In my judgment, it is pretty safe to assume that any ultra-filtered honey on store shelves is Chinese honey and it's even safer to assume that it entered the country uninspected and in violation of federal law," he added.

...

"We are well aware of the tricks being used by some brokers to sell honey that originated in China and laundering it in a second country by filtering out the pollen and other adulterants," said Wenger, whose firm markets 55 million pounds of honey annually under its Busy Bee brand, store brands, club stores and food service.

"The brokers know that if there's an absence of all pollen in the raw honey we won't buy it, we won't touch it, because without pollen we have no way to verify its origin."

Trader Joe's has safe honey, it seems, so buy from them. Local producers may be selling good stuff, but you'd have to verify that. But most of the other stuff is junk.

And so, to lighten the mood, I've found some honey that has not been proven to poison anyone. Sweet Honey on the Rock, singing, "There Were No Mirrors in My Nana's House," which I find haunting and lovely, a perfect lullaby for babies and angry bees.

* Evil Bee picture was created by Director/Animator Stefan Nadelman, who created this Evil Bee video, with music by Menomena.

Tea Is Sometimes All About the Crazy.

2011-11-07T09:13:00.000-06:00

Mike Tyson Hearts Tea and Cannoli. And Human Ears.

Dorri Olds at OpenSalon writes about an encounter she had with a peculiar Earl Grey drinker she served at an Italian restaurant in which she served as a waitress. Quite a charming article, entitled, "Compassion and a Cannoli."

When I put the tea and pastry down, his posture changed. He’d sit up a little straighter, hold his head a little higher. He’d pick up the tea cup and put it right under his nose and inhale deeply. His face lost its tension. He’d pull the teabag out of the cup and place it in his spoon. He’d wrap the white string around and lift the spoon three times, forcing a few drops of tea into the cup. He’d set down the spoon with teabag on his napkin. He’d curl his hands around the warm cup. He’d then switch over to the cannoli. He was the only customer who used a knife and fork. Everybody else just picked a cannoli up like a hot dog.

When searching for images, I found a video with Mike Tyson drinking tea and eating cannoli. Odd enough to merit a link, I suppose.

You're welcome.

Drink Cheap Wine . . . and Tea?

2011-11-05T16:22:00.000-05:00

Pablo Picasso, "The Bottle of Wine," c1925

Gentle readers, I would ask you to read the following article from Slate online magazine: "Drink Cheap Wine: I Mean, Really Cheap." Here's a sample:

Ernest Gallo, who, along with his brother Julio, popularized wine among the American masses, understood the psychology of wine better than anyone. He used to pour two glasses of wine for potential buyers, telling them that one sold for 5 cents, and the other for 10. According to Gallo, his guinea pigs invariably chose the more expensive option. What they didn’t know was that the two wines were exactly the same. Researchers have recently reproduced Gallo’s results, proving that our appreciation of a wine depends on how much we think it costs. If you can break yourself of this psychological quirk—or have your spouse lie to you about the cost of your wine—you’ll save a small fortune.

Interesting, no? Basically, they're saying that "everyday wine" is usually pretty consistent within a brand, and that it's typically serviceable, unless you happen to be a dedicated oenophile. And maybe even then.

So what about tea, O Wise? Would you drink what we often term, "bog-quality swill," without being embarrassed by it? Or do you need the "high-quality" imprimatur from such geniuses as the writers at The 39 Steeps?

Personally, I've found that I can drink even Lipton's and make a fair-to-middlin' cup. If I get to open the plastic wrapper, and if the tea is newly purchased, and if I am extremely careful about steeping time. With Tazo at Starbucks, I've had no such luck, because the temperature at which the tea is steeped at is too low, in my opinion, to make anything but a rather flat, insipid cup of tea. (The paper cups may have something to do with that effect, also, at least psychologically. A nice, solid ceramic teacup makes me think what's inside it is better than what's inside a paper cup with a plastic lid.)

I don't think the tea market and the coffee or wine markets are equivalent, however. Americans are accustomed to a higher-quality product with their coffee and wine, and they associate tea with what you drink when you're sick, or something that tastes execrable.

Please respond in the comments. What "bog-quality" teas will you drink, and why? Or do you stick to only the highest and bestest stuff?

Review: RARE TEA REPUBLIC, Phoobsering Special Oolong, 2011

2011-11-05T14:56:00.001-05:00

Madame Dugazon Awaiting Tea and L'Amour

I have only just heard of a new company, Rare Tea Republic. Their website says they focus on small-parcel, single-estate, fresh tea.

Their Phoobsering Special Oolong Organic, which comes from the Phoobsering Estate in Darjeeling, India. Interestingly, the package I received from them gives the plucking date, April 1, 2011. This is precisely the kind of information I'm looking for when purchasing a tea. I want to know who, what, where, when, how and probably the why of any serious tea. Even the best tea, if it's been sitting in a bin too long, will degrade to the point where you'd be better off drinking cheaper but fresher stuff (not counting puerhs or certain oolongs, which benefit from age).

So what do we know about Phoobsering? It's high: 6000 feet (though I hasten to stay, I used to live with my sister in Los Alamos, NM, which is at 7200 feet; However, Los Alamos is covered in nuclear weapons labs, not green tea plantations, so there's that.) It's one of the major estates in India, and has been around from the beginning of tea cultivation in Darjeeling, and it ranges from about 3000 to 6000 feet. Apparently, the Special Oolong Organic is from their higher slopes, which means it should have benefited from the harsher, colder winters, which help intensify the flavor of high-grown Darjeelings.

The April date indicates a first-flush tea, so you would expect it to be lighter in body and flavor, and also a bit less complex than the leaves from the same plant a little later in the season. First-flush Darjeelings are very much in vogue in Germany (and other European countries, I suppose, as well, though I don't know which ones), but it hasn't caught on in the United States as much. We're a coffee-swilling country; so something light, delicate, and subtle as a first-flush Darj. is typically not to our taste.

The directions given by the tea procurer call for 3 tsp per cup at 190F. Pfshaw! We are the makers of manners, and prudish customs bow before great tea drinkers! And me, too. I decided to take their "oolong" designation seriously and make the tea gongfu style: lots of leaf, lots of short steepings.

1st steeping: 92C, 50s
Light, not surprisingly. No trace of bitterness. Highly fragrant, as you'd hope from a Darjeeling. Tastes much like a beautiful-quality Darjeeling, but I can't really grab hold of how processing it as a Darjeeling sets it apart from other Darjeelings sufficiently to make much difference.

2nd steeping: 92C, 40s
More body. The cup is a rich amber, as most 1st-flush Darjeelings tend to be. Slight hint of a bite to the cup-- which is something I prize in a Darjeeling. (For I like my tea, cheese, wine, and women opinionated.) The complexity is starting to develop on the palate. Tastes rather green, a touch sweet-vegetal.

My second-tea-taster-in-house, Gregory, says it's good. And he's no slouch when it comes to high-quality teas, even though he's 9 years old. But now he's escaped his homework/tea tasting to play Legos, so I'm on my own.

3rd steeping: Just off the boil, 55s
Strong amber color to the cup, perfectly clear to the bottom. The leaves have unfurled entirely, with quite a bit of the two-leaves-and-a-bud. A bit more breakage on the leaves than I would expect. Leaves quite uniformly light-forest green. Buds floating about. There's a sort of faint but hot spiciness to the aroma of the wet leaves, underneath the sweetness. It's not a particularly floral tea, but the allusive aroma is so very attractive. Happily, the cup closely follows the aroma (which is not typically the case). The flavor unfurls in the mouth in waves, as one breathes. The huigan, which is what you sense mainly by the aroma coming up through the sinus passages, is pleasing, direct, strong in the middle register but without much at the high or low end. Because it's a light tea with a resonant middle register, if it were an opera singer, I'd classify this as a light mezzo-soprano, a jeunes dugazon, which is like unto a young mother, just past the first blush of youth but not yet into her full maturity. Lovely, light, a bit inexperienced, not overly complicated or carrying too much baggage.

4th steeping: Just off the boil, 1 min
My wife is making coffee in the kitchen, where I make my tasting today. SO . . . that means the tea currently steeping may just have a delightfully beany aroma, a strong, black, smokiness, and whatnot. I may have to evacuate to even sense the tea at all. As a side note: Any tea shop that also sells coffee will have to contend with this, and they'll have to choose robust teas that will stand out among the coffee scents, which are much more pervasive.

The tea is still going strong, and a bit of mineral flavor is starting to make itself felt. The flavor is a bit uninflected, without many complex overtones. Again, this is fairly typical of first-flush Darjeelings. If you are looking for overwhelming complexity, go for those second-flushes.

5th steeping: Just off the boil, 3 min
Well, at this point, the tea has lost its punchy interest; that is, it's still worth drinking, but there's nothing much to be added by further description. Subsequent steepings, if any, will most likely be the same, just progressively less so as the flavor fades into insubstantiality.

Overall Impressions
As a first-flush Darjeeling, it's lovely, and it survived a number of steepings. That being said, I don't quite understand this tea as an oolong. Perhaps the vintage needs a few seasons of rest to develop and come into its true character; or perhaps a light roast may help to bring out something hidden in its quality. Now, because I chose not to follow their directions, I missed the opportunity to have all the layers of flavor on top of one another like some complicated Austrian torte. However, I would rather drink my tea the way I read books: in chapters, with a story developing over time.

THANK YOU, Rare Tea Republic, for this first opportunity to get to know your tea. I do hope you'll continue to provide these higher-end teas and help with convincing Americans that tea can be amazing. This has been a good first impression of your work, and I'm grateful for your generosity.

Where are my monkeys?

2011-10-26T17:01:00.000-05:00

"I hate Chris Giddings," says Abominable.

Chris Giddings, author of the Tea Guy blog, has punctured yet another dearly held belief: that monkeys pick monkey-picked tea, hence the name. Next, he'll probably tell me that Rudolph and Hermey the orthodontic elf didn't pull the Abominble Snow Monster's teeth out and save the day. Curse you, Chris Giddings!*

*And, no, I know this is a myth. Give me some credit, people!

Hobbes Searches for a Proper Englishman's Lapsang

2011-10-26T09:56:00.001-05:00

Hobbes Puzzles over Lapsang

Is "Hobbes," author of The Half-Dipper blog, the best tea writer extant? Perhaps, though I have a few others in my must-read category. Unlike me, Hobbes actually puts pictures of real tea on his blog, instead of bits of pop culture or images tangentially related to Camellia sinensis. I do so because I am no photographer, and I cannot approach the beauties of a well-laid tea tray or capture the subtlety of the meniscus at the edge of a lovely cup of hongcha in a purple-clay cup.

And thus, back to Hobbes. He is an instructor at an eminent U.K. university, and I've delighted in learning much of what little I know about puerh from him. Last year, I participated in a tea tasting he hosted, for which I am still grateful.

Today, Hobbes is talking lapsang souchong. As my readers would know (and I invite you to look in my blog here), I had never enjoyed lapsang souchong until a tea friend, George Zhang from Green Hill Tea, converted me with the Bohea Lapsang he told me came from the Wuyi Mountain reserve, and of which no other than Norwood Pratt himself said,

"I bet I know that Bohea you love--it's from the Jiang Family back in the Wuyi Nature Reserve if I'm thinking of the right stuff--simply the world's best."

Now, Hobbes is searching for a proper Englishman's lapsang, and finds some samples he's interested in. For him, this is a quest not unlike the endless longing for, "The Lost Chord," which Arthur Sullivan described in his tone-poem, composed in 1877. Do listen to the piece while reading Hobbes's article. I've had experiences like this myself: longing for a flavor or aroma only found in my childhood, inextricably linked to my memories of Grandma's cupboard, or Grandpa Allison's pipes, or Clear Lake afternoons. The longing for a golden past is a very English pastime, I believe, which is why Hobbes makes reference to his love for Tolkien (the sentimentalist di tutti sentimentalists, when it comes to his longing for an untouched Shire). But even a poor American such as myself can indulge thus and come away pining for that lost fjord.

I asked in his comments section something like, "So what makes a proper Englishman's lapsang anyway, you tea-swilling Brit?" Well, I asked with a bit more grace than that, but I'm still puzzled. I always thought Brits drank low-quality tea dressed up with pine smoke to cover the deficiencies of the leaves themselves. (But of Americans' tea palates, the less said the better, so no offense meant.) I searched his the archives, and I found the answer here. A sample quote:

This is a delicious hongcha, but it is not lapsang souchong. Yes, I know that it was plucked by the thighs of young virgins from the finest tea-bushes in the Wuyi mountain range, and then was gently passed over the combusting branches of pine trees through which ambrosial scents whisper throughout the long, spring evenings. It is an excellent "Zhengshan Xiaozhong". It is first-class hongcha.

However, it is not lapsang souchong, as English culture has long appreciated it. This is not to say that English culture has been raised on inferior product - merely that this particular variety is too light, not sufficiently pine-like, not sufficiently sweet-smokey, to be an Englishman's lapsang.

If you've never had the opportunity to read Hobbes's blog, please enjoy a wander through his archives at your earliest convenience. His knowledge of puerh is extensive, and he makes that difficult-to-understand corner of the tea world a bit more accessible. I'm glad to see him writing also about lapsang souchong, which can be an amazing tea when done right.

The Tale of the Fairy Great-Grand-Godmother

2011-10-18T12:38:00.001-05:00

My, what a big pumpkin you have, Grandma.

My sister and I blog together on Sibling Ribaldry. It's not about tea, though I do cross-post some things. BUT, tea people being the eclectic, zany, and caffeinated people you are, I thought you might appreciate a bit of madness.

I wrote a fairy story, "The Tale of the Fairy Great-Grand-Godmother." It's in fairy tale form, but it's factually true. And then it starts to get weird as the fairy tale starts to seep out into reality. Here's how it starts. Once you read this, please go to the blog and read on, especially to see the Google Chat conversation between my sister and me concerning the fairy tale I had just written.

Sibling Ribaldry. It's where all the cool kids go to slowly and inexorably lose their minds.

Once upon a time, two children were lost in the greenwood. Well, not so much "lost" as, "told to stay outside and stop watching so much TV already."

They grew up. Or so they said. But the adventure did not end quite yet.

One day, while sitting at their "computers," using Google chat, they accidentally invoked a supernatural being of mischievous mien and unfathomable intent, which has been interfering with the two children in subtle and not-so-subtle ways ever since. And here is how it went.

New Find: Red Circle Tea blog

2011-10-12T11:29:00.000-05:00

Red Circle Tea

Today I discovered something new: a blog entitled, Red Circle Tea: Tea aficianados who travel through Asia.

New to me, anyway. I wish I were a tea aficianado who traveled Asia (and the Himalayas, and, well, anywhere, really). So I have found another source through which to live vicariously. [Edit out self-pitying nonsense here.]

The article that caught my eye is entitled, "The dish not made," about traveling to China and being unable to find bamboo sticks in which a traditional Chinese dish is cooked. The writer (I haven't delved deeply enough into the blog yet to figure out who is who) was told by her Chinese teacher that the Chinese diaspora, when they return home, will often find that their favorite dishes are now difficult or impossible to find, because the cuisine is changing so rapidly. But no bamboo sticks?! I'll let the author tell her story.

“Yes! This is a Chinese dish,very traditional and they serve it all over China, of course, and it’s delicious!” “You know,” she continued,“ my country changes so fast, from one year to the next. We don’t have the underground metro, then one day, all of a sudden, we do! And food changes too. Steamed Bamaboo is a common dish, but the Chinese here ,if they were born in China, have been “out”- they have not been back in 10, 20, 30 years, they don’t remember their country’s cuisine. Many were born here. They only know what they learn and eat here, even if they speak Chinese. It doesn’t surprise me you can’t find bamboo. Most people don’t know about it.”
I sipped my tea and reflected on this. It redefined Chinese American life for me all over again. I imagined American-born Chinese learning about their cultural roots from a distance and how one stays connected to that from across an ocean. Well, I surmised, you do the best you can with what you’ve got.
“Anyhow,” she finished “It’s out of season. Try the spring next year.” And with a start, I realized, so they DO have bamboo sticks! It’s just the wrong season! Haha!

Unqualified but not disqualified

2011-10-10T13:01:00.000-05:00

Winged Victory. Just do it, already!

One of my favorite bloggers is a fellow with the French-sounding name, Chris Guillebeau, who writes The Art of Nonconformity. He has a book by the same name, which I encourage you to pick up at Amazon. He talks about his near-perfect lack of credentials, which nevertheless has not kept him from living a life of world travel, a life of living-outside-the-cubicle.

Guillebeau challenges me, because I'm constantly attempting to pull myself out of ruts, caused by being depressed, by being anxious, by feeling stuck or powerless to change my circumstances. Do you ever feel this way? Like your life is really not enough? That you're not giving your wife or kids enough great memories to carry them into their lives? Do you ever wonder, "What would life be like if...."? Guillebeau asks that question, then goes on to answer it for himself.

But what if you don't feel credentialed enough? What if you don't have "what it takes," whatever that is, to really break free and live that life-worth-living? How does one jump over the wall, crash through the troops, strike down that giant? Everybody's life is a hero struggle (as James Joyce beautifully captures in his Ulysses), and I've got my own mountains to climb, starting with that stupid first step.

I want to travel the world, taking my wife and children to China for the pre-Ming tea-picking; to climb the Himalayas and drink tea that is one-day-old fresh. I want to see the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival. I want to return to Europe and breathe Alpine air again. But I feel stuck, because to do all that, I need to reconfigure my business and life arrangements. And this takes a lot of courage and hard work. And, frankly, sometimes I don't feel up to it. The cares and worries of this world are pretty heavy burdens that seem to get me off of my goals, out of sorts with my real self, and into a funk.

And so: Tea. I like to drink tea. I don't have any tea qualifications. I'm not a tea master, nor have I studied under great Taiwanese Tea Masters, as has Stefane. I'm not a certified tea sommelier working with upscale restaurants and hotels to demonstrate to the foodie world how to enjoy great, vintage teas from around the world.

All I've got is the ability to type 90 wpm, a nose and a mouth, and a lively interest. And the ability to speak English fluently.

Guillebeau reminds me that somehow, even one such as I can break out of the mediocre into living the more abundant life. Jesus promised it to us, and I want it. Though I don't really know yet how to become the globetrotting life-drinker I want to be, I will put my faith out there that it can still happen, and I won't give up. I may be unqualified for that life, but I'm not disqualified from the race.

(Please visit Chris G.'s blog, The Art of Nonconformity, if any of this resonates with you.)

Lainie Takes Tea at the Lockwood

2011-10-06T11:46:00.000-05:00

Lainie's Tea Service. Jealous, much?

Lainie Petersen, host of the Lainie Sips tea blog, has a bullet-pointed review of her recent afternoon tea at the Palmer House Hilton's Lockwood restaurant in Chicago. For me, the money quote:

Tea: The high point of the service was the excellent tea from Rare Tea Cellar. Unfortunately, the online menu doesn't offer a full list of teas (and completely eliminates its selection of herbal infusions). My Aged Keemun was delicious and my companion's English Breakfast Tea was simply superb. You can't go wrong with Rod Markus 's wonderful teas....

Aged Keemun? In a teahouse? In the U.S.?! I've friends in the U.K. who go to tony establishments for tea and report that they have to make do with much less.

For those who don't already know, Rod Markus runs the Rare Tea Cellar, and his love for tea is acting as a transformative influence in Chicago's foodie scene.

I'll have to head over there sometime, put in some earplugs, and enjoy some tea and scones.

(Above picture via The Examiner, credit to Lainie Petersen.)

Jetsons FAIL: No tea robots yet?!

2011-10-05T10:40:00.000-05:00

Dashed Expectations

This morning, I awake without having had enough sleep. Children stirring at awkward moments during my sleep cycle brought about a spot of insomnia, which has left me groggy and unwilling to de-slackify myself. And this post will no doubt be rife with odd repetitions of unusual words (a tic I have to edit whenever I write), badly drawn analogies, and unconscious alliteration. Be merciful, O gods of grammar. I blame Hanna-Barbera studios.

There Is a Monster at the End of this Post

And so, along with the conspicuous absence of flying cars, which The Jetsons assured me I'd be driving right about now, I'm wondering, "Where my tea robot at?"

And there is no good answer for this. Using the wonder of Google, I've searched high and low, and I've found no robot that will make me a pot of decent tea in the morning, when I most need the help. Because I cannot outsource my tea-making to India, I have to do it myself. This is unfortunate.

I have found some devices, however, which may fit the bill, however imprecisely. They don't look like Rosie, the robotic housekeeper from The Jetsons, unfortunately. With all that stimulus money floating around, why has none of it been spent on this obvious requirement for the awareness-impaired?

Yeah, I don't think so.

Some of the devices designed to automate the tea process seem a bit arcane, like something belonging in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory. I pity the purchaser of the item to the left, which doesn't appear to simplify or automate the process, which begs the question. The Wicked Witch of the West might enjoy using it, though, because it would go so well with her décor, along with a couple of throw-rugs and some window treatments.

"Time for lunch . . . in a cup!"

But what about this thing? The Swan Teasmade (in white, which looks very futuristic, like something from Wall-e). It has a blue, backlit clock; a timer; and a flashy-light-thing, the purpose of which I suppose is to wake you up gently, without a jarring alarm to contend with. I've been told the Teasmade products in the past may not have had the elegance of an iPad or a Disney production; and that they made execrable, bog-quality tea fit only for swilling down in a semi-conscious state. Nevertheless, it seems to be the closest thing to a real tea robot, and I may have to invest in one. Any port in a storm, eh?

Do you think they come in Yixing?

What I Missed: The Northwest Tea Festival

2011-10-04T14:16:00.000-05:00

The Plane Left Without Me.

Well, I live in Chicagoland, which means I was nowhere near the movable feast of U.S. teadom, which manifested last weekend at the Northwest Tea Festival. Everybody who is anybody was there. (Please note, I was not there. QED.)

I haven't found much in the blogging world about it (other than notes that it was coming and that it had gone). If you know of any good roundups or notes about it, please pop a link into the comments, and I'll be sure to post them in an update.

Phoenix Tea (a combined effort between Cinnabar Gongfu and Brett at Black Dragon Tea Bar) give a quick rundown with some pictures.

Looking over the program, I can see I've missed an opportunity to learn something and enjoy some teas I've never heard of. Blech. Maybe next year!

Teapotting Is teh AWESOME

2011-10-04T06:28:00.000-05:00

Andy Goldsworthy Hearts Planking.

I watched the opening to the first episode of the U.S. version of The Office this morning and discovered a phenomenon called, "planking," which to my astonishment is an Internet meme that has taken hold of the world. It involves people lying down. On things. Like a plank of wood. And posting pictures of themselves lying down on things like a plank of wood. BRILLIANT!

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.

A variant on this theme is something called, "teapotting." Oh, yes, my friends. The old ballad, "I'm a Little Teapot" now has an Internet meme of its own, and you, too, can participate. All you have to do is become a teapot in some unusual venue, snap a photo, and poof! You are now a hipster.

And here, you thought the Internet was for stupid people.

Please do not try this at home.

Iguana Tea: from the Sleep Talkin' Man

2011-10-03T08:56:00.003-05:00

Tea for the Cold-Blooded

"Pay homage to toast. Prostrate yourself in front of it: hot, crunchy bread slice thingy. We shall celebrate with tea! Iguana tea."

Homage to Toast

(Lizard teapot found here.)

Tea for Today tastes some Turkish tea, Western-style

2011-10-03T06:10:00.000-05:00

Dr. Who's steampunk samovar

Marlena, who hosts the Tea for Today blog, intersperses tea tasting notes with pictures of faraway places (which often bear no relation to the teas themselves, but reflect her wide traveling experiences and are just lovely to look at), along with other tea facts.

This week she tasted some Turkish tea from two vendors, but she made it Western-style (1 tsp, boiling water, 3 minutes). Traditionally, Turks make their tea with a samovar and all the delightful complexities that go with that. One of these days, I need to buy me one of those contraptions.

Marlena makes the following interesting statement:

As sometimes happens, the taste of the tea follows directly in the foorsteps of the aroma, which to me, is one indication of a good tea.

While, obviously, there are a million ways to measure a good or great tea, the aroma is particularly useful. The tongue can only identify five flavors-- sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami; but the human nose can identify tens of thousands of different, nuanced aromas. Interestingly, women in general have a stronger sense of smell than men, and their sense of smell is most highly developed during ovulation (if you'll pardon a bit of TMI with your breakfast). So, ladies, drink that comfort tea when you need it, and take good notes of what you're drinking.

Also, dogs have about 10 times the olfactory receptors that humans have. If I had a wish (other than for world peace, blah blah blah), I'd want to have a dog's ability to smell. Can you imagine the nuances of aroma and flavor you'd be able to discover in your favorite teas?

(Doctor Who steampunk Dalek comes from sculptor Alex Holden. I don't think it's actually a samovar, but who's counting?)

[Updated to fix horrid typos. Bleh.]

BearsBlog finds two Taiwanese oolongs to be... consistent.

2011-10-02T15:14:00.000-05:00

Bear Discerning Fine Differences
among Taiwanese Teas

Bears Blog asks, who has the better San Lin Xi oolong from 2011: A source in Taizhong or Floating Leaves?

Takeaway: Taiwanese have their tea crafting down to an art that yields very consistent results. Judging gaoshan tea competitions must be rather difficult!

From what I understand, the Taiwanese may have the world's most sophisticated, upscale tea culture-- and certainly, being filled with businessmen willing to drop a thousand or two dollars on a pot of tea may effectively bring about such fine-tuned discernment that they can easily tell the differences between vintage teas that would elude us Westerners.

Go to Bears Blog for LOTS more to augment your tea education.

Picture of Pooh Bear originally found here.

Tasting Notes: Huang Jin Gui Wu Long, Canton Tea Co.

2011-10-02T13:35:00.000-05:00

Though I've been in hiatus, I've been taking some tea notes along the way, which I can share with you now that I'm back up and running.

Tasting notes on Huang Jin Gui Wu Long, from Canton Tea Company

Steeping 1: 25s, all about scent.

Beautiful, golden liquor, with a distinctly fruit-floral aroma that eluded me until I read the liner notes, which stated that this tea is reminiscent and named after the osmanthus flower for both its color and scent. And, yes, this does somewhat remind me of osmanthus-infused oolongs, which I've tasted a number of times in the past.

Steeping 2: 20s, with attitude
The second steeping is quite often the best when drinking oolongs: the leaves have been awakened, but they still retain the potency and have not been diminished in any measurable way. When tasting a tea such as this, it's important to remember that the tea changes in the pot as you drink, revealing a changing character as it breathes. This tea definitely wakes up with the second steeping, and the fruity flavor is accompanied by an astringency that makes the golden infusion take on a brightness on the tongue. Quite delicious. If I were to give this tea a musical label, I would say she is a mezzo-soprano, with plenty of high (but not overly high) notes and a powerful middle register. There is little to no bitterness, and I can't discern any distinguishing low notes (which one would usually associate with, say, an Assam or other black teas). It's quite strong and bright, like hot sunlight filtered through a latticework screen.

Steeping 3 and onward: 20s, 45s, &c
[Author's note: I didn't take notes on the third steeping and onward, being that my life frequently interferes with a properly meditative environment for tea-taking. That being said, the third steeping was delightful, though thinning, stretching out a bit. True to form, that second steeping was the highlight of the gongfu session, and from then on I fought to keep the pot hot enough to extract the flavors from the tea. I was able to get about six pots of tea from this, until I got busy enough that I was unable to continue. The tea outlasted my life's ability to sit still in one place long enough.]

I love how teas can taste like so many things: osmanthus flower aroma, in this case, even though an osmanthus never came in contact with these leaves. If only people realized how teas are like roses, with more varieties and subtleties than a single person can experience in a lifetime.

Lovely tea, Canton Tea. Thanks!

Tea and Snoopy

2011-10-01T09:26:00.003-05:00

Every time I set my microwave's timer (sorry, I don't have a Wicked-Witch-of-the-West hourglass) for three minutes-- a good length of time for many black teas-- I hear the rhythm of The Royal Guardsmen, singing, "It's Sopwith Camel Time." [Timer], [3], [0], [0], [Timer].

"And this is relevant to my tea-drinking experience how?" I hear you asking. Well, when one drinks some sophisticated tea using one's best gongfu, and some goofy number from the '60s is ringing in one's head, it rather colors the experience. And because I think it just about every time I make tea. Can't help it. Could be worse, I suppose.

Walker compares dan congs

2011-10-01T08:52:00.004-05:00

That's Dan Cong, not King Kong.

Okay, let's remember, the words sound sort of like "don song," not a rhyme with "King Kong." Walker Tea Review (who's been very busy making videos while I've been on hiatus) reviews two dan congs teas. Walker's got an awesome new intro music mix now, to boot!

Dan cong oolongs are as different and varied as American barbecue recipes, and so a review of only two of them might be a bit too limited. That being said, there are so few of them on the market in the US that it's good to start to think about them at all. Jason Walker knows his tea, as I'm sure all of you know, and he does such a good job letting you see how to prepare and discern teas. In a way, he's a tea educator more than a tea evangelist. Thanks, Jason.

It's Time to Wake Up the Ol' Bear

2011-09-29T08:30:00.001-05:00

Sleepers, awake!

Well, fellow tea travelers, it's time to wake up and start writing again. Maybe a cup of tea would help.

Thank you for sticking around and being patient while I reorganize my life. Blogging and intense introspection may go together, but perhaps not when I'm writing about tea. I've been working on my business, working on my family life, and working on me. Though I've been drinking tea, it's been in a rather desultory fashion, without spending the time or energy that such an obsession deserves. A bit of ti quan yin here, a splash of sencha there, some pu-erh in between, and of course Darjeeling to keep me honest.

Primarily, I've been reworking my daytime business, Chicago Captioning. Making a new website (can you believe it, still in progress), remaking relationships with clients, and thinking through the entire enterprise. You'd be surprised how much of your time a small business can take. But full steam ahead! Who knows, someday I might even take a vacation.

So we're open for tea. If any of you have any teas you want me to rant about, please do let me know. As always, I'll be honest when I like something and when I don't. And readers, if you have any recommendations for me, please pop them into the comments section, and I'll be sure to look them up.

I appreciate all my reader(s), and I look forward to being part of your conversations again. Most of the content going forward will be tea oriented, but I will slip in a few other ideas along the way, as the mood strikes. Let the posting begin!

Very sincerely,

Steven

Tasting Notes: California Tea House, White Monkey Paw 2009

2010-08-11T07:15:00.006-05:00

California Tea House does not indicate whether the three wishes I made on my White Monkey Paw (actually, a green tea) will go horribly awry, as I should expect all such wishes to go, per W. W. Jacobs's classic horror story. I'll update you if any undead show up at my door.

The Web site describes it thus:

White Monkey Paw is a green tea made from the very young leaves and bud of new season growth. It originates from the Wuyi Mountains in Fujian Province, China. With the pride of an Italian chef creating extra long spaghetti noodles, the tea leaves are very carefully hand picked with an artistic process to preserve the tea leaf form and then delicately steamed and dried. These perfect, prized tea leaves in our California Tea House collection resemble a monkey's paw, hence the name.
Similar to Silver Needle white tea, the 'down' on the leaves gives the leaves a silver appearance and indicates that these leaves were plucked very early in the morning and within the first two weeks of growth. Enjoy the art of one of our finest green teas with approximately 2 heaping teaspoons of tea to each cup of mineral water. Steep under 2 minutes in just under boiling water.

THE LEAVES
The above is as good a description as any of the appearance of the leaves before steeping. After steeping, I found a few unbroken leaves, though most showed some breakage; and the color was a rich, olive green. In spite of its name, this is not a white tea, but a green. (My first wish: that Chinese tea names would be useful to us Westerners.)

THE CUP
This pale amber tea is highly fragrant, and as I let it rest a few moments after decanting-- a practice I've found that helps bring out the best flavor of most teas-- I am surrounded by the bright aroma of sea, a touch of pine, perhaps, and French Toast. (Of course, that last may be caused by the remains of breakfast on the table.)
Very nice. As I drink, there is an elusive flavor I can't quite put my finger on, and quite pleasant, though not something easily translated into words. The mouthfeel is nicely buttery, but with a sharpness that catches at the back of the throat, which balances nicely. That quite elusive flavor is in the huigan, that sweet aftertaste that is produced retronasally, as the tea hits the throat and goes from there up to the sinus passages, which can distinguish tens of thousands of aromas.

(Wish number two: that I could sit and write a review without near-constant interruption.)

Coming back to the tea again, after it's cooled just a bit more, the vegetal characteristic is more pronounced, though, the tea is mild and relaxed. Quite nice, rather homey. This is the type of tea I could drink every morning.

THE SECOND STEEPING
I did steep this tea a second time, with the same parameters as the first. This time, the liquor was a pale, sunny, lemon yellow, and the aroma was not nearly as pronounced from the pot. There was no noticeable bitterness, and the flavors were too muted to be of much interest. Next time, I would perhaps double the time of the second steeping in hopes of getting the most from a second shot of this tea.

Thank you for reading this review! Now, if you'll excuse me, there's someone knocking at my door.

[UPDATED TO INCLUDE WEB ADDRESS FOR CALIFORNIA TEA HOUSE.]

A Serial Killer's Guide to Making Sweet Tea (and possibly murdering people)

2010-08-04T07:07:00.005-05:00

"Iced tea: that magical elixir of dreams . . . and sometimes nightmares."

Oh, yes, my friends. It is time for Steve Sutton's guide to making iced tea. I defy you to watch this and not wonder if he is going to pull a human head out of one of those sugar canisters on the counter.

Tasting Notes: Menghai XX93 2006 cooked pu-erh

2010-07-31T10:28:00.010-05:00

I'm outside on a very rainy-cloudy day in Illinois, on my balcony, drinking something to combat the damp: a 2006 cooked pu-erh from the Menghai Factory. This tea is a gift from the Tea Dork, or Tea Goober, who recently sold me a highly useful tea table and teapot, as well as some other items. Though the gift of tea was given to me awhile back, I believe TD indicated this came from Yunnan Sourcing. I've had a number of their pu-erhs in the past, and they are a favorite among those who drink this type of tea.

Because the tea has been cooked, I thought it best to allow the tea a couple of quick, 10-second rinses before I would drink. During the rinses, the first whiffs of the tea rise up out of the pot after I decant. These are highly fragrant leaves, fruity and complex. The bing is so tightly compressed that I only managed to break the piece I was given into a couple chunks and some powder. It is beyond my skill to separate out every leaf, as I often do with younger, uncooked pu-erhs, so it'll take awhile for this tea to open up. The trick with pu is to separate as much as possible the leaves, without breaking them into pieces, which creates a more bitter cup.

Steeping 1: 15 sec, wife stole it
My lovely wife was going out the door and stole the first steeping of this tea as she left. I did manage to get one small cup, which seemed quite light in flavor, even though heavy and black in color. But that's about all I could get out of it. Suzanne, enjoy the rest on your way to karate!

Steeping 2: 20sec, on the balcony
With great labor, I moved everything out to the balcony from my bunker tea laboratory, so I could enjoy the gray, moist weather. We'll see how long this lasts until the rain drives me in. The tea: Almost a coffee black, but still rather light in flavor. There are high notes of fruit and chocolate, a slightly hollow middle, and a rather bitter undertow that should fade with further steepings. I am refusing to be moved by the plaintive cries of the baby, who is supposed to be taking her nap right now.

Steeping 3: 30s, still on the balcony
Now joined by neighbors and their dog, my balcony is not quite as private as before. But happily, I can be sure no one cares about what I'm writing about tea, so I am in no danger of someone scooping me. By this third steeping, the tea still seems weak in its mouthfeel, eluding my grasp. The very black leaves have not really begun unfurling yet, and they have a lovely fragrance that I'm hoping to taste at some point in the liquor itself. My bare feet feel cold on the damp wood of the balcony. Because I'm anxious to get to the fifth steeping and beyond, I am going to drop this steeping into a larger pitcher for later, or for the plants or something. I want to get to the good stuff, but it seems that might be a while.

Steeping 4: 30s, Dvorjak's Slavonic Dances
"What does Dvorjak have to do with pu-erh tea?" you might ask. Well, nothing, except that I like both of them, and I happen to be enjoying them at the same time. Finally, the pu-erh is starting to get its legs. There's an almost cherry wood sense to the cup now, and a slight roseate glow about the edges of the tea in the pot.

A QUICK NOTE ON ME, MYSELF, I, MOI, AND SOMETHING ABOUT TEA
Well, that's what you came here for, right? Writing and reading about tea is not just documentation of some liquid that is only valuable when making purchasing decisions. It's about culture, and about people, and what makes us tick.

I'm a bit of a melancholic. (My friends and family would ask, "A bit?!") Drinking tea is, for me, something of an ameliorative, a tonic that helps me find a moment of peace and solace. So I drink the good stuff-- as good as I can get my hands on, anyway, on the basic premise that what is good for my soul is good for my life; and that a healthy, prosperous soul is the foundation for a healthy, prosperous life.

And tea helps me with this, by giving silence an anchor in my noisy life, somewhere to hang its hat and stay awhile, so I can gather myself together. And, oddly enough, the music playing in the background while I write augments the silence and grace of this moment, given to me to enjoy. These are the moments in which I come to full stop and say, "This is the day that the Lord has made; I will [I make a conscious choice] rejoice and be glad in it." Odd, how a cup of brown leaf juice helps me come to that conclusion.

Steeping 5: 35s, baby still complaining
Just as the tea starts getting good, I think I've run out of time, because of the angelic but noisy baby upstairs. The tea has taken on a richness in flavor that matches the depth of the hue. The aroma is delicate, nevertheless; surprising in a brew so dark. In the aftertaste, there is a delicately woodsy, floral sense that makes drinking this outdoors quite appropriate. I'd have to say, if I were not rather used to drinking pu-erh, I would find this tea a challenge, because it is so unlike other, more commonly drunk teas. The fermentation transforms the flavor so profoundly, it seems an entirely different class of drink altogether.

Steeping 6: 60s, baby still quiet, Stravinsky inappropriate
I have finally bent the baby's will to my all, and she is quiet. I am listening to Pandora and fast-forwarded through Stravinsky's Petrushka, because it just was not working with the quiet but uplifted feeling I am trying to cultivate this midmorning. Switching to my "Stormy Weather" station, hoping to placate the weather and keep the rain off. The cup is now transparent to the bottom of the crystal pitcher I decanted it into. I feel like I'm finally tasting the pu-erh itself for the first time: cherry notes, something like a cedar woodiness, and a light quality I did not expect. For a pu-erh, this is surprisingly delicate (particularly in contrast to the 2010 Makaibari Estate Darjeeling I've been enjoying lately, which has a kick like a mule if it's not handled with the deftness of a Swiss watchmaker-- though why a Swiss watchmaker would be handling a mule is a puzzle I'll leave for you to unravel).

Steeping 7: baby awake, must attend.

Steeping 8, 9, 10...
On into the evening, the tea kept going, revealing more of itself to me. I went to bed and put the tea into a bag, into the refrigerator, so I could continue on into the next day.

Steeping 11: staying home from church
Today the baby is ill, drippy and crusty (blech), and so I am staying home to keep her happy while wife and son go to worship. And hopefully learn something. I shall learn patience, it appears. I ran a quick rinse over the leaves to wake them up and warm the pot, and then commenced with a longer steep, about three minutes. Though the mouthfeel is becoming rather too light, and the flavor is fainter, the overall delicacy from this tea remains quite similar to the previous steepings.

Steeping 12: onward and upward
Bright, sunny day, though a bit humid for my taste. Drinking hot tea makes me feel a bit overheated, but I don't really care, and I drink it anyway. Baby Charis (pictured above in the image, Not Still Life) is wandering around, being adorable while keeping me on the move, playing the game, "Throw Everything on the Floor." Hoping to keep Yixing teapot in one piece. This steeping is 6 minutes, trying to bring out a bit more kick while still enjoying the delicacy of the tea. The cup has a pinkish hue, with very little aroma. Though the taste of the tea is still able to be discerned, I believe I'm ready to move on from this pu-erh to something a bit more substantial.

Thank you, TG and Yunnan Sourcing, for a most enjoyable tea. And to my readers: I know this blog post took on the form of a series of snapshots, as I attempted to drink the tea within the constraints of my busy life. But in real life, grabbing these moments when we can is (for me) essential, and it's enjoyable to let you in on the life behind the tea, messy though it may be.

Cheers, and thank you for reading!

Tasting Notes: Makaibari Estate 1st-Flush Darjeeling 2010

2010-07-23T10:04:00.010-05:00

There was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good; but when she was bad, she was horrid.

Behold the little Infanta Margarita at the center of Velázquez's masterpiece, Las Meninas. There's the painter himself, behind and to the left, rendering the scene that is viewed as the pinnacle of his work. The Infanta has seven attendants, plus a portrait painter, plus a dog, to keep her mildly amused. Her royal parents are watching the scene (you can see them in the mirror behind Velázquez), to ensure that he paints their little darling in the best light possible. Well, Sr. Velázquez managed to keep his position with his patron, even though you can just see the petulance seething under those little blond locks. Velázquez subtly leads us to understand that Her Cuteness can be quite the terror, and I'm certain this pampered princess would have remained so until well into adulthood. Delightful when you can catch her in the right mood, but watch out if she feels cross! Notice, there's not a smile in the room, and the attendants share a distinct tension as they await the next tempest royale. I feel for her future husband.

I am in love with 1st-flush Darjeelings, having drunk gallons of the stuff. But in general, I find this tea to be as touchy as old cats and dying empires, which, Mark Helprin assures us in Soldier of the Great War, "viciously insist upon decorum." Anything more than the lightest touch, and you end up with a brew that is harsh, bitter, and angry; but with gentleness and proper handling, as yielding and refreshing as a Spring meadow.

Arbor Teas sent me an enjoyable though rather temperamental 1st-flush Darjeeling from the Makaibari Estate, which I am sampling today. I've gone through several different iterations to get the tea just right, and I know that once I hit it, it'll be fireworks. By the third steeping, I've managed to get quite a delightful brew, though I'm certain the best is ahead. Just a bit more patience, and this should be very, very good indeed.

Not to be deterred, I shall try a fourth time and take notes as I go.

THE PREPARATION
1 tsp per cup boiling water, allowed to cool to maybe around 88C to 92C. The reason for this is that, as a greenish 1st-flush, I want to minimize bitterness. I'll steep for 2:30. Again, the imperative here is to avoid the bitterness I experienced the first time out of the gate, when I first received the tea a couple days ago. Considering water: I use regular tap water, but which I have placed in a receptacle containing plenty of Japanese "white" charcoal for a day or so. I find the charcoal (which can be purchased online) eliminates the chlorine flavor in Chicago water, as well as adding a bit of body to the mouthfeel, which really rounds out the tea in a way that distilled or heavily filtered water does not. After steeping the tea, I decant and allow the tea to rest for maybe 3 to 5 minutes. This allows a bit further oxidation of the tea in the pot before I drink from it, thus allowing me to get at some of the more complex notes that are absent without oxidation. I used to notice that the second cup of every pot was much better than the first; so I just decided, why not just let the pot set and skip the less-flavorful first cup altogether?

THE LEAVES
The dry leaves are brightly aromatic, with a color ranging from pale green to black. My 18-month-old baby, Charis, is complaining now that I've taken away the tea jar from her, where she was breathing deeply to enjoy the smell. Catching the aroma is an important part of the tea-drinking experience, and I hope my readers know enough to stick their nose in the bag and get a good whiff. There is often an interesting contrast between the nose of the tea and the flavor on the tongue, which broadens the experience. Charis found the nose to be quite charming, though hinting at a lack of structure in the middle register. We'll see if how her advice plays out. I found the aroma to be bright and sharp, quite floral and a bit dusty. Although the label does not indicate so, I would expect from the size of the leaves upon steeping that this would be FTGFOP1, with perhaps a 60% oxidation.

THE CUP
Rich, deep amber, like middle-grade maple syrup. The aroma matches that of the dry leaves quite closely. The wet leaves, though, have taken on a completely different character, like that of a grape arbor. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR and always smell the wet leaves, once they've been steeped. While the tongue can identify five flavors, the nose can perceive literally thousands, and the aroma of tea leaves is not to be missed.

The flavor: Now that I've succeeded getting in within the sweet spot of this tea, how to describe? Bright on the tongue, but without being overbearing. Some complexity, mostly in texture, but with a bright note of flavor in the middle palate with a honeylike sweetness and a deep berry note in the upper register. It's dry, like a white wine; and the taste lingers on the tongue for quite a long time, slowly developing to a woodier, darker flavor as it rests on the palate and in the throat.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
This is an excellent example of a highgrown Darjeeling. It's bright, enjoyable, and treated correctly can produce a light but memorable cup. But people with little experience with drinking Darjeelings must be warned that oversteeping this tea will kill it. If you find the tea to be bitter or difficult to drink, try a slightly lower steeping temperature, and go for a little less time than you ordinarily would. 2 to 2.5 minutes should be sufficient, and it will also allow multiple steepings of this quite lovely tea.

WHERE TO BUY IT
Arbor Teas, $12.50/3oz

Tasting Notes: TeaGschwendner China Lung Ching 2009

2010-07-01T08:30:00.007-05:00

TeaGschwendner is one of my favorite sources for Indian teas, particularly first- and second-flush Darjeelings. They have a large variety of flavored teas (which I shall not be reviewing on this site), as well as a number of unflavored greens and oolongs, though these are less likely to be found in local TeaGschwendner shops.

Though I bought the tea not too long ago, it was still the 2009 vintage, and so it's not at its very best (typically, one would want to buy a green tea as close to its picking as possible, which would mean anywhere between April and June; drinking a green a year after its picking is obviously going to dull the taste a bit and make it sparkle less).

The TeaGschwendner China Long Jing can be translated as "Dragon Well," hence the graphic I chose for today's post. I originally bought it for my lovely sister-in-law as a gift, along with several other teas, but she returned the Long Jing to me because she disliked it. Puzzlement! I had made Laura some Long Jing teas, and I knew she liked it. So what was the problem?

Donning my Charlie Chan robes (I would have used Sherlock Holmes, but since Charlie was "Chinese," I thought he would be funnier), I asked Sister-in-Law Number One what she was doing wrong. She was ignoring the directions on the packaging, and steeping at too high a temperature, and probably for too long. I write this as a teachable moment for all my readers: DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT STEEP CHINESE GREEN TEAS AT BOILING, unless you steep for only a matter of seconds (in the range of 5 to 10 seconds per steep). This results in a harsh, ugly concoction that will make you return someone's very thoughtful gift to them, which they will then enjoy immensely without you.

When properly steeped, the TeaGschwendner Long Jing is predictably lovely: a tawny-gold color with a lot of fragrance. There is a slight bitter tang to the flavor, but the bright, high notes and long finish are quite pleasant. This tea survived two steepings nicely, and perhaps more that I'll savor later.

How to describe? There are elusive berry notes in the center of my palate, but the high is a bright, acerbic cheerfulness that I enjoy immensely. There is a hint of something dark in the low palate that offsets the high notes, to give a beautifully balanced cup.

I wish I had been able to get this tea when it was freshly picked, because I'm certain it would have been quite extraordinary. Unfortunately, the TeaGschwendner people have their tea shipped from China to Germany, and from there to the U.S., where it's shelved until it's sold, which means it was a bit beyond its prime by the time I got to drink it. I look forward to tasting the 2010 variety, which I hope will live up to my expectations.

Thank you, TeaGschwendner, for being so consistent and careful with your tea offerings. I've learned so much from living near one of your very few shops, and I am grateful for your considerable addition to the U.S. tea culture.

Tasting Notes: Bily Jerab Jingmai 2009 Sheng Pu-erh

2010-06-29T16:12:00.013-05:00

Little by little and more by more, I'm learning about pu-erh, albeit at a glacial pace.

But learning tea is like that: slow, with much to learn, especially when crammed into the corners of a busy schedule. Modern life-- particularly suburban life, entrepreneurial life, and life with small children-- doesn't allow for much slow-and-easy meditation. As I write, my seven-year-old boy is playing with my intermittently but earsplittingly shrieking baby, which does not really help me get "centered," as the pop-psy people would say. Indeed, sometimes it feels miraculous if I can string two sentences together or follow any thought through to its completion. At least, until they go to bed, when I'm too tired to think anyway.

So I shall write these notes briefly, if only because it's certain I'll be interrupted before I can finish my post, if I write with amount of painstaking care I usually take.

Today I am drinking some pu-erh from my friends at Bily Jerab, whose complex circumflexes I shall have to forego when typing. They can be reached at info@bily-jerab.cz, and they're delightful as a vibrant part of the Czech tea culture, which you can read more about here.

The folks at BJ had sent me a package with a variety of young, sheng pu-erhs. I was rather hesitant at first, because I'd been reading how young pu can be extraordinarily harsh and difficult to drink. But I've found, with a light touch, that a very delicate and complex tea tasting can result in a time well spent.

Now, young pu-erhs have a lot more in common, in my tender experience, than they differ. I believe the process of aging a green pu-erh is that which really drives the different pu into their wide variations. But I find the freshly green pu-erhs are quite similar to my palate, and quite enjoyable.

This particular Jingmai 2009 has a very light start, with a pale golden liquor and an aroma and flavor of fresh hay, and very little bitterness.

The second steeping opens up with a bit more bitterness, which I don't really mind in this case. Light and airy, mildly astringent, with an almost metallic aftertaste that I find much more enjoyable than the wording suggests. A deeper amber color accompanies the aroma, which rides closely to the flavor experienced in the mouth (which is not by any means always the case).

The third steeping is a rich tawny color, with a very light, dry flavor, which makes me think of some white wines that are strong on "dry" and light on "fruity." For this tea, the trick is pulling out enough of the flavor without ratcheting up the bitterness. It's something of a tightrope, and it's difficult to hit it right at it's sweet spot with every steeping. As the tea sits in the fairness pitcher awhile, it mellows and sweetens.

As I wait for the fourth steeping, I'll stop a moment and think about these young, green pu-erhs. Unlike my expectations, they can be quite mellow, but that means keeping the steepings short, and not going overboard in the amount of leaf in the pot. A lighter cup might be interpreted as a weak cup in a black tea, but with pu-erh, the sharp brightness of the tea allows a fairly balanced cup. I use a purple-clay Yixing pot for my green pu-erhs, which provides a very happy experience. It's atypical for me to be able to sit down and have a proper tea, unbroken by interruptions, but when I can get one, it's something I look forward to. (I've been interrupted countless times during the writing of this post, so please pardon its fractious disorganization.)

The fourth steeping. At first blush, the tawny and transparent liquor has a herblike airiness, which reminds me of dry Illinois prairie in Summer. Which, coincidentally, I am surrounded by in my far-Western suburb of Chicago. There's a brassiness to the flavor in the very high notes, which is in contrast to the rich middle and the dry low notes.

As a quick note: The young, green pu-erhs I've been tasting via Bily Jerab do not have the richness and complexity of an aged pu-ehrs. In this case, the tea keeps the same flavor with only slight development as the tea goes, although it starts to lose its strength and power around the sixth or so steeping. At a certain point, I'll be steeping the tea for 20 or 30 minutes to get the last of the flavor from the leaves, before I compost them.

Well, I'm forced to stop my review, because a certain little princess is demanding all the attention she can muster. Please pardon the abbreviated form and the lack of deep rumination. I'd like to offer more, but a baby begging to be picked up just doesn't seem to care about the readership of The 39 Steeps. Well, she'll go to college someday, I suppose, so I'll be able to complete a thought then.

Until that time, thank you all for reading!

UPDATE:
Later steepings revealed a carmel-corn aroma and taste that was knockout delicious. Even though the mouthfeel at this point was becoming quite thin, the awakening of the new flavor was worth the wait. Beautiful end to a series of steeps.

Tasting Notes: Green Hill Tea: OC Royal Pu-erh

2010-06-05T09:18:00.008-05:00

Brainsssssss.

I love tea, even though it's been a while since I felt up to writing about it. But the full moon is out, and the forces of darkness are resurrecting The 39 Steeps blog, dragging it from its shallow grave to shamble among the living again. Brainssssssss.

Or something like that. Really, I'd like to just talk a bit about Green Hill Tea's OC Royal Pu-erh.

The zombie imagery suggested itself to me by way of drinking this powerful, deeply black pu-erh, which I can feel pulsing through my nervous system. And with my wicked mood this morning, it seems even more appropriate. Brainssssssss.

The Royal Pu-erh looks like a typical yellow-tippy Yunnan tea, coming in loose-leaf rather than in compacted form. It's a shu pu-erh, from all appearances, meaning it was processed to hasten its appearance of aging.

Now, when this process was invented, it was viewed by aficionados as a way of cheating the system-- of taking a tea and making it look older than it really is. People can't always wait around for a green pu-erh to age 30 years to drink it, and the market had exceeded demand. So clever manufacturers took the green pu and ran it through some sort of wet-heat process, whereby the tea was artifically made to darken and take on the appearance of a time-fermented tea. Quelle horreur! The real problem was that often this type of shu was passed off as an aged tea, when it was not. And these shu pu-erhs may not age as well as a properly prepared and cared-for green pu, thus making them a bit less valuable.

That being said, there's much to enjoy about a shu pu-erh, drunk on its own terms, without any pretension that it is something it is not. A shu-pu (a phrase you can pop out in your next business meeting, to wow the customers and make them think very highly of your intellect) can be very enjoyable and fun as a self-drinker, without any need for further aging.

Now to Green Hill Tea's OC Royal Pu-erh. This does not appear on their Web site, and hopefully they will begin to market it along with their other excellent offerings. (As a reminder, I love, love, love their lapsang souchong, which they also market under various names as bohea lapsang and so on. Easily the best lapsang I've ever encountered.)

THE PREPARATION

RINSE: 10S
I prepared the pu in my Yixing pu-erh pot, and gave it a 10-second rinse, then poured it over my Yixing and warmed up my cups and fairness pitcher. This way, everything was happily warmed up for the next step.

RINSE: 10S
And I did it again. Typically, with shu pu-erh, I don't enjoy the first couple steepings because they taste more like what I suppose is the storage facility than the tea itself.

STEEPING 1: 15S
The first steeping was lackluster, though bracing in its effect on my nervous system. Dark mahogany in color, the liquor has a nicely earthy, mushroomy aroma, with a lightly tangy spice in the high notes.

STEEPING 2: 15S
Well, this steeping had to be made after an hour wait, so the tea was, again, rather lackluster. My life keeps interrupting my ability to sit down over a long tea session, and these gaps in the tea production obviously affect the next steeping.

STEEPING 3: 15s
The leaves in the pot smell precisely like the liquor, which is kind of surprising, because that is not typically the case. The pure black leaves have no begun unfurling yet (at least, not so I would notice), and the tea session is still in its infancy. The liquor is a nearly opaque black, with a reddish tint, still, when viewed in the clear pot. Now the tea takes on an astringency, a dryness, with a woody dampness that softens the impact of the astringency. So far, I'm not bowled over by the pu-erh, but I'm interested to see what the next steepings will do. I've read that pu-erh drinking doesn't even really get started until the fifth steeping.

STEEPING 4: 20S
The tea is staying fairly consistent: fairly light, woody, but the astringency has diminished noticeably.

STEEPING 5: 25s
I thought to lengthen the amount of steeping time, to make the tea have a bit more personality. The pu has taken on a lighter transparency, with the reddish tint more pronounced. Aroma is pronounced and there's a pleasing mouthfeel: full and satisfying. It's a nice, though rather light, pu. I was sparing in the water to give it a greater strength, but it still sits a bit too lightly on the palate. For future, I'll lengthen the steeping times a bit.

AND THAT'S ALL I CAN WRITE! Cramming writing into my schedule is so difficult at this time in my life, and this little blog post has been interrupted so many times, that I am frustrated about the experience. Bleh. Well, at least the tea is good! I feel a bit less zombielike, though my mood is still black as I would think the undead would experience, as they cannot enjoy tea.

Tasting Notes: Culinary Teas, Irish Breakfast Green

2010-03-18T08:24:00.003-05:00

Indifference is isolation.
In difference is texture and wonder.
(Edwin Schlossburg)

Looking at the leaves as they steep in my Tea-iere from JING Tea, I'm struck by the disjoint in visual texture. On top of the 75C water float largish, olive-green leaves, which slowly drift toward the bottom of the carafe as they gain water. On the bottom is a layer of what looks like some kind of water bracken-- tiny nodules in the same drab green, similar to stuff on the bottom of Clear Lake, in Buchanan, Michigan, where I go to swim and enjoy family and sun. And the liquor itself is a slightly foggy gold-green, which is much brighter and cleaner looking than the leaves themselves would suggest. The textural combination is visually interesting, but not what I typically expect with mixed-region teas, where some effort is usually made to ensure that the leaves appear similar to one another, as well as come together in an harmonious flavor and aroma.

I ordinarily don't drink many mixed-estate teas, much less those whose origins come from mixed regions: Culinary Tea's Irish Breakfast Green comes from Kenya, China, and Japan, and together they form a pleasant enough liquor, fairly light green with a hint of bitterness and a lightly floral, verging on citrus, note amidst the greenly vegetative impression the tea gives.

The instructions on the Culinary Teas Web site call for boiling water on the leaves for three to seven minutes, but I admit, I couldn't bring myself to follow the directions exactly. I could imagine using either boiling water with a duration of perhaps 10 to 30 seconds; or alternatively, 70C to 80C water for the longer duration, which is what I decided on. I think it's a mistake to steep a green tea in the Western style (which is boiling water, 3 or so minutes, as per the Culinary Teas Web site directions), because that tradition was created for black teas. Many people are turned off forever from green teas precisely because they follow this type of instruction, and they end up with a soupy mess that tastes like cooked spinach, completely missing the delightful nuance they might find with a lighter steeping. I, myself, spent 20 years drinking nothing but black teas for this very reason.

Prepared as a more typical green tea, this is enjoyable enough, though not particularly memorable; nevertheless, it does not remind me too much of the sharp, bright, hard-elbowed Irish Breakfast teas I have drunk in the past. I imagine that scalding the tea at a higher temperature and brewing it for a long time might provide that level of deliberate harshness, which is rather desirable in an Irish Breakfast, but can typically be cut by either milk or sugar. I didn't necessarily want to try a green tea with milk this morning, so I'll leave that to your own experimentation with this tea.

(The above image, brought to mind by my meditation on texture is Anselm Kiefer's Tes cheveux d'or Margarethe, 1981.)

Review: Dao Tea Balhyocha

2010-02-25T08:50:00.000-06:00

Black tea

In appearance, like a typical black tea: tight, small twists of pure black leaf.

THE CUP
Again, in appearance, like any other black tea: dark, mahogany-brown cup, so deep I cannot see to the bottom of my white (though, admittedly, rather deep) cup.

On the surface, this seems very typical for a black tea: a touch of bitterness, an apparent simplicity. But then immediately, there's an indefinable-- This is a challenge, because it's my job to define these flavors. But the problem with much tea is that taste memories are highly subjective, and that it rarely helps a reader to understand what the character of the tea is like. But, being game, I'll give it a go anyway.

If this song is a voice, it would be a mezzo-soprano: a very strong middle-high range of distinct flavor that is unique enough, I'm struggling to put my finger on it, which primarily announces itself in the aftertaste, once the tea's been swallowed. When drinking this tea, take that sip, and then sit for about a minute without tasting anything else. Pay close attention to what's happening on your palate, and you will be rewarded by a rising taste of some unique hardwood, perhaps; a flavor like walking in a scrub meadow: a bit mossy, a bit dry, a bit weedy. Very satisfying and unusual.

In the low range, there is a bit of a throaty growl to the tea, which announces itself on my palate like a more typical black tea's personality. I wouldn't call this a smooth tea, because of this somewhat flinty edge to it. But at the same time, it is light, not heavy at all, but without the floral or sweetly fruity notes you normally would find accompanying such a light tea.

In all, for its unique flavor profile, a great choice for someone trying to enjoy an unusual morning cup.

INTRODUCING: Chicago Tea Garden's Golden Bi Luo

2010-02-08T08:14:00.006-06:00

To my great delight, one of my tea friends of the Chicago Tea Confab, Tony Gebely, has opened the metaphorical doors on Chicago Tea Garden, and by so doing, he is raising the level of Chicago's tea culture.

During our informal tea tastings/gatherings of the Chicago-area folks who blog about tea, Lainie, Tony, Thomas, and I periodically gather for the Chicago Tea Confab, where we discuss the shape of American tea culture-- specifically Chicago's-- and taste treasures from one another's tea troves (though we do try not to be so alliterative, as a general rule). Tony had recently gone on a search for a great, authentic Chinese tea experience and discovered that to get a really great cup of such tea in Chicago, one had to travel up to Evanston to Lainie's favorite, Dream About Tea.

Seriously, for a world-class city, it's a wonder we haven't seen the type of tea Renaissance that has been developing in the U.S. in other population centers, such as San Francisco, or L.A., or New York, or D.C. Where is our Winnie Yu or Imen Shan? While our tea shops can be delightful and instructive (My favorite is TeaGschwendner, and there are many others), Chicagoans still toddle up to Starbucks for their cup of soy-latte macchiato joe.

Which brings me back to Tony. He and his business partner(s) have taken matters into their own hands, and they've started the beautifully named Chicago Tea Garden, which will primarily (as I understand it) sell teas sourced through David Lee Hoffman's extensive tea network, rather than merely reselling teas that can easily be found elsewhere. For Chicagoans, this is a big deal, because it represents a move forward in what tea is available to Chicagoans. TeaGschwendner, Dream about Tea, and Chicago Coffee & Tea Exchange (among others) now have some great company as they collectively build up our tea culture.

The first tea I can report on is Chicago Tea Garden's Golden Bi Luo. I've had and loved Bi Luo Chun before, which is a green tea whose name means, "Snail Spring," a reference to an early Spring-picked tea whose leaves have been hand-rolled into shapes resembling tiny snails. Because this is typically a complex green tea from Jiangsu province, I was very curious about how the "Snail Spring" tea would be treated when sourced from Yunnan province, as a black tea.

THE PREPARATION
Following Chicago Tea Garden's instructions, included in the packaging, I made a number of short steeps at just under boiling (1 min, 1 min, 1.5 min, 1.5 min, &c.), each just slightly longer than the previous, and decanted.

THE LEAVES
Interesting, lovely. The leaves are that golden tippy appearance you'd expect from a golden Yunnan tea, but folded into the snail shapes you'd see with a Bi Luo Chun. The aroma in the tin tickles the nose, a dryish spiciness. The spent leaves are reddish-orange, fully formed leaves, maintaining the two-leaves-and-a-bud appearance they started with. No broken leaves, stems, or dust that I can discern, which speaks of the care that went into the production and shipping.

THE CUP
Over the course of the many steepings, the tea started with a deep reddish-brown cup, which lightened slowly to a pale orange-red. Chicago Tea Garden's description said it would be a golden liquor, but reddish-brown seems a more apt description, at least until the later steepings.

This Golden Bi Luo strongly reminds me somewhat of a Yunnan golden tippy tea, which is of course what it should; with a quite allusively spicy-sweet flavor of black raisins, perhaps, and a surprising smoothness, with no discernible bitterness. A slight burn at the back of the throat accompanies the retronasal huigan, which is the flavor that rises from throat to nose, which then picks up even more flavors in the aftertaste than could be interpreted by the tongue while drinking directly.

Drunk with short steepings, it's a remarkably light cup of tea, with an acerbic edge at the forefront that helps balance the sweetness that follows. I would perhaps experiment with slightly longer steepings, just to see how the tea holds up-- though I would definitely avoid steeping the traditional Western 3 minutes' steeping time, as these leaves seem to want a Chinese-style gongfu method instead. The rolled leaves allow for many steepings, because they release their flavors more slowly than leaves that have not been wound so tightly.

Tony, well done. I definitely look forward to seeing where you go from here. I'm delighted to see what you've got in store for us.

DEAR READER(S): I would be interested in your response to these tea notes, because I'm trying to gauge what kind of information is interesting and useful to you. Wandering meanderings about my childhood memories evoked from the particular tea I'm drinking? Long, involved posts that describe in painful detail each steeping of some pu-erh? Do you want to know more about the production, the terroir, the history of each tea? Or are you pretty happy with the reviews as they are, being that they spring from such a mind as my own, which is good enough for you? And does anybody in God's creation actually read all the way to the bottom of one of these things? And why do you read this blog at all? Is it part of your self-education in all things tea, or are you trying to figure out what teas to buy next, using my descriptions for help in your purchasing decisions? Thank you for your patronage!

Tasting notes: Yibang "White" cake 2009, from Bílý Jeřáb, drunk on a snowy day in Chicago

2010-02-06T07:38:00.008-06:00

And behold, something new under the distant, barely warm Sun!

Well, newish to me, anyway: a white pu-erh. I've tasted this type of thing only once before, drunk with the esteemed Chicago Tea Confab of great fame, and now I have the opportunity to drink it alone, with computer ready to take notes, and attempting to keep a year-old baby and a seven-year-old boy quiet enough for that zenlike focus and laser intensity I am so famous for.

The Yibang cake sent to me by my friends from Bílý Jeřáb (there are too many Czech circumflexes and whatnot for me to correctly write that without copying-and-pasting), who are pu-erh aficionados with a great site. Though it's in Czech, they speak perfect English and will be happy to help you get your hands on some very nice examples of pu.

I've been drinking them for the last few months, as I took a break from writing. But I thought I'd try to open up the spigot to write again by telling you about something special, which is the white pu-erh.

Now, pu-erh-- the pressed, fermented, aged green tea from Yunnan province in China-- has been around for ages. But it's only the last couple years that they've been experimenting with white teas, giving them the same treatment. A white tea is typically the bud and perhaps one or two leaves of the tea plant. Because this type of pu-erh is so new, it's impossible to say how it will age, and what the end result will be after 20 or 30 years of storage. So these teas are purchased for immediate drinking at this point, and are to be enjoyed on their own merits.

Bílý Jeřáb's Yibang "white" cake 2009 came in the typical jigsaw puzzle fashion, with all the pieces needing to very carefully be pulled apart without damaging the leaves. In the portion I received as a gift from Bílý Jeřáb, I could very clearly see the white buds with two leaves throughout the cake, with no tea dust or particles of any kind. Quite pristine and lovely, with a light, tobacconist's smell about the dry leaves.

1st steeping: 15s
Because it's such a new tea, I chose to skip the typical rinsing, which I use to wash off some of the dust or whatnot that might accumulate on the leaves through the course of time. The cup was a clear, straw-colored liquor, with a light but distinctively typical pu-erhish flavor, if I might coin the awkward and hopefully never-to-be-used-again term. The fermentation had done its magic on the white buds. I had wondered about this, because a pu-erh is typically made from green leaves, not buds, and I had no idea what the true results might be.

2nd steeping: 20s
Well, 20s or thereabouts. I tend to pour a bit less "scientific," as my dad would say in his faux-German accent, when I have the children bouncing around. My wife has come downstairs on this Saturday morning, reminding me of the much we have to do, and how I'll have to make this tea tasting rather more quickly than I'd like. Second steeping pours out clear, accumulates in the pot a lovely straw-golden color, crystalline in clarity. Unusual in a pu-erh, that. The fragrance is lovely: tobacco, hints of something sweet-- vanilla, perhaps, or something spicier. There's a tiny edge to the tea, which exerts itself at the back of the throat, providing a nice counterpoint to the smoothness and sweetness of the tea. The tea leaves in the pot have taken on the appearance of a perfectly normal white tea, with the typical two-leaves-and-a-bud configuration, and nicely large leaves, freshly spring green. Again, highly unusual in a pu-erh.

Steeping 3: maybe about 30s
This tea is very forgiving. Some pu-erhs are so strong that you can only steep 2 or 3 seconds at first, or you get in danger of bitterness and just too much pu, if you take my meaning. But because this is young, and because the leaves it derives from are by nature very subtle, one can let it steep awhile without much ado. On the third steeping, the tea has become a richer gold color, much like honey. The haylike aroma is stronger, too, and that sharp edge is creeping toward the front of the palate, accompanied by a pleasant drying in the mouth and throat, but without a sense of coating in the throat. In other words, the tea is improving with subsequent steepings, as it wakes up.

Steeping 4: again, maybe about 30s
Now, I'm runnining out of time, and the result will be that I will pick up this tasting again after a couple of hours, which means the tea will lose a bit of its "oomph." Nevertheless, the fourth steeping is remarkably consistent with the third, with very little variation in flavor, appearance, or aroma. Very pleasant!

The wrap up
At this point, I can't tell you whether this is a 20-steeping variety of pu or a 6-steeping type, but we'll have to try it later, if I can get back to this . I'll update later, if I'm even able to complete this tasting. It's a date night, you see, which might mean that tea tasting takes a backseat to even more interesting pursuits.

Typically, I don't like white teas, because the subtlety of their flavor is just lost on my barbaric palate. I like my teas to be opinionated, and I like to taste them, not infer their flavor. Happily, a white tea that has been transmuted into a pu-erh has a lovely balance between subtlety and punchiness, which I find completely appealing. I would love to get my hands on a full cake of this stuff and see how it ages for a couple years, and compare the experience. But as a self-drinker, one which you can drink immediately without waiting, I can strongly recommend this, because it lacks that harshness and bitterness one often finds in a young, green pu-erh. Strikes a lovely balance, and I'm quite excited to have found it.

I thank Bílý Jeřáb for the opportunity to taste this tea! It's perfect for a beastly, cold day in Chicago.

Review: American Tea Room, Puttabong SFTGFOP1Q Darjeeling Muscatel, 2nd Flush 2009

2010-01-30T06:55:00.003-06:00

As longtime readers of my reviews know (that is, if they care to remember), I find the Puttabong Estate teas of Darjeeling to be among the greatest in the world. Highgrown, mountain tea plants survive the rough winter and have a shorter growing season than those grown at a lower elevations, causing more intense flavor in the leaves, which is part of why the Himalayan-grown teas of Darjeeling are among the most prized in the world.

THE LEAVES
Smallish twists of pure black, highly fragrant. When they've been steeped, they take on a reddish-brown hue, fairly dark, indicating a highish level of oxidation, consistent with the way second-flush teas are processed. The aroma of the spent leaves is quite faint, easily overpowered by the other kitchen aromas of this morning's breakfast.

THE CUP
At three minutes' steeping time, about 90C, the liquor is quite a dark reddish-brown, crystal clear to the bottom of the cup. The very first moment, when the tea struck my palate, it was rather strikingly bitter (not a quality I look for in a tea, but not one I despise, either), but it quickly resolved into a very smooth cup, very complex.

When I speak of second-flush Darjeelings, "complex" is the characteristic I most highly prize. Layers of flavor reveal themselves on my palate at every sip. First, that bitter note (which may have been caused by my allowing the steeping to take place slightly longer than 3 minutes; life with an infant makes tea steeping times sometimes fall short of a laboratory's strict methologies); followed by an astringency that dried the tongue, reminiscent of a woody fruitiness, like blackberries or other dark berries; and then I notice this is followed by something akin to an aromatic evergreen resin, then other flavors I can't identify but enjoy.

For the second steeping, which I performed at 2:30, 85C, but it was underwhelmingly weak. I would advise a longer steeping. NOTE ON SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT STEEPINGS: I have sought long and hard for some kind of consensus among wise tea masters of whom I have acquaintance, and none of them agree about how to make a second steeping of a black tea like this Darjeeling. So you kind of have to guess and experiment with a tea until you find something that works for your palate.

I find that most people, when reading reviews of this sort, find them to be unhelpful when trying to recreate the exact taste experience of the writer. If you sat next to me while we drank the exact same cup of tea, you'd say, "Evergreen resin? What in the world are you talking about?" Well, perhaps it's best to paint in broader strokes, to convey the general, overarching experience, rather than try to notate personal taste memories that will not carry over to anyone else.

This Puttabong is enjoyable precisely because, as I allow a sip to sit in my mouth for a few minutes, various flavors slowly reveal themselves, ranging from the bitter, to the sweet, to the woodsy, floral, and fruity, and to things I can't identify but are uniquely characteristic of this estate's tea. It's the sheer range of characters that reveal themselves in this tea, one after another, that is so entrancing. It's by no means a tea that can be experienced at once, but rather one that is drunk as though it's a book, being revealed page by page.

The sweetly bright huigan, which is practically the only Chinese tea word I know (and so, yes, I overuse it; I'll work on that in future), is that retronasal experience when the tea is experienced through the back of the throat, entering up into the nasal passages. Did you know, the human tongue can only perceive five basic flavors-- sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami-- but the nose can perceive literally thousands of variations of aromas. This means that much of our delight in tea is caused by all those scents floating around within them. The retronasal experience of huigan is primarily caused by those smells, divorced from any of the five tastes perceived on the tongue.

There's a reason I spent almost 20 years of my life drinking primarily Darjeeling teas, and this is why: a second-flush Darjeeling can be an engaging, complex, delightful experience. My only problem with it was the strike of bitterness at the beginning of the drinking experience, but following more religiously the #1 Rule of Darjeelings: NEVER OVERSTEEP, would have served me better.

Review: Thunderbolt Tea, 2nd Flush Sungma Clonal Wonder 2009

2009-12-08T09:15:00.005-06:00

I've been enjoying a lot of Darjeeling lately. The snow is falling, and I find something so comforting about the deep, rich aromas I find here.

Benoy of Thunderbolt Tea sent earlier this year a package of teas, which I have been slowly working my way through to review. Today's is Sungma Clonal Wonder.

I've been drinking this tea on and off for several months. It's very consistent, in that I can create a very appealing cup of tea under various conditions of weather, and mood, and the normal variations of a day. With a couple small children, I often find myself making a pot of tea in the middle of the wonderful noise and chaos of a world of toys, and homework, and changing tables. Oh, and my business, which I'm supposed to be working on right now.

A clonal tea is often a bit expensive, because a specific tree was chosen for its beautiful qualities, and then through a rather intensive and time-consuming process, propagated until enough new clonal plants exist for a harvest. I can see why this one tree made the cut. So to speak.

The dry leaves: ranging from almost black, to deep brown, to reddish, with maybe 10% silvery-white tips. There's a lovely sweetness that I can enjoy in the leaves, even before they are steeped.

THE PROCESS
I used three teaspoons of the leaves and steeped in a Tea-iere from JINGtea, which only holds enough space for two cups' worth. And so when I decanted into a crystal pitcher, I added another cup of boiling hot water to make up the difference. Then I set the timer for 5 minutes, allowing the complexities of the cup to develop in the pitcher before I drink.

THE CUP
And it's worth the wait. This has a deep honey-brown color, transparent to the bottom of the pitcher, but it gets pretty dark down there. The flavor: rather astringent, but quite smooth, for all that. A faint, faint hint of smokiness, adding a depth to the burnt honey and dark fruitiness. The life of the tea seems to be sensed mainly at the back of the throat. There's an absence, if I might use the term, in the high register, making this tea more like a piece played on a solo 'cello, rather than one performed by a whole string quartet, which is what I typically look for in a Darjeeling. A lovely, comforting pot of tea.

The lovely image above, "Girl with Red 'Cello Case," is by Ted Szukalski and can be found on his Web site.

Green Tea Review Series 6: Aura Teas, Jian Meng Green Tea 2009

2009-11-20T09:54:00.006-06:00

Very generously, my friends at Aura Teas sent me a variety of teas from their private stash of samples, which they are not (at least at this time) offering to the public. Amazing to have such an opportunity! Today I am tasting something called Jian Meng green tea.

I'm sitting in a Panera for work purposes, and enjoying the free Wi-Fi. My hosts are very kindly offering me all the free hot water I can drink, and they've been exclaiming over the wonderful aromas of the teas I've been steeping here today. The JINGtea Tea-iere is a novelty that, once they understood the purpose of it, has been surprisingly excited about seeing. Who knows? Perhaps Panera home office will get a call about offering high-quality teas to their customers, rather than the stuff they currently offer.

I've never heard of this tea, nor can I find references to it online, except that the term, Jian Meng, is apparently been used as to describe a Chinese pu-erh brick. Other than that: nada. So let's dive in.

The leaves are a pale green, fairly small leaf, and this sample has no small amount of broken leaf, but no stemminess. Beautifully fragrant leaves-- have I mentioned how much I love the highly fragrant greens? The aroma coming from the wet leaves is seriously intoxicating. I'm happy I'm sitting in an out-of-the-way corner at Panera, so fellow customers won't think I'm dangerously bizarre for sniffing my JINGtea Tea-iere, in which I steeped the leaves for three minutes with steaming, filtered water. Perhaps it's all the muscatel Darjeeling speaking, which I've been drinking lately, but there's a grape quality to the aroma: a fruity-floral, rather than vegetal, thing going on.

The liquor is a tawny gold, almost an orange, and it is highly fragrant, as well (which is not always the case). The Jian Meng is quite light on the tongue, with a bright quality that nevertheless doesn't have a particularly long-lasting aftertaste. I can taste a flavor rather like chestnuts, a touch of citrus fruit; and that umami that all the kids go on about nowadays, which makes me think of mushrooms, and well-seared steaks, and rich French onion soup. (Which is rather an odd thing to think about when drinking a lightly crisp, bracing green tea, but there you have it.)

Initially, though, there is a sharp bite to each sip (at least, while the tea is quite hot), accompanied by a lovely, drying mouthfeel that I find arresting. The dry mouthfeel continues on, even after the initial sharp flavor of the tea too-quickly dissipates.

In my experience, the Jian Meng's enjoyment seems mostly bound up in its beautiful aroma and it's substantial mouthfeel. The flavor, unfortunately, seems to die off too quickly after sipping, but for the umami, which I mostly experience almost by inference.

It's admittedly a bit odd, discussing a tea that is not in wide circulation and which I am unlikely to experience again, because I can make no recommendations to buy or not for an unavailable item. Nevertheless, how enjoyable to break open something I've never heard of and which is its own unique delight, with its own character and personality. What a pleasure!

As a side note: When I can find more information about this vintage tea from Aura Teas, I will add it here as an addendum.

(The above image is also an item of uncertain provenance: Maybe Jackson Pollack's "Number 1, 1950.")

Review Series Green Tea 5: Maeda-en Kuki-Cha Twig Tea with Matcha 2009

2009-11-18T10:07:00.002-06:00

"Great with sweets."

Japan is a small island. Therefore, the tea farmers have to be very smart agronomers, making the most of the tight spaces they have to grow their crops. Kuki-cha is a crucial part of the system of making the absolute most of the resources they have. After the tender leaves are plucked every Spring, the Japanese choose to then pluck the green shoots and very frugally make that into a tea of its own: kuki-cha.

In this case, Maeda-en blends the shoots with a touch of matcha powder, which is made from the light-sheltered gyokuro leaves and ground into a fine tea dust. Matcha is typically used in the Japanese tea ceremony, but here is added to lend a bit of mellowness to the flavor and brightness to the color.

And brightness! The leaves are by far the lightest green in my tea drawer. When steeped, the liquor is an opaquely rich, saturated, radioactive green color that could easily have been accidentally created by Homer Simpson at the nuclear power plant. When I poured off the tea, I could easily see the sharp difference between the 1/2-inch, pale shoots and the darker leaf matter, which appeared much like cooked spinach.

When I first made the tea (80C, 1min), I found it to be a bit... well, weird and bitter. Sencha, I understand. Matcha, not so much, though I've tasted it at Japanese tea ceremony a couple of times. The tea was vegetal and a bit bitter. I went back to the Web site and read that this pairs well with sweets-- much in line with how the Japanese tea ceremony is designed, with dainty sweets accompanying the rather bitter tea, allowing for greater enjoyment.

So I pulled out our Toll House chocolate chip (on the theory that chocolate and matcha pair nicely together) and made the tea again (85C, 1min), and did have better results. The buttery quality of the tea was lovely and quite sweet (once the bitterness was taken care of), and I was able to enjoy the lightly vegetal quality-- a bit like asparagus.

Typically, I enjoy teas without accompaniment: just me and the naked leaves. In this case, the tea actually seems deliberately designed to be drunk alongside the sweets, much as British teas are cultivated to best survive the cultural habit of adding milk and sugar and drinking alongside scones and cream. Drunk on those terms, honoring the cultural heritage that brought about this tea, it's quite delicate and enjoyable. Drunk, though, in the raw (the tea, I mean: you can enjoy it in whatever state of dress or undress you choose), this makes much less sense and is not nearly as enjoyable.

Review: Tea Forté, Formosa Oolong '09

2009-11-17T17:19:00.001-06:00

I didn't sleep last night, and I spent a big chunk of today outside, in the cold, at Goebbert's Pumpkin Farm, along with my baby girl and my little boy. Goebbert's is a farm that has gone the clever route of agritourism, in which they celebrate harvest with, among other things, the world's only Pumpkin-Eating Dinosaur, a haunted house, mazes, a couple giraffes (in north-central Illinois, no less), a pumpkin cannon, apple cider donuts, a cornstalk maze, and even pig races. (Hammy Faye Bacon won by a hair, incidentally.) The baby was warm because she was bundled emphatically, with all my bundling might; and my seven-year-old boy was racing around. So I'm the only one of the three of us who is cold and tired, and feeling just a bit old.

ANYWAY, to warm up and attempt to get through the long, dark afternoon of the soul, I am drinking Formosa Oolong by Tea Forté. It is in a clever nylon pyramid-shaped teabag, and I think the leaves within it are in pretty good shape.

THE LEAVES
Hidden within a tea bag, I can tell very little about their appearance. The steeped leaves have a pleasant enough, sweetly roasted aroma. I don't really think the nylon bag affected the aroma. The tea bags reside inside a pyramid-shaped card-stock paper wrapper, and they have a cute metallic string with a little leaf on the end. Stylish looking and neat. Typically, none of the teas I enjoy are distributed in tea bags, so I don't have much to compare this to.

THE PROCESS
I used just-under-boiling water (around 195 or so), in a covered, glass cup, for about 3 minutes. The Web site suggests 2-4 minutes, so I'm right in the zone.

THE CUP
A transparent, brown liquor with a roasty aroma. The flavor does not really work for me. I noticed an odd flavor note that makes me think of a paper bag. Now, I know that the nylon bag has nothing to do with this (not being made of paper, of course), but nevertheless there's something there I can't quite account for. Very light mouthfeel.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I don't really want to belabor this review with the history of oolong, or the significance of Formosa tea-making practice, nor the proper place of teabags in the enjoyment of my favorite beverage. The thing is, I don't enjoy this tea, and I find I haven't finished the cup. I wonder if the paper packaging failed to protect these unfortunate tea leaves from off-flavors it might have picked up in transit or in storage. I'd be interested to taste this again, if I knew it was freshly packaged and stored in airtight foil. I don't think my leaves gave me the same experience that was had by the distributor when they first received their shipment from the tea farms in Formosa.

REVIEW: Li Shan Oolong 2009, JING Tea

2009-11-15T08:00:00.000-06:00

Li Shan Oolong, 2009
JING Tea

"Oh, this is going to be good."

The aroma of the first steeping greeted me with an intensity that I'd forgotten. I've had Li Shan oolong only once before (a Fang Tea offering), and it had knocked my socks off. When that first whiff of this intensely fragrant leaf hit me as I poured out, I was reminded that I like Li Shan, and I look forward to tasting what this has in store for me.

Li Shan is a high-grown (over 2000 meters) mountain tea, and the region was recently in the news because a horrible hurricane swept the area, and the mountain tea gardens were unable to hold the topsoil, which washed down and caused havoc in the communities below. The Taiwan legislature has a bill in the works that (if passed) will make it illegal to grow Li Shan oolong at these high elevations, for fear that global warming will cause more hurricanes and thus more havoc. You can read more about this here.

1st Steeping: 25s
For the first steeping, I chose 25 seconds of just-boiling, filtered water that has been soaking with Japanese charcoal, and tea made in my new glass teapot, courtesy of the very kind folks at JING Tea. What a beautifully fragrant tea, with a creamy, milky aroma. The lemon-yellow liquor is perfectly clear, with a tiny amount of broken leaf that has snuck through the filter into the fairness cup. Perhaps it's the power of suggestion by the creamy aroma, but the mouthfeel of the tea is thick, quite substantial. Creamy, in fact. The balled leaves opened into springy, summer-grass green leaves that are only partially unfurled. This promises a number of lovely steepings. The damp leaves are deeply aromatic, and they seem only lightly oxidized, with reddish-brown only at the very, very edge of the leaf. I'm fairly partial to lightly oxidized oolongs, and this is quite typical of the type of tea I've discovered I really love.

I admit, there is a faint bitterness in the cup, only a frisson, and I believe it adds to the attractiveness of the offering by Jing. I don't usually look for bitterness in a cup of tea, but it's one of the five tastes, and we shouldn't try to avoid it in every circumstance, but rather embrace it as part of the sensory experience. In this case, it adds an edge to the otherwise very smooth cup.

2nd Steeping: 20s
Again, the lemon-yellow cup, clear and lovely. As the wenxianbei [sipping cup] cools, the aroma moves from these creamy, thick aromas to a more autumn-garden kind of aroma: earthy but light. Still, a very hint of bitterness, though less than on the first steeping. It's possible I oversteeped slightly, and so I realized I had a word problem on my hands. So I asked for some advice on my tea math.

Word Problem: Stevie wants to steep his Li Shan oolong for 20 seconds. His new teapot pours out at 7 seconds. He does not want to oversteep. Should he (a) start pouring at 20s, knowing that the latter part of the brew will have oversteeped by 7 seconds? Does he (b) start pouring at 13 seconds, knowing that the last drop will be steeped at exactly 20s? Or (c) does Stevie start pouring at 16.5 seconds [if he is able to be this accurate], knowing that the tea will, on average, be 20s?

Solution: As of the third steeping, I am going to go with (c), on the assumption that the average of 20s (or whatever length of time I'm steeping) is better than under- or oversteeping. I'm open to suggestions if this is not other people's tea practice.

3rd Steeping, 20s
I find it's difficult for me to describe this tea. Li Shan oolong is memorable among a thousand flavors: rich, earthy, fragrant, sharp, bright, subtle, redolent of cooking herbs and buttery bread. There's an undercurrent, oddly, of unusual animal aromas I associate with a day at the zoo: exotic, pungent, musky. In other words, my description makes no sense whatsoever, and it gives you no idea of what I'm actually experiencing.

So I'll try this another way: The difficult-to-describe aroma and flavor have coated my mouth and throat, they're rising up into my nose from the back of my throat, and the aftertaste is lingering a surprisingly long time. I like it a lot, though I can't say I would need to drink it every day of my life.

A NOTE ON REVIEW WRITING
Michael J. Coffey wrote recently that it is a crime against tea (to horribly paraphrase him and invite correction) to drink while writing, or write while drinking. He maintains that converting the experience from the nondiscursive flav0r-aroma-texture-energy moment, into a carefully edited piece of language blunts the pure enjoyment of the moment, and it inhibits sense memory. I can't disagree. But that being said, I write to help me remember over the long run, what I had experienced at one point, and to help me make purchasing, drinking, and serving decisions. And hopefully to encourage others to open themselves up to exquisite tea experiences they might not have thought to try otherwise.

ADDITIONAL READING:
Again, thanks to JING Tea for very generously allowed me to taste their Li Shan oolong (also called Ali Shan), a high-mountain tea from Taiwan. I wrote rather extensively about LiSan oolong here, and invite you to read about my very first foray into this intensely beautiful type of tea. I will excerpt here from an excerpt there, which I took from Winnie Yu's blog:

Li Shan Oolongs are the most intensely fragrant, smooth buttery oolong there is, topping Taiwan oolongs growing everywhere else. Particularly, there is a pronounced taste of gan that lingers for an entire day, with less and less astringency the higher the elevation, no matter how strong a cup of tea you make. Incredibly sweet with a taste of fruit that's been cooked at high heat, Li Shan tea no doubt is so highly sought after, many unscrupulous merchants would try to dupe the unsuspecting consumer. It is highly unlikely to buy any Li shan tea less than $200 USD p/lb. at a retail level, and at that price, one is guaranteed that it came from the second-flush or 'second spring', or lower elevations at 1700 meters. Da Yu Ling oolongs are well over $300 p/lb., and difficult to acquire even if one would pay for it, for all of the crops are usually spoken for.

Review: Big Red Robe Supreme (Da Hong Pao) 2009, JINGTea

2009-11-08T19:45:00.001-06:00

Recently, I bought a simple gaiwan, as well as wensienbei, the Taiwanese-style aroma cup set. I tried them out on this Big Red Robe by JING tea and had a great time. (Sadly! I broke the gaiwan and still haven't replaced it. I will, I will, I promise.)

I have come to love Big Red Robe oolongs. At least, the ones I've tasted have been uniformly delightful, and JING tea's is no exception.

I steeped the tea with the best gongfu I could muster: I filled the gaiwan a little less than about a quarter of the way with the leaves, and used just-under-boiling water throughout the steeping sequence. By using a lot of leaf and many short steeps, I am able to drink tea in chapters, opening up the flavor of the leaves without having an overly weak cup. A good gongfu session can last an entire afternoon, with many many steeps. I recorded a few of them here, but I kept steeping well after I had run out of time to take sipping notes.

Steeping 1: 25s
The leaves are a rich, dark color, of what seems to be a medium-roasted DHP with a high level of oxidation. Leaves are beautifully resilient, with a sharp aroma that has high citrus notes. Quite brilliant.

Steeping 2: 20s
The aroma cup carries this intense, sharp aroma I describe as Christmas berries-- spicy, citrus, light, sharp. A slightly bitter edge that could easily be attributed to my inadequate gongfu.

Steeping 3: 20s
Almost a vanilla aroma arising; berries and pine, again making me think of Christmas after breakfast. The taste is... okay, not fantastic but good. It's slightly bitter, but again, I think it's my fu as I get used to my new equipment.

Steeping 4: 20s
Less sharp and intense, the bitterness abating (from the roasting process, most likely), I now start to get to know the tea itself. Woodsy astringency. My, but my table got wet. There is an attractive roughness to this tea, a hard-elbowed quality I rather like. It's the huigan that carries this lovely quality-- the rising sweetness that makes me think of burning sweet applewood, say; ever so slightly smoky, fruity but not fruit (again, applewood, not apple).

Steeping 5: 35s
Aroma: sweet sushi rice, applewood. The aroma seems to dissipate more quickly. The deep brown-gold color has become a lighter orange-amber. Beautiful sweetness, but with a burn in the throat that catches the attention and is sharply at variance with the lightness in the mouth. There is a lovely mouthfeel, substantial even at the fifth steeping. A slight minerality develops in the mouth, like iron perhaps, as the more prominent, roasty flavors are in retreat.

Steeping 6: 45s
Most surprising here is the huigan, which rises up a couple minutes after drinking. Complicated flavors that remind me of a bonbon thing I once had at the Russian Tea Cafe, in Chicago: as it melted, different flavors would appear (first the pomegranate sorbet, then the ice cream, finally the orange-scented white chocolate). Here, a progression. The flavor is now quite muted, but still enjoyable. Learning to burn myself a little bit less on the gaiwan.

Steeping 7: 55s
Finally, a bit of floral brightness appears in the aroma. Flavor receding, but the mouthfeel-- not as dry now, but substantial-- is quite good. I don't know what I think Qi is, but I feel quite energetic and alert, without a hint of anxiety or jitteriness.

Steeping 8: 65s
The aroma is now like a candy at the front, in the high notes, with a hint of tobacco following. And then very little aroma following through.

OVERALL IMPRESSION
A very nice DHP, with a robust character that carries through a number of steepings. Complex and quite interesting.

Review Series Green Tea 4: JingTea, Dragon Well 2009 (In a JingTea Tea-iere)

2009-11-01T08:58:00.000-06:00

Jing Tea sells a lovely Dragon Well, which they describe thus:

Picked on 5th April 2009 from Cedar Hill garden. Our Dragon Well green tea is characterised by enticing sweet aromas of freshly plucked tea buds and teasing orchard fruit.
Dragon Well is one of the most famous green teas in China. Complex and multi-layered with warm, creamy, soft plant notes filled out by understated peach.

The traditional method of making Dragon Well is what really sets it apart. Each individual tea bud is hand-pressed and shaped in a wok to achieve the perfect level of roasting.

Certified organic by the Soil Association. Fair Trade certified by IMO Switzerland.

I invite you to visit their nicely informative Blog, which has quite a bit of information about this year's Dragon Well, including this video:

Quite nice, eh? The folks at Jing do a great job with marketing their product, making wonderful use of the Internet to spread the word on their tea.

THE LEAVES
Very typical for a good Lonjing, these leaves are brightly green, sharp, with very little broken leaf. I can't resist taking long jing leaves and munching on them as I prepare the water, because they're like tea candy. You should try this, if you haven't already.

THE PREPARATION (in the JING Tea Tea-iere)
Per the Web site instructions, 80C, 4min. I prepared this in a glass Jing Tea Tea-iere, which is a glass carafe that has a metal filter that fits nicely at the top. I have been playing a lot with this bit of teaware, and for green teas like this, the thin, glass wall allows the temperature of the water to dissipate, avoiding stewing the leaves. I used to use a French press for making tea, but it had the unfortunate side-effect of smashing the leaves down into the bottom of the carafe, which both wasted some tea and crushed the leaves, releasing some bitterness. I wouldn't advise that now, but the Tea-iere seems to solve that problem pretty nicely. It's convenient, and the carafe is pretty attractive.

THE CUP
The liquor is the palest green, perfectly transparent, with a sharp, bright, delightful aroma. If you enjoy beautifully aromatic teas, a good longjing is definitely something you should check out. The aroma is one of the most enjoyable aspects of this type of tea, and it can be intoxicating.

But how does it taste? Slightly nutty, a bit like almond. I experienced a lightly drying mouthfeel. JingTea's offering has quite a lot of character, with a warming, friendly-yet-crisp, vegetal tone. Next to no bitterness, and a wonderful huigan (which is a sweet aftertaste that asserts itself retronasally, after the cup has been completed) that follows me around rather a while longer than I expected.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I've not been drinking as much green tea lately as usual, and this meets me exactly where I need to be. Crisp, aromatic, complex, friendly.

Review Series Green Tea 3: Mighty Leaf Organic Green Dragon (pouch) 2009

2009-10-30T11:38:00.000-05:00

Things have changed since I last ventured to use a teabag. Mighty Leaf uses a nylon bag (presumably scent free), in which they place their "Organic Green Dragon," which is their title for Longjing (Lung Ching), which is typically known as Dragonwell in the Western world. It's description, found on their Web site, reads,

An organic dragonwell green tea from China (also known as Lung Ching), our Organic Green Dragon envelops the whole palate with a slightly sweet, very refreshing liquor. A classic wok-fired chinese green tea, it has a delicate chestnut like flavor, captivating aroma, and a lovely yellow-green color. Whole loose leaf green tea fills our silken tea pouch, our gourmet tea bag twist, to infuse the senses.

Longjing is one of the great Tribute Teas of China, and it's almost always placed on the list of 10 Famous Teas. These teas were given in tribute to the Emperor, who got first pick and distributed it at his will among his loyal followers. A longjing tea is nothing to sneeze at.

Longjing is typically supposed to come from West Lake, a region in China famous for this tea. Leaves from this region will fetch a high price, and the very best leaves still never leave China, but are kept for the leaders in their government. One problem with purchasing a longjing is that leaves grown all over China can be labeled, "Longjing," even if they are what Chinese would typically think of as being not quite kosher. One thing that makes longjing teas unique is their processing, where specially trained tea wranglers (so to speak) will wok-fry the leaves in a tiny amount of tea tree oil, and they use the "Ten Movements," which are a series of hand movements (typically 10, but can be more or less, depending on who is doing it) to form the leaves into careful, flat spears.

In addition, the early, pre-Ming Festival leaves demand the highest price, and leaves plucked after that date are often discounted as not being quite top-drawer.

Now, Mighty Leaf does not identify when their tea was plucked (though I must presume 2009), nor the location of origin (other than "China"). I would suggest to them, if they are in possession of this information, that they might wish to provide it on the Web site, to help sell their product.

WHAT I EXPECT
When I drink a longjing, I look for a bright, fragrant cup with a lovely yellow, pure character. I hope the leaves will be bright and fresh looking, and in pretty good shape, to avoid bitterness.

THE PREPARATION
The Web site suggests steeping the sachet 2-3 minutes in 170 to 180F water. I chose 80C (176F) as being a good average, and for the full 3 minutes, in a glass pot (very happily provided by Jing Tea).

THE CUP
For this cup, I couldn't really see how the leaves were formed, because they were in the tea bag, though I could see a bit of broken leaf. The wet leaves had a pleasant enough aroma, though rather faint. The liquor is pure yellow-gold. The flavor is grassy with a hint of an acerbic, herbaceous quality I find appealing, and which I've missed for several long months, as I've been drinking other teas.

Ultimately, though, I find the Organic Green Dragon to be rather flat and disappointing. I do not know if it's because of the leaf itself, or because it's been placed in a sachet for convenience sake, or because of deficiencies in my own steeping. I love longjing, and I wanted this to be brighter and much more fragrant than it ultimately was. Again, I enjoyed the flavors and aroma, but I wanted more of them in the cup, on my tongue, and in my nose.

(Cross-posted on TeaViews.com)

Review Series Green Tea 2: TeaHub Pre-Ming West Lake Long Jing 2009

2009-10-15T15:10:00.002-05:00

The folks at Tea Hub are smart. When discussing the provenance of their tea, they are very, very serious about ensuring that, say, their Long Jing (Dragon Well) tea really comes from the West Lake region in China. For buyers like me, this is invaluable as I learn about the Great Teas of the world.

Provenance is what the game is all about. Many famous Chinese teas are fairly costly, because there are only so many acres available upon which to grow a region's characteristic tea. Thus, limited source leads to cost increases in the tea when it comes to market. So unscrupulous dealers will try to sell quite similar counterfeits from other, less-famous regions, as the real thing. (As an example, imagine a Peruvian wine dealer trying to pass off their bubbly wine as "Champagne," even though it does not come from that region of France. It's misleading and harmful to the industry, and it sets the experts' teeth on edge when they see it.)

The Tea Hub's Web site (and their Twitter feed, @TeaHub, which is a place to speak directly with the knowledgeable staffers who know their tea) is a great source of information, and I urge you to wander through and learn something, as I did. This, I learned from their article, "Majority of Long Jing and Bi Lo Chun Are from Si Chuan."

Recent news from ChengDu Business Paper said that 80% Long Jing (from Zhe Jiang), Bi Luo Chun (from Jiang Su) on the market are actually from Si Chuan. According to the news, unethical business people purchase Si Chuan teas at low prices and sell them as Long Jing or Bi Luo Chun at 3 to 4 times the paid prices.

An expert told the reporter that appearance of real Long Jing and Si Chuan tea, Zhu Ye Qing, are quite similar. It is very hard for regular people to tell the differences. Experts from Tea Research Institute also said that Long Jing demanded high prices while its production was low. Therefore, some business people produce Si Chuan Long Jing to make high profits.

Good grief: 80% of the stuff was reportedly fake, back in 2004, when the article was written. For someone like me, who is only discovering Long Jing in the first place, this is just so frustrating. How can one discover what is the real deal, and what is faked?

Tea Hub followed up with a companion article this year, "Reading Long Jing Tea Leaves," which addresses the same situation. An excerpt:

Below are photos of the most common faked Long Jing on the market. The one on the left is Wu Niu Zao from Wen Zhou, Zhe Jiang, and the one on the right is Zhu Ye Qing from Si Chuan.
Both Wu Niu Zao and Zhu Ye Qing are early-harvest teas. Because that early-harvest Long Jing demand much higher prices and only have limited productions, some illegal business people chose to fake Long Jing with Wu Niu Zao and Zhu Ye Qing in pursue of maximum profits. Real Long Jing teas have beautiful straight, flat leaves with none or very few hairs. Faked Long Jing, on the other hand, have fluffier leaves, some even covered with hairs. Leaves of faked Long Jing from Zhu Ye Qing are smaller than real ones. Leaves of faked Long Jing from Wu Niu Zao are bigger than real ones.

There are other sources of information about this same phenomenon, as well; I think I will write an article about, "The Great Tea Counterfeit Heist: The Seamy Underbelly of the Dirty Tea World," sometime. In the meanwhile:

THE TEA HUB: West Lake Long Jing

Tea Hub's description of their West Lake Long Jing scans with the information above.

Pre-Ming West Lake Long Jing/ Dragon Well (明前西湖龙井) 2009 Spring Tea!

Another great West Lake Long Jing (also called Dragon Well or Lung Ching) from Tea Research Institute in HangZhou, the only authority in tea quality test in China.

This delicate pre-Ming Long Jing was grown at Tea Research Institute's Long Jing tea garden in the protected West Lake Long Jing Origin area, and hand fired by experienced masters. This year's extremely cold weather caused delay in harvest. Our Long Jing is the few early harvest. This tea carries Chinese Green Food Certificate.

THE LEAF
Exactly as described. Sadly, when I originally started writing this article, I did not have camera on hand to document the leaves, but they were a brilliant green, sharp and flat because of the method of frying the leaves, and delicious. And when I say, "delicious," I meant that I tasted the leaves, and it's like wonderful tea candy. Seriously, they could market it as a snack-- except for the fact that you get a mouthful of rather gummy tea leaf residue once the crunch has worn off. When wet, the leaves took on a beautiful citrus-grape and seashore aroma. It's the aroma that is so intoxicating with this type of tea, really.

THE CUP
The liquor: pale greenish, clean. It's highly fragrant, and this Long Jing is as good as any I've ever had. It's refreshing, like the aroma of freshest grass clippings, like citrus, like lemon...

I found a sweet, sweet aftertaste, which rises up through the throat. This is why I drink tea.

I can quaff this down in large quantities, because it is so easy and pleasing to drink (same with cranberry juice: can just chug it forever, seemingly) without coming up for air.

The package says it is pre-Ming, and it's been dated quite carefully. Happily, because of the certification, I can have some certainty that this is the real deal, and not faked. As I attempt to develop my palate enough to be able to tell the real thing from the fake, it helps when I can perhaps trust the dealer to be providing something legitimate.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I can't wait until next Spring to be able to buy the 2010 Long Jing. This tea is best purchased right around the time of picking, so when it's drunk, it'll be at its best. When I took the tasting notes on this tea, it was only a couple weeks after it had been harvested. (Sad, how long it took me to finish the rest of the article! I'm trying to catch up, really I am.) You would not really want to buy or taste a Longjing in midwinter, for example, because by then the leaves would have lost their "oomph." Green tea, in particular, is a seasonal, vintage product, and it's best enjoyed on those terms.

(This review has been cross-posted at TeaViews.com)

Lochan Tea Tasting Event

2009-10-15T05:14:00.004-05:00

There are a few spots still available for the Lochan Tea Tasting event, which they are hosting on Facebook.

Ankit Lochan
Online facebook tea tasting... We will supply you with 10 ounce of tea (free of cost).. only shipping 20 USD per head shall be applicable.. we will wait for 50 sign up's .. once we have them we will start posting the samples... once you receive ...the samples you will have a weeks time to assess the teas and then we will take one tea at a time and proceed with online posting of the results and we will see what all of us have to offer.. the best review writer shall be awarded a prize.. (the prize is a secret).. to be disclosed after the event is over.. any suggestions.. please advise... thank you... for signing up please confirm on facebook and email us your adress and vivek shall be in touch with you. his email is vivek@lochantea.com ... thank you!!

Please consider participating in the event, which I'm sure will be quite a good introduction to Indian and Himalayan teas. Contact Vivek Lochan with your contact information: Vivek@LochanTea.com. Vivek supplied this list of the teas that will be showcased:

1. Doke Silver Needle, 2nd Flush 2009, Bihar
2. Meghma Oolong, 2nd Flush 2009, Nepal
3. Korakundha FOP, 2nd Flush 2009, Nilgiri - South India... Read More
4. Hattialli Golden Bud, 2nd Flush 2009, Assam
5. Harmutty Golden Paw, 2nd Flush 2009, Assam
6. Margaret's Hope Muscatel, 2nd Flush 2009, Darjeeling
7. Thurbo FTGFOP 1 CL TPY, 2nd Flush 2009, Darjeeling
8. Jungpana Imperial Muscatel, 2nd Flush 2009, Darjeeling
9. Castleton FTGFOP 1 CH SPL, 2nd Flush 2009, Darjeeling
10. Masala Chai, Indian Chai Blend

1 ounce of each tea will be sent to all participants

As for myself, I've tasted teas from only four of the nine estates listed (not counting the chai, of course), so I expect this to be a good learning experience. As you can see from the list, these are all second-flush (picked in summertime) Indian and Himalayan teas from Bihar, Darjeeling, Assam, Nilgiri, and Nepal.

If you haven't dipped your toe into high-quality India teas, this would be a good way to start. Because it's a group event, people will be able to learn with each other as they taste the various teas.

Review Series Darjeeling 1: Risheehat Clonal Flowery SFTGFOP1, Second Flush '09

2009-10-11T08:46:00.001-05:00

I'm dealing with quite a backlog of partially written reviews, which have been piling up for a while. I'm creating a number of interlocking series of reviews, and this kicks off Review Series Darjeeling.

My great tea friend, Benoy Thapa, is the face of Thunderbolt Tea. He blogs occasionally at the Darjeeling Tea Blog, and his very useful Twitter feed is @DarjeelingTea. Thunderbolt Tea also has a Facebook page, which is another pretty useful way to keep up with him. Quick tea fact: Did you know that the word, Darjeeling, is a reference to the thunderstorms that keep the tea so well watered?

Now, why am I shilling so shamelessly for Benoy? Mainly, as a lover of Darjeeling tea, I appreciate learning about what's happening in Darjeeling, and how the weather is affecting the crops and so on. Plus, it's lovely to think of whether the clouds are hiding the mountains, and which festival is going on, and the like. For me, it's been a great help in gaining a better understanding of the local conditions in which my beloved Darjeeling teas are grown.

Earlier this summer, Benoy sent me simply the most extravagant shipping I've ever seen, with the tea encased in no less than five packages: a paper sack, within a mylar or some such shiny metallic plastic bag, packed with four other teas, all within another mylar bag, within a cardboard box, all sewn into a burlap package covered in sealing wax, with almost every square inch of the package covered in writing for customs officials. Shipping things from overseas to the United States is no mean feat, because the laws governing herbs are so strict. I very much appreciate the great effort Benoy took to ensure this great tea arrived here intact.

Today I'm drinking a Summer '09 Risheehat Estate Clonal Flowery. Now, for those of you who haven't really dug deeply into the world of Darjeeling teas, you have to learn that great teas are like great wines: They are vintages that can differ greatly from region to region, and farm to farm, and season to season. The first flush is the Spring plucking of the leaves, and they typically have rather a lighter touch than the second flush or autumnal flush pluckings. The second flush, which is plucked in summer, is typically more complex and robust than the first flush. The teas from a great estate like Risheehat can be so exciting, because they are unique in the world's tea, with a character distinctly special.

THE LEAVES
I've found that most high-quality Darjeeling tea leaves have a fairly similar appearance when they are dry: tight, fairly small twists of black leaf, with a bit of golden tippiness and no sign of branches. Once they have been steeped, they take on more varied character. for the Risheehat clonal flowery, we see a bit of reddish-brown, broken leaf, well oxidized, though with bits that have a greenish cast.

THE CUP
This tea had a pretty dark-brown liquor, with the characteristic Darjeeling aroma, very classic; with a lovely, bright floral scent of summer berries. Now that autumn is here in Illinois, with the gray clouds streaming by, it's like drinking a bit of summer in a cup, with bright colors and sharp flavor. The tea has such a sharply defined taste, which is a bit difficult to describe. There's sort of an astringent chocolate, like bitter dark chocolate, overlaid with a fruity high note of berries and brown honey. It's sweet-- requires no sugar or milk at all-- and has a huigan [sweet aftertaste] that moves into more a light cocoa flavor I sense hints of almond nuttiness. (I always think of Ratatouille, in which Remy's brother, upon hearing Remy spout some such nonsense, said, "Oh, I sense nuttiness, all right.")

When drinking this tea, please do not neglect to make a second steeping. I have heard much discussion about how to conduct a second steeping: Some people say only steep a few seconds (10 or 15) on the belief that the leaves, already opened, are ready to release their flavor quickly; others suggest doubling or tripling the length of the steeping, so that you draw the most out of the leaf. I just steeped the same amount as the first time 'round (3 minutes, Third Boil (98C), and poured off. Same dark-brown color. This time the flavor is a bit brighter, absent some of the darker notes that were evident in the first steeping. Slightly more astringent, which means it's a bit dry in the mouth, like a white wine. Not quite the body of the first round, but pleasant enough.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
Quickly, go to the Thunderbolt Tea Web site, and buy up some of these wonderful teas before Benoy runs out of them. Many of the first-flush teas are gone, but there are still quite a few great second-flushes available for purchase. Thunderbolt has an amazing selection of high-grown, single-estate teas, and the Web site has good information about each distinct vintage, to give you an idea of what you're buying. And the Autumnal Flush is not far off, I believe!

Review Series Green Tea 1: Grand Tea, Premium Bi Luo Chun 2009

2009-10-10T10:37:00.002-05:00

Grand Tea has a video in which a tumbler of Bi Luo Chun leaves are steeped. Strangely, whenever I make my own glass of this lovely green tea, seagulls do, indeed, start calling, and soothing music rises up in the background.

For some background on the tea, I found this on their Web site:

Bi Lu Chun is one of the most famous Green tea in China, it means "Green Spring Snail" in Chinese and is named by an emperor in seventeenth century by its look. GrandTea.com's Bi Luo Chun ( Pi Lo Chun , Bi Lu Chun) is first class Green Tea comes from Suzhou province in China. To product this tea, the leafs and buds are picked by skilled hands one by one in the early spring. The tea has almost no broken leafs and the shape is so called "one bud two leafs" which is an ideal shape of the best quality green tea. Taste, and aftertaste is light, sweet and pleasant with a hint of fruity fragrance. This Bi Lou Chun is limited produced and will only be available in a limited time each year. Preparation of this tea need to do with care. General tips are use one tablespoon or 3-4 grams of tea leaves for every 160 ml water. The temperature should be 75-80 °C with a steeping time 1-3 minute depend on the desired strength.

THE LEAVES
Opening the package, I found tiny, olive-green twists of leaf, which opened up to become . . . tiny, obviously new-growth leaves in the pot. It's always a great idea to study the loose-leaf tea leaves when you make a cup of tea, so you can learn a lot about a tea by the appearance and aroma of the dry leaves. In this case, because the leaves were so tiny, I could tell they were plucked at an early stage in Spring. If it takes twice as many tea plants to produce the same weight of leaf, it will obviously cost more to produce. Also, because the leaves are so fresh, their taste will be more delicate. Chinese will spend quite a lot of money for these early leaves (which they refer to as "Pre-Ming," in reference to the QingMing festival, which takes place on the 15th day from the Spring equinox; and in which everyone goes outside to tread on the green, enjoy the weather, and take care of their ancestors' graves).

THE STEEPING
I followed the steeping instructions provided by Grand Tea's Web site, though I used my great-grandmother's century-old porcelain Japanese teapot instead of a glass tumbler.

THE CUP
My family and I love this tea. It is bright, pleasantly vegetal, with a slightly dry mouthfeel and a nicely floral fragrance. Settling into the cup, I enjoy the clean refreshment of the liquor: yellow-gold in color, perfectly transparent. Exactly what I expect a high-quality Bi Luo Chun to taste like. This particular one tastes of sweet rice, and a bit buttery. I enjoy the long finish with notes honey and grain.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
Why drink this tea? It's very refreshing and clean, with a happy Spring feeling. After I let the tea rest a bit and come back to it, it's surprisingly green, and upbeat, and bright, with a crisp, dry edge that keeps all that sweetness from becoming cloying.

(This review has been cross-posted at TeaViews.com.)

Review: Grand Tea Baihao Yinzhen 2009 (White Down Silver Needle)

2009-10-09T11:07:00.003-05:00

White Painting (Three Panels), 1951, Robert Rauschenberg, via SFMoma.org

As readers of my blog know, I am not much for white tea, because my palate is a bit too barbaric and longs for more robust, in-your-face teas. So I face the cup of Baihao Yinzhen, provided very kindly by Grand Tea, with a bit of caution. I am convinced that there's something here I am simply missing, and this is part of my ongoing quest to discover how to make a decent cup of white tea that I will actually enjoy. Wish me well.

Here is the description of the tea, found on the Grand Tea Web site:

First Harvest White Tea (白毫銀針) - Loose leaf

White Down Silver Needle (Baihao Yinzhen) is one of the finest white tea produced in the districts of Fujian province. This tea is delicate and has a subtle, fresh sweetness.

I'll direct you to the Web site, if you wish to read more about what they say of the tea's health and beauty benefits.

The Grand Tea Web site tells me to steep at around 71C or so, and for only a minute. Surprisingly short! I would have thought a longer steeping time would be more appropriate for such a low steeping temperature. Let's get into it, then.

THE LEAVES
I wonder, if tea trees were allowed to bloom, if they would take on the floral aroma of these leaves. Actually, they are really the buds of the tree: pointed needles with silver-gray hair over the olive-green flesh.

THE CUP
This tea is perfectly clear, with a liquor that is pale gold, without a cloud in the sky. I drink this from a JING Tea clear cup and saucer, which seems to highlight the clarity and shininess of the tea itself. Quite lovely. When I bring the tea to my nose, I find the aroma is quite faintly floral. The mouthfeel of the tea is pleasant enough. The tea's flavor is quite subtle: merest hints of flowers, a touch of pine, perhaps-- like a wisp of mist on a lake in the morning: faint, subtle enough to make me wonder if it's all in my imagination.

THE SECOND CUP
As is usual, while I'm drinking the first cup, the already-steeped tea in the pot continues to oxidize, with the complex chemical compounds combining and recombining, causing that second cup to be much more complex and nuanced than the first. And so it is, here. While the first cup left me grasping, the second cup's flavor came forward more directly. There's the slightest drying in the mouth and a good, throat-coating mouthfeel. The aroma is still too subtle for me to easily observe, except again for a hint of some kind of floral sweetness. People suggest it's the aroma of peony, but as I'm not too familiar with that scent, I'll pass on further description. And the flavor: mown hay, and the echo of some honeyed sweetness. Again, notably subtle. The tea's huigan, which means the sweet aftertaste, is enjoyable, because it kind of sneaks up on you and whacks you hard on the back of the head with a feather. Sweet, like a hot summertime meadow, remembered rather than being experienced directly.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I'm sorry my wife is not here to drink this tea, because she would tell you that it is refreshing and smooth, with an enjoyable lightness that seems designed for her delicate palate. Then she'd demand my cup and finish it for me.

Life, Love, and Li Shan

2009-10-07T05:58:00.002-05:00

Last week, Aura Teas sent me a package of a number of "gift" teas, some of which are samples only and are not necessarily available for sale on their Web site. We had the opportunity to open one up and share it with a family member, who is going through a crisis. I include below my letter of thanks to Aura Teas, which I sent earlier this morning.

Tea is not something that really solves any problems in life, but it gives us the opportunity to share something beautiful with people we love, and by painstaking care in hospitality (all that trouble taken in brewing as perfect a cup of tea as I am able), I can in some measure to show someone how important she is to my wife and me, and how deeply we care about the well-being of her and her family.

My letter to my contact at Aura Teas follows here.

Hi, and thank you so much for your gift of the lovely teas.

[Redacted] was visiting during a quite horrible family crisis, and we fed her and afterward served her your Li Shan oolong (about a half-dozen steeps, gongfu style, until she couldn't take more), which was a great comfort.

It's amazing, how a gift of tea from you to me became a gift of tea (and love) from us to her, a way of saying, "We love you. We are looking out for you. We are taking time to listen to you. We are pulling out the good stuff to show you that you are important to us."

Obviously, tea didn't solve any problems, but it did help us express our love and concern for a family member in need, and for this I thank you.

Very sincerely,

Steven Knoerr
The 39 Steeps

Review Series Pu-erh 5: "Epsilon" by Yunnan Sourcing

2009-10-03T20:00:00.009-05:00

I am excited about the newest sample, ε, which is the final one in the tasting event hosted by Hobbes at The Half Dipper blog. He has identified this as 2009 Yunzhihuan/Ruicaoxiang "Banzhan Chunqing."

This pu is pretty heavily compressed, and it took some doing to separate out the leaves in the beeng. I thought the aroma was quite subdued coming from the package. After the leaves are first steeped, they remain quite quiet about it, and don't have a heavy or terribly exotic aroma. It's pleasant enough, with that tobacco aroma dominating, and a lightly floral texture to it.

Rinse: 10s

First steeping: 13s
The epsilon pu-erh is quite assertive, right off the bat. A bit of bitterness balanced nicely with a sweet quality that makes it very drinkable. Lovely yellow-gold color, light and pure.

Second steeping: 12s
Sweet tobacco, a hint of smokiness. Very crisp flavor, bright and clean. There's a greenness to this, but not much of what I would think of as the huigan, the aftertaste-- the tea remains quite constant in flavor from the moment it hits my tongue, with little variation in the ensuing seconds.

Third steeping: 13s
I'm aware in my mind of Michael J. Coffey's advice not to write about what you're tasting, because it diminishes one's ability to remember the flavors later. Well, I do what I can: I try to taste first, just experience the nondiscursive element; and then later to give voice to it, if I can. This tea has a touch of bitterness, still (and enough that my seven-year-old boy found it a bit too much for him). However, nicely complex, with a sort of leatheriness, perhaps, in the flavor, and a quite sweet burn a few moments after the tea is up.

Fourth steeping: 15s
Astringent and drying, with a full, robust mouthfeel that coats the tongue. The bitterness is still present, but not dominant; and it fades into a nicely sweet tobacco flavor. I wouldn't really think of this as a sweet pu-erh, but it's complex and fun to drink.

Fifth steeping: 17s
Getting a mite twitchy, I must say, after the fifth steeping (on top of the several pots of Darjeeling earlier today). My little boy says, "It has a good texture. It's a little, tiny, tiny, tiny bit bitter." He's seven years old, by the way. He's right: good texture, and the slightest bit bitter. Maybe he needs less pu-erh, because he hasn't stopped talking (about his comic book, The Battle Begins, which he is writing) in the last 10 minutes.

Sixth steeping
I am continuing this steeping onward, as I have with others. If I feel the need to add anything, I shall do so as an addendum later. I'm very much enjoying this particular pu-erh, with its lovely tobacco smell and pretty bright complexity.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
This series of tea tastings has been, for me, a great introduction into the world of pu-erh. Along the way, I've made a couple new tea friends, which has been very gratifying. Honestly, for the last couple years I've been very hesitant to try the genre of pu-erh, because of all the pretty terrible press it's received, what with all the faked beengs being sold at ridiculous prices, and the near certainty that I would ruin my palate by learning about pu-erh the wrong way: by drinking lousy tea, made the wrong way, setting up incorrect assumptions. For me, this tasting is invaluable, because it allows me to check my tastebuds against those of other tea drinkers, and to try to understand what they're experiencing as well, in a context in which I'm allowed to simply enjoy myself without guarding myself against being scammed or something by a dishonest pu-erh salesman. Additionally, I got to share this with my family and allow them to have fun learning right along with me. Brilliant fun.

Thank you, Hobbes of The Half Dipper, and Yunnan Sourcing, for opening the door for me to the world of pu-erh.

The above photos: antique green bowl by The Haeger Potteries; Yixing pot by Art Zisha, Zhuxinnan Products, via Bret at Tea Goober; antique tea trays (which perfectly match the orange-gold of the pu-erh, and which nicely complement the green bowl) via my Great-Aunt Lydia Behm; and Tiger Drill hero image by my seven-year-old son. That's his hand in the picture at top. And buster, you haven't seen anything if you haven't gotten a look at his newest creation, "Explosive Cowboy Man."

Review Series Pu-erh 4: "Delta" by Yunnan Sourcing

2009-09-30T22:54:00.009-05:00

Today I am tasting Δ (Delta), the fourth of five in Hobbes's pu-erh tasting series. As with the rest of the series, I am imitating the video I found on the Wrong Fu Cha Web site, in which a bowl is filled with hot water, and the teapot is brewed inside it, helping maintain high temperature throughout the steeping process. I don't do this because I am definitively saying this is the best way to do gongfu, but rather because I found the video to be engaging and fun-looking, so off I went. The results have been enjoyable, and I hope for the best. I'm writing this instead of sleeping, using tea to get me through a very long night of work. Sometimes, it's better to power through than to sleep. I hope this is one of those times.

And my standard disclaimer: I am not a pu-erh aficionado, and so if you're here expecting an expert's eye overlooking the leaf, wringing from it the secrets of its making, you're in the wrong place. However, if you're new to this type of tea, as I am, perhaps this will convince you to search out some pu-erh of your own and give it a whirl.

THE SHORT VERSION
I drank this tea over the course of two days, with something like a dozen or so short steeps, ranging from about 10s to up to several minutes. The tea provided me with plenty of energy to get through a particularly difficult set of deadlines I faced. The pu-erh itself had a pleasant tobacco shop aroma, with a flavor that changed over time: starting a touch bitter, moving into a sweetly burnt-caramel sensation, and with quite a bit of complexity. If you have not tried pu-erh, or the Chinese way of making deconstructing a pot of tea by breaking it down into many short steeps, I would encourage you to try. For coffee drinkers, I would think pu-erh would provide you with something you could get your tastebuds around, so to speak: lots of solidity and "oomph," and with quite a bit of buoyancy in mood.

Hic Sunt Dracones

THE LONG VERSION
What follows are my detailed tasting notes, which you don't need to read unless you have quite the attention span. I am learning as I go, and this helps me track my experience for future buying decisions (and for general knowledge). Beyond Here Be Dragons and Unduly Long Descriptions of Brown Leaf Juice.

Rinse: 10s
Quick rinse of my new zisha pot, which I picked up during Bret's sale on his Web site, Tea Goober. Bret, thank you for the lovely pot. After the rinse, the leaves take on a rich, darkly tobacco scent, which promises much loveliness.

Steeping 1: 10s
A touch bitter the first cup, so probably a 5s steeping would have served me better for this first steeping. HOWEVER, the second cup of the first steeping (even at this early stage) starts to show me the waking complexity of this cup. Michael Coffey would rebuke me for trying to put this into words, but I want to convey how interesting this pu is to me: it's got a brilliant flavor, but there are so many layers of flavor that reward me when I close my eyes to sip.

The aroma reminds me of the Iwan Ries tobacco my Grandpa Allison used to smoke in his home in Effingham, Illinois. When I'd visit, his immaculate house always carried this sweet-tobacco scent, which I associate with his pipe collection. He never smoked around me (on account of the asthma I suffered under as a kid), but the sweetness of this leaf became one of my Favorite Things. I'd sniff around his pipes and the pouches of leaf he would have on his pipe stand, the wood of which was redolent of tobacco in and of itself. Please don't ask me which specific Iwan Ries tobacco he would smoke, because my memory doesn't carry so far. Strange, how drinking Chinese tea can make me miss my Grandfather.

While I was writing the above, I was struck by the huigan, which is the Chinese term for the sweet aftertaste that rises up in the throat, retronasally. In this case, it's light and compelling, very enjoyable.

Steeping 2: 12s
In spite of my desire to pop that tea out quickly, I just couldn't move enough. All the descriptions of gongfu cha on the Web sites fail to mention how hot everything is, and how fragile. Tea pot burning fingers! Do not drop tea pot, which you just bought. Pour out gently, even while fingers are uncomfortably hot. Suddenly, 5 seconds becomes 12. Chinese people must have fingers made of titanium, to be able to withstand all this hot water. The aroma rising from my wenxianbei (aroma cup) is like caramel, or burnt sugar, and sweet cotton candy. Which are all kind of the same thing, I realize. There's a rich mouthfeel that accompanies that bitterness-- which, naturally, would have been avoided with a slightly shorter steep. So sue me. Happily, I don't mind a touch of bitterness in my tea, though I know it's not truly optimal. As before, the second cup (and subsequent) are not nearly as bitter as at first, so either I'm acclimating to the bitterness, or there's some process in the fairness cup that is mellowing the flavor. My enjoyment rests primarily in the aftertaste, which is complex and lovely, and keeps opening up as the seconds tick.

Steeping 3: 12s
I just cannot pour fast enough, and 12 seconds seems to be about the amount of time it takes me to get the hot kettle back to the stove and then be able to pour off the tea. I do not have a tableside electric kettle, nor a charcoal brazier of the type favored by Imen Shan at Tea Habitat. Nevertheless, I soldier on.
Here, the tea is taking on a much richer aspect in both mouthfeel and distinctiveness of flavor. I wish someone were here to taste this with me, but it's midnight, and I'm trying to energize to work through until morning. There's tobacco, and a tingly mouthfeel I associate with some type of menthol. The orange liquor has remained quite constant. There's a drying aspect to the mouthfeel that has me wishing for a tall glass of ice water.

Steeping 4: 10s
Ah, I'm in the zone, getting in a shorter steep, at last. I begin to understand the wisdom of this type of steeping method. By keeping the pot submerged in quite hot water, it allows the leaves to stay at a nicely warm temperature, no matter how long (within reason) I take between steeps. It probably wouldn't matter as much if I were in of a larger party, were the tea flowed more quickly. But by myself, I think it helps.
At this point, there is a richer sweetness developing, which I find surprising. I've gotten used to the flavor, but now as the bitterness recedes, these other flavors appear. Seriously, lovely, and the best steeping yet. Tobacco is less pronounced, and other complexities rise up.

Steeping 5: 10s
Sigh. I need to get to work, as midnight has arrived. While I waited for the water to heat this last time, I read through accounts of sea serpents (click the map picture above), with lots of amusing and fascinating images of sea monsters, as drawn by cartographers and artists a couple centuries past.
And what does that have to do with tea? Well, tea has water in it. And tea came by ships. And... well, nothing, really. Anyway, the pu-erh: The tobacco flavor has taken on a sharper aspect now, with a smokier character, yet with notes of fruit, like apple or melon, floating on top of the heavier aroma. Very lovely.

I'll continue this journal as I go, in between bouts of work, which I expect to be doing throughout the night. I hope the Qi, or the caffeine+theanine, will help me stay alert and focused.

Steeping 6: 15s
Still going strong, with a beautiful aroma that drifts from the fairness pitcher as I work. A slightly sour honey flavor, with a kind of hay overtone is evident. Really nice.

Steepings 7 through 12 (or so): various lengths
I really rather do like this pu-erh, so I kept it going on into the next day. Perhaps at its 12th steeping or so, I moved on. The tea provided me with the energy to get through the deadlines I needed to finish, and then some. The pu's flavor and aroma remained pretty steady, without much variation after about the 7th steeping.

Review Series Pu-erh 3: "Gamma" by Yunnan Sourcing

2009-09-26T21:52:00.003-05:00

And this our life,
exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees,
books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones,
and good in every thing.

Drinking tea often sets me to musing. In my last pu-erh tasting, I made reference to the sophistication of this pastime, and how oh-so-nuanced it all was. But here, I think almost the exact opposite: that I'm experiencing something primal, something ancient, perfectly tuned to nature and her wildly exuberant fancies.

With this tasting, I have been enjoying thoroughly pu-erh of a quality that I had not experienced before.

For the gamma bing, I followed roughly the same method of tea preparation as with the previous: I kept a large bowl of very hot water, in which I mostly submerged my teapot and prepared my tea with a fairly large amount of leaf and many short steeps.

Once I rinsed the leaves, they took on a pungent, complex, almost chocolate aroma, which I found intoxicating. I had hoped the aroma would carry into the cup, but alas, they diverged.

At the very first, the tea leaves seemed hesitant-- or, perhaps I should say, I was unable to bring out a very strong flavor. But then . . . well, I'll let you read my notes.

Steeping 2: 12s
Amen, hallelujah. The second steeping smells like Pau D'arco, and like the Forest of Arden. The first sip of the cup was truly weak; but then after it rested a few moments in the fairness pitcher and was poured, the flavor awoke: sharp, rich mouthfeel, indescribably complex. Still a bit on the light side.

From there, the tea progressed through an entirely pleasant session, with a beautifully woodsy and airy cup. Throughout the experience, the tea remained fairly on the light side, which I found surprising-- remember, my previous experience with pu-erh had been with shupu tuochas, which were pretty intense and rather heavy by comparison. This was almost wispy, with this woodsiness (that Forest of Arden aroma) that I described earlier.

Thank you again, Hobbes, for a lovely tasting event. I'm trying to keep up! But, alas, a too-busy schedule put me behind. I'll be adding my tasting notes for the last couple samples in the next couple days.

Here are Hobbes's introductory remarks about the identity of this mystery pu-erh, which is 2009 Yunzhiyuan/Ruicaoxiang "Bulangshanyun." Please read the rest, and enjoy!

"Gamma" is the "Bulangshanyun", which by coincidence or design is the same name as the dreadful "Bulangshanyun" from Puerh Shop that I lamented a few days ago. Yunnan Sourcing notes that this cake was made from 2006 maocha from Mannonzhai [winding-lane village], near Hekai, some 20km north of Banzhang.

Review Series Pu-erh 2: "Beta" by Yunnan Sourcing

2009-09-22T14:00:00.001-05:00

"Fear is the only darkness."

The beauty of gongfu is the opportunity to drink tea as you read a book: in progressive chapters with a beginning, a middle, and an end. -- The 39 Steeps Compendium of Brilliant yet Rather Commonplace Musings.

I freely admit, my gongfu is white belt, and I thus have some trepidation about adding my observations about Yunnan Sourcing's β sample, as part of The Half Dipper's special pu-erh tasting event. Nevertheless, Grasshopper, I will dare to go where tea masters should slap me silly.

For more of background on pu-erh tea, including some introductory material, please skim my other thoughts here. In the past I had only experienced shu pu-erh, which means the leaves had been oxidized in such to imitate of how green (sheng) pu-erh tastes after a few years of fermentation. This is an entirely different experience.

THE LEAVES
β is a green pu-erh, pressed in 2009 and distributed by Yunnan Sourcing, a reputable dealer in pu-erh. The cake was pressed quite tightly, but in such a way that I could easily separate the individual leaves, jigsaw-puzzle style, from one another. I noticed quite a bit of silvery tips among the darker leaf. The attractive aroma is like sweet, Southern barbecue: honey, smoke, hot spice. After the initial rinse, the leaf took on a warm, tobacco and mulch scent.

THE PREPARATION
As I did in the α pu-erh sample, I roughly imitated the Chouzhou pu-erh preparation style found here. I have taken extensive notes on the multiple steepings I enjoyed, but I'll summarize them here for the sake of brevity.

THE SUMMARY
After the rinse, the first four steepings (ranging from 10s to 15s) revealed a richly golden-orange colored liquor with a distinctly sweet green herb and tobacco flavor, along with some bitterness (which may easily be attributed to my gongfu ability). Upon the fifth steeping, however, the tea had arrived. The bitterness was gone, and it left a lovely, honey-sweet, herb-and-tobacco note; it reminded me of a decent white wine, in its delicate boldness and its balance between dryness and fruit.

AND... THE LONG VERSION
Please feel free to skip this part, because it's been summarized above. I do wish to preserve my notes here, however, for reference.

Rinse: 10s

Steeping 1: 13s
I originally intended this to be a 10-second steeping, but because my pot has a seven-second pour and I started pouring right as I counted to 10, I realized I had oversteeped slightly. Ah, well. The golden-orange, transparent liquor (thought with some leaf dust at the bottom of the fairness pitcher) is honey-sweet, but also has a bitterness at the back of the throat, which I attribute to my oversteeping. A green, tobacco flavor is primary, though without any smokiness. Light, sharp, bright. This is enjoyable and memorable.

Steeping 2: 11s
I didn't know what to expect from a green pu-erh, but I suspected it would be very harsh (per other descriptions I had read). This has probably the same acerbic quality I find in many first-flush Darjeelings, and a fair bit of bitterness, as well. But it's balanced against the honey-like sweetness in the liquor. I have no idea whatsoever how this would age, but as a self-drinker, I must say it's enjoyable enough, and has quite a bit of sophistication, of complexity. The green, sweet herbal quality becomes very evident in the huigan [sweet aftertaste, primarily recognized retronasally: that is, from the back of the throat, rising up to the nasal passages], after the bitterness has toned down on the tongue. Now, I hasten to add, a seasoned gongfu master would doubtless be able to massage the sweetness out of the leaf and avoid the bitterness; but I must do with my own level of knowledge, and this is what I get.

Steeping 3
At this point, I am noticing again a slight sensitivity in my stomach to the green pu-erh, which I'm counterbalancing with French bread. As I sip and nibble, I am thinking of what a sophisticated pleasure this is, like Cuban cigars. Not that I have ever had a cigar, Cuban or otherwise. Sadly, musing thus broadcasts how unsophisticated I am, because the truly sophisticated would never think such a boorish thing. (And do notice how many times I can use the word, sophisticated, in a paragraph.)

(If you want Tony Santana to roll cigars for your wedding, do click here.)

Steeping 4: 15s
The green/tobacco flavors are still very strong, with that sweet aftertaste growing more distinct as time goes on, though with that bitter edge (not entirely unpleasant).

Steeping 5: 13s
Bingo. Suddenly, it seems the true quality of the tea has arrived. Sweet, light, beautiful tobacco-and-green herbs flavor. The first four steepings now seem like the time spent in the restaurant bar, waiting for the table, and I could drink this all day long. It's smooth and bright, just about perfectly to my liking. Where did the bitterness go? Suddenly, it's all sweetness and mild astringency, a bit like a fresh, slightly fruity but dry white wine. With the bitterness in abeyance, I begin to notice the full mouthfeel, which coats my entire mouth and throat. Truly nice.

Steeping 6: 14s
Crisp and light, without a trace of bitterness. Gorgeous. Writing summary now.

Steeping 7: 15s
Again, very crisp, like a white wine. After all these steepings, I'm feeling quite good energy and focus. I rather wish I could start my day with this feeling. The aftertaste reminds me of a good Darjeeling, with the pleasantly acerbic lightness coupled with that sweet quality. It interests me to find that highgrown Darjeelings and pu-erh can produce such a similar huigan, and I don't really know why that would be. At this point, I can see the tea settles into this sweet dryness, and seems to be maintaining that quite nicely. I will keep steeping this, but suspending the notes here. If I feel it necessary to add something later, I will do so in an update.

Thank you for reading!

Review Series Pu-erh 1: "Alpha" by Yunnan Sourcing

2009-09-17T10:10:00.018-05:00

I am delighted to be a part of a Pu-erh tea tasting, hosted by Hobbes at The Half Dipper blog, with the leaf generously provided by Yunnan Sourcing. Yunnan Sourcing has been getting some very favorable attention of late as a helpful source for Pu-erh teas, which originate in this region of China. And if you haven't read Hobbes's limpid prose, please wander through his blog and enjoy yourselves.

[UPDATE: Hobbes posted about this pu-erh here, and it is called the Yunzhiyuan Ruicaoxiang "Yiwuzhidao Guafengzhai." Ironically, that was exactly what I was going to guess.]

A quick bit of background: I am not a pu-erh aficionado, but rather a passionate tea enthusiast, and so I cannot identify which year's vintage of which factory a pu-erh might be. My tea life has been spent steeped (so to speak) primarily in the Himalayan teas of Darjeeling, Nilgiri, Sikkim, and Nepal, and I discovered pu-erh only a couple years ago.

Now, as I spent time reading an heroic amount about the broad topic of pu-erh, I discovered that the "pu-erh boom" had just gone bust, and that a dismaying amount of counterfeit pu was floating around, muddying up the waters so much that a newbie like myself had very little chance of getting his hands on a verifiably decent bit of this leaf that I would be able to afford; and besides, I had no idea how to prepare it or what to expect. Because I did not want to drink low-quality pu-erh that would inhibit my ability to develop an informed palate, I stayed away.

Cut ahead to this last year, and I've now had several examples of pu-erh, which I consumed happily, knowing full well that I had no idea what I was doing, nor the quality of the leaf I was drinking. A fun (though not terribly educational) time was had by all, and my pu-erh adventures can be found here.

When Hobbes sent out an open invitation to be part of a pu-erh tasting, I jumped at the chance. At last, an opportunity presented itself to learn something in the presence of those vastly more knowledgeably than I. I anxiously awaited the package, and when one arrived (with return address in Chinese characters), I tore it open . . . and found that this is a blind tasting, and the bags are labeled, "Alpha," "Beta," . . . "Epsilon." In a way, this is a good thing, because it throws me back on my palate, my observation, and my sense of adventure.

PREPARATION
I recently watched a video in which the proprietor of the "Wrong Fu Cha" blog made a pot of pu-erh in the Chaozhou gongfu style, which involved keeping the Yixing pot in a vessel of hot water to maintain temperature. You can watch the video here. I was glad to see tea preparation done in a way I could conceivably imitate, and so I did. The only thing the video does not show is how often it's necessary to empty out the big bowl as the water cools and needs to be replenished. When you're doing 6 or 8 or 10 or more steepings, be prepared to dump and refill any number of times.

THE LEAVES
Dry leaf: pretty well compressed, and the leaves came apart with a bit of effort. I didn't want to break the leaves, making the resultant brew more bitter, so I took my time with this, separating the leaves like pieces of a puzzle. The dry leaves are quite green (sheng, I believe), not black, so this is not a cooked pu-erh (shu), but rather one that is intended for long-term storage, perhaps? I would imagine so. They have a bit of silver, a bit of woody stem to it. The aroma is like blackberries, to my nose; and a bit like the oak smoke campfires I grew up with, when we vacationed in Michigan.

THE TEA FLIGHT
As longtime readers of this blog (both of me) know, I write fairly extensive tasting notes here, which I use to help me remember the experiences and make purchasing decisions. Do feel free to skip to the bottom, where you can find my OVERALL IMPRESSIONS. Kind of like skipping all the boring plot and character development and going straight to the epilogue, when skimming a book right before a test.

Rinse: 10s
I use a quick rinse to awaken the leaves, then pour off into my wenxianbei [aroma cup set] and fairness pitcher, and get everything ready for the real action to follow.

1st steeping: 15s
Lightly aromatic-- again, like the campfire aroma of the dry pu-erh leaves, and like blackberries and oak impressions. What a surprisingly light, rich flavor for a first steeping. I know green pu-erhs are reportedly quite bitter and harsh, but this is not like that at all. (First time, as I mentioned, too much leaf did lead to a bitter experience, but this time it's great.) This stuff is addictive. The berry and smoke notes are superseded by a roasted honey taste in the huigan, which is the sweet aftertaste that Hobbes has explained thoroughly in his blog. This cup of tea is a lovely, pure yellow-gold color, not the deep brownish-orange I have experienced with other pu-erhs of my acquaintance.

As a side note, sipping this reminds me a bit of the first time I had a high-quality Lapsang Souchong, produced in Dong Mu village, where this type of tea originated. While I had had LS before, I had never had the real deal, and the difference was telling. Here, too, the gulf between this beeng and the little tuochas I've had before is quite wide. The subtlety is pleasing, and I begin to understand what all the fuss is about.

And by the way, Hobbes, if you have braved my torpid prose and prolix description this far: Thank you again for your great advice on enjoying tea, which you wrote a couple months ago. I would by no means feel brave enough to present my thoughts about this pu-erh, much less one presented to me in a blind tasting like this, had you not written so encouragingly about simply enjoying the experience and not allowing other, more knowledgeable writers drive me into silence about the topic. While my gongfu might not be black belty enough to be informative to more experienced drinkers, perhaps people who have not drunk pu-erh might find this helpful, and it might encourage them to try this strange and surprising genre of tea.

2nd steeping: 15s
Still, the first impression is, "campfire." This is really a very specific sense memory, which comes from countless hours poking sticks into fires made primarily of oak hardwood, and cooking marshmallows, and being allowed to play outside after dark. In other words, an entirely pleasant memory evoked by the smooth, fruity woodiness of this tea. The flavor is quite consistent with the first steeping, though with a slightly more drying, acerbic quality and a warming in my stomach. I am told green pu-erh can be a bit rough on the stomach for those not accustomed, so I hope this isn't going to pose a problem. I would be interested to find out what Hobbes thinks of this, and how he thinks it will mature over time.

3rd steeping: 10s
The overall impression is this hardwood campfire smoke, with a lingering sweet vanilla and blackberry flavor hiding at the back of the throat. I'm delighted I had enough of this tea to try a second steeping, because this experience is rich, quite fun, and provides for a lot of surprises. Vanilla notes? Not what I expected. (Perhaps the vanilla is really how my senses translate the sweetness and smoothness, which is overlaid on top of the drying sharpness. Sweet, smooth, dry, sharp. I can see my description makes no sense whatsoever. As we said in high school, "I guess you had to be there.") The pu-erh has a really meaty mouthfeel, which coats my entire mouth and throat.

4th steeping: 13s
Denser minerality to the taste this time. Minerality is the word I'm using to describe the shift from a smoky flavor to something sharper, brighter. The woodiness is still there, but mostly to be found in my wenxianbei [aroma cup], which is a tiny cup that can be held up to the nose and sniffed. When smelling the aroma cup, the lighter, head-note smells seem to arrive first, to be followed by the middle and then lower notes. This has something to do with the rate at which the different catechins and flavinoids and whatnot (for tea has a very complex chemistry) are released into the atmosphere. Anyway, the greenness of the tea is more pronounced now, as the tea begins to hit its stride.

5th steeping: 15s
I've read that a proper pu flight doesn't really start until the fifth steeping. It's here that most of the storage aromas are gone, and the true character of the tea begins to be revealed. I've read that some tea drinkers will just toss the first four steepings as unworthy of attention, but I'd hate to miss out on any part of the experience. On the other hand, if a tea is 20 or 30 (or 60?!) steepings in duration, at that point you might as well skip to the good stuff. To me, this tastes of roasted honey, and a very high, light fruity note that seems to come up from behind, after the richer, darker note: like a flute and an oboe hanging in the air after the rest of the orchestra has fallen into silence.

I am really liking this.

6th steeping:
Decidedly lighter. The aroma is much harder to discern, but the flavor and the mouthfeel/texture is still quite bright. Again, I would probably describe this as having a metallic quality, which I'm using to try to convey a complexity and sharpness. Lovely flavor at the very back of my throat (necessary to slurp a bit to cause this experience to occur), of blackberries again, and woodsmoke, but now the sweet honey has receded. When my tastebuds are allowed to relax for a minute or two after sipping, a lovely perfume rises up in the throat, floral and delicately light. It's very easy to drink, very welcoming.

7th steeping: 17s
I wish, dear reader, you were here with me, because right now you'd be smelling the delicious aroma from the cup of pu-erh, which greets me upon each steeping. This no longer makes me think of a campfire, but rather a delicate brightness.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
This tea can clearly go on a bit further, but I am going to suspend the review here because my stomach is starting to feel a touch tender. I'll update tomorrow, perhaps, if I have it in me to keep this steeping going later tonight. At any rate, what a lovely, delicate, complex tea this is. I have no skill to be able to tell you where it comes from, but I can say this is easily the best pu-erh I've ever drunk. I can't wait for the rest of these pu packages, so I can start to compare notes among them. Though it's evening, I feel energetic and relaxed from the tea. Perhaps it's Qi, the Chinese concept of the divine energy that flows to me from the tea; maybe it's a combination of theanine and caffeine. Either way, I feel great (except for mild upset of my stomach) and look forward to a good evening. Thank you again, Hobbes, for allowing me to be a part of this tea tasting.

Cheers, all!

Upcoming Tea Series

2009-09-16T16:36:00.006-05:00

I am composing a number of tea review series, variations on several themes, which I'll be exploring in the weeks ahead. I'll be hopping between them, but please return to read:

Darjeeling Tasting Series
Nepal Tasting Series
Dan Cong Oolong Tasting Series
Pu-erh Tasting Series

There will be a number of other tastings mixed in there as well, to keep things interesting (for me, at least). If any green tea distributors or farms wish to be part of a tasting series, please let me know, and I'll put one together.

And in case you're wondering, the above image is from the Book of Kells. I added it here because the interlocking series of reviews I'm embarking on, of glorious, intense teas, made me think of the complex fractals found in this ancient illustration.

Review: An Ji Bai Cha '09, Grand Tea

2009-09-02T09:49:00.000-05:00

It's amazing what you find when you just start searching for crazy things on Google. I typed in, "wolf drinking tea," and lo and behold, this image is what I discovered. Thank you, Migy Illustration, for the great image. Please go to their Web site for much illustration goodness.

Grand Tea: An Ji Bai Cha

Today I find myself wolfing down Grand Tea's An Ji Bai Cha like it's going out of style. Of course, if wolves drank tea and dressed as snappily as the ones in the illustration, they might not have quite the public relations nightmare they've developed.

THE BACKGROUND
An Ji Bai Cha has quite a unique story: it's a long-lost tea that was recreated only a few years ago by tea sleuths putting together hints found in various ancient texts. I wrote about it in detail here, and I hope you'll go there to read about where this enjoyable tea comes from.

THE LEAVES
When I open the package from Grand Tea, provided to me via the folks at TeaViews.com, I am confronted with a singingly fresh, bright, grassy fragrance that instantly takes me outside. The leaves look much like a longjing tea: two fresh green leaves and a bud, carefully formed by carefully orchestrated movements, whereby the tea processors place the green leaves into large woks coated with a small amount of tea oil, and they pan fry them using special hand movements (usually 10) that fold and refold the leaves into flat spears.

My notes, and I quote: "SOOOO GOOD."

THE PREPARATION
In a Japanese teapot, I used 1 tsp/cup at 70C, for 4 minutes.

THE LIQUOR
As is typical with an An Ji Bai Cha, it is a pale gold with a very slight greenish cast. Beautifully sweet with slight hint of bitterness to the tongue (maybe less time steeping would work better). This tea has much the same effect on me that good cranberry juice has: I can drink it endlessly, insatiably, and never feel like I've had enough. I would get to the bottom of the cup, surprised that I was done already, and ready for more.

Comparing three Arya Estate '09 Darjeelings

2009-09-02T09:08:00.001-05:00

It's moments like this that remind me why I drink tea. I've come a long way from avoiding stale teabag tea, to being able to experience (at once) three of the premiere teas of Darjeeling. It's hard to express how lovely is the aroma I'm experiencing. It's like springtime; it's like a mountain of spices.

I have before me three cups of Arya Estate Darjeeling, provided very kindly by Thunderbolt Tea, via TeaViews.com, where I am a contributor. The three teas are:

Arya SFTGFOP1 China '09
Arya FTGFOP1 Clonal '09
Arya SFTGFOP1 Sample '09

What surprises me is how different the tea leaves appear, but how alike the liquors themselves are. The aroma rising from the three cups is intoxicating.

Arya SFTGFOP1 China '09
Slightly bitter, complex, astringent, leads to sweet aftertaste. High notes of cherry or berry fruit;

Dry leaves: Twisted green-black leaves. In terms of oxidation, the middle.
Wet leaves: Quite large leaves , nice tobacco aroma.

Arya FTGFOP1 Clonal '09
Richer taste than the first and third; deeper flavor. because of more oxidation? Cherries. Spun sugar.

Dry leaves: Orthodox preparation, darkest oxidation; mostly black, a little green.
Wet leaves: darkest oxidation of the three; a rich red-green. A bit difficult to discern the aroma, in comparison with the other two.

Arya SFTGFOP1 Sample '09
Brightest, most astringent sample. Brilliant example of a high-end Darjeeling.

Dry leaves: Leaves appear as oxidized as the China '09. However, the smallest in size of leaf.
Wet leaves: Lightest oxidation, almost entirely green; beautiful garden-fresh scent, like my Grandpa Allison's rose garden.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
As I compared the three Darjeelings, I was struck by how difficult the tea taster's job must be. My palate, though much more sophisticated than it was a few years ago, was simply overjoyed by what it was drinking, but trying to explain the subtle differences among three teas of the same estate, grown at the same time, sitting next to one another was challenging. I had hoped that this review would be really in-depth, an exploration of the movement among the leaves of these plants. Instead, I discovered that being a tea taster would be a job for a more highly skilled drinker than I. When I read that tea shop owners will cup 60 or 100 different, nearly identical teas in a day, and then be able to make value judgments among them, I start to understand what that would entail.

For my interest, questions I am left with: What are the differences between the clonal and the Chinese varietals? How do these differences affect the final cupping? Are there characteristics I would expect to find that would help me when making purchasing decisions?

I know, not much useful information here for a tea connoisseur, except for me saying that a tea cupper's job is a challenging one, and I can only imagine how much practice and training it would take to become one.

Review: Yin Zhen (Silver Needle), Canton Tea Company

2009-08-25T12:59:00.011-05:00

A typical day in the 39 Steeps tea laboratory.

To my taste, the first sip of a white tea is almost not worth drinking, so insipid do I find it to be. With Canton Tea Company's Yin Zhen (Silver Needle), I find that to be almost, but not quite, true. That was a compliment, by the way, in case you're keeping score.

I am always fascinated by how leaf juice from this plant can be so mercurial. It will change from steeping to steeping, from setting to setting, and the variation is endless. In fact, it's almost impossible for me to get the same exact results twice (though I don't try to do so very often, because variety is the spice of life). The literal translation for gongfu is, "skillful preparation." Knowing just how long to steep a particular type of tea, and at what temperature, and in what fashion, shows how deeply your knowledge of tea goes. In my case, I coined the term, gong-faux, to signify that much of my tea drinking is a clumsy combination of research, obsessive patience, and all-too-often failed experiments as I grope toward a decent cup.

Today's example from The 39 Steeps Tea Laboratory:

Read online that this particular Yin Zhen, distributed by Canton Tea Company, is best served in perhaps three steeps in a gongfu session. Think to self, "The amount of tea they recommend seems too small for gongfu. Like I know. Anyway, double it." Steep the white tea for 2 or 3 minutes at 75C, and sip when hot (or, hottish), and get... almost nothing. Pour out into the tiny gongfu cup, and sip again. Strong! Almost bitter. Maybe too much leaf for this gongfu preparation? Stupid to go off the reservation! Perhaps a white tea prepared gongfu only requires a tablespoon, rather than two, of the tea. Perhaps I should have compensated for more leaf by steeping less time, instead of (finally) following directions? Sip again... and ready for the second steeping. Go off recipe, and this time steep only half the time. Better, but still a bit bitter. This shouldn't be bitter. Am I mad to mess this up like this? Bleh. Toss the whole thing and try again. Note to self: following only half of the directions will ensure a lousy result, as anyone reading this could easily have predicted.

Well, let's reread Canton Tea Company's Web site to see how to prepare this stuff:

Origin : Fuding County, Fujian Province
Harvest : Spring 2009
Varietal : Fuding Da Bai Hao
Certification : Organic certification in China. Direct from the farmer.

This rare and delicious Silver Needle white tea is entirely hand-made from Fuding Da Bai Hao tips and is simply picked at dawn and scattered in the sun to dry. It is a very high quality Yin Zhen showing a dense covering of the characteristic white hairs on a healthy, plump, pale green leaf. The liquor is very pale and bright - the colour of champagne and it has a sweet nutty aroma. It tastes soft, creamy and mellow with a long and pleasant aftertaste.

Brewing tips: Silver needle should be brewed quite cool, around 75c, allowed to steep for 2 to 3 minutes and infused at least 3 times

NB These fine, high grade, whole leaf teas yield different flavours with each successive infusion. The second is usually considered the best. This is why the best way to brew the tea is in a small pot and to make several quick infusions.

Buyers Notes “Try nibbling on a bud of this top Silver Needle after infusion: it will be sweet and delicious, unlike lower grades which can be bitter and woody. This tea comes from Fuding, Fujian province. The farmer won the gold medal for Yin Zhen at this year’s international tea competition in Las Vegas.”

Nibbling, check. (Tastes a bit bitter, honestly, and kind of furry.) The appearance is exactly as described: small buds, olive green with a dusting of silver hairs overall. Dusty smell to the dry leaves that tickles the nose and reminds me of a hot summer meadow. The Web site provides no notes on how much leaf to use, but I can only assume the amount I used earlier was too much, so I am going to use about a tablespoon, give or take (now there's scientific accuracy for ya). I'll go with 2:30 to get the middle setting, and use that throughout the three steepings. I am unfamiliar with treating whit tea in gongfu fashion, so we'll see what we come up with this time.

SECOND TIME AROUND
1st steeping: 2.5 minutes, 75C, 1tbsp/cup
Pretty weak, not terribly gripping, though not at all bitter. The sweetness and drying make me experience this primarily in the feeling, but not the taste, of the tea. As usual, I think my barbarian tastebuds are not sufficiently attuned to properly enjoy this white tea. Incidentally, my seven-year-old boy enjoyed using the new wenxianbei immensely, and reported the smell of the dry leaves was, "weird."

2nd steeping: (same)
The tea has the slightest of flavors-- buttery is right, per the Canton Tea Company description of the texture. The tea, to me, seems apprehended primarily in the retronasal aftertaste that rises in the throat; a bit like water chestnut or brazil nuts, or perhaps white bread very lightly toasted.

3rd steeping: (same)
There is simply not enough coming from this cup of tea for my taste. Too subtle by half.

I'm beginning to feel like Goldilocks: first time, too strong. Second time, too weak. Third time, just right?

AND THIRD TIME AROUND (good grief)

1st infusion: 2 minutes, 70C, precisely 1.4682 tablespoons per cup. Give or take.
The tea is quite strong, buttery, and a pale green-gold. Happily, I used a strainer, because there was quite a bit of broken leaf that made it past my gaiwan lid.

2nd Infusion: 2 minutes, 70C
There's a floral quality that reminds me strongly of a light jasmine tea. I'm not truly crazy about jasmine tea, as a rule, but this is interesting, not cloying.

3rd Infusion: 2 minutes, 70C
In spite of the description of the Web site, I enjoy the third steeping the most. Palest gold in color, and quite subtle in flavor.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
Well, for all the hullabaloo of finding the right volume of tea per cup, and settling on a good formula, I end up thinking, as usual, "This tea, though rather interesting, is not what I'm looking for." Just too subtle for me. I like my enigmas wrapped in bright, shiny wrapping paper with a bow, thank you.

Great Frankenstein's laboratory image is by artist Steven Martiniere, found via the Frankensteinia blog.

Review: Big Red Robe Supreme (Da Hong Pao) 2009, JINGTea

2009-08-20T23:20:00.005-05:00

No, It's Not Tea: Gregory's Arroz con Pollo

2009-08-19T15:18:00.010-05:00

No, everything is not about tea. Sometimes, it's about food and family.

My seven-year-old boy, Gregory Robert, is a serious reader of this site. Well, he claims to be, though I think he may skim a bit. At any rate, he's a young connoisseur (that's a person who enjoys things a lot) of fine tea, and he has definite ideas about food, as well. He has asked me to write in this blog about his new favorite food, Arroz con Pollo.

My wife and I are concerned about our health and weight, and as we try to gain the first and lose the second, we are cooking from, The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook: A Delicious Alternative for Lifelong Health, written by Nancy Harmon Jenkins. And Gregory loved "Quick and Easy Arroz con Pollo" so much, he thought it belongs where all good things go: The 39 Steeps.

One of Gregory's best friends is Galito, the eight-year-old son of our great friends, Dunia and Galo. Galito gets to eat Arroz con Pollo all the time, because his mom was born in Cuba, where this is a staple (a food that people eat all the time).

When I first encountered Cuban food, I thought it would be very spicy, like Mexican. But no, it is more like classic Spanish fare, without so much heat in the mouth. Arroz con Pollo is rather like an easy version of the classic paella. And the easy version of an easy version just can't be beat.

Gregory loved the richness of the chicken and rice dish, which has been spiced up with onion, and cloves, and tomatoes, and pimento, along with the world's most expensive spice, saffron.

Saffron comes from the saffron crocus, a type of purple flower. Look at the picture at the top of this blog for an example of this crocus flower. And have a look at the little red strings poking out of the crocus. Those are the stigmas, which help the flower reproduce itself. These tiny, little threads are dried out and sold for a lot of money, because you can imagine how many of them it takes to make a pound! Thousands, I think. It takes so much work and so much time to pluck all of those little stigmas that it drives the price sky-high. That's why saffron is the world's most expensive spice. And we have a little of it right in our very own kitchen!

Gregory will get to smell the saffron when we cook the dish (if he can be dragged away from his wicked-sweet Nintendo DS long enough), so he can identify it in any dish he eats from now on. And there's just a touch of it in the Arroz con Pollo, but a little goes a long way! That's part of what makes the rice so yummy and golden colored.

I'm continually amazed at Gregory's perspicacity and willingness to explore new things. He is surprisingly aware of his palate and likes thinking about the interesting flavors of the teas and foods we give him. Someday he wants to be a videogame creator, or a tea maker, or maybe a rescue guy who works with the Coast Guard.

Well done, Imen Shan, owner of Tea Habitat

2009-08-19T09:15:00.003-05:00

Imen Shan is a friend in tea, and I've come to appreciate her very much. Her tea store, Tea Habitat, was featured in the L.A. Times food section with a positively incandescent review that must be the envy of every other restaurant in the Los Angeles area. I will give you an excerpt:

This is the next level of hard-core Chinese tea appreciation: dan cong oolong. You know how there's single-barrel bourbon and single-cask scotch? Well, this is single-tree tea. This means that every cup of dan cong you drink has been brewed from the leaves of one particular tea tree on the slopes of Phoenix Mountain in Guangdong. Each old dan cong tree is known, named, carefully tended and loved for its own peculiar character.

And America's only specialist in dan cong is right here in Southern California: Tea Habitat, a hidden jewel of high Chinese tea connoisseurship. It's in a Rancho Palos Verdes shopping mall, across from a T.J. Maxx.

And after that, C. Thi Nguyen, the author of the article, "At Tea Habitat, Tea Connoisseurship Is Taken to the Extreme," starts to get enthusiastic.

Imen deserved every bit of this glowing review, and I wish her all the best.

VIDEO: "Wrong Fu Cha" makes a cup of tea, Chaozhou style

2009-08-17T08:29:00.014-05:00

Chaozhou Yiwu Puerh Cha from Brandon on Vimeo.

I only just discovered the "Wrong Fu Cha" site, which has a very nice video of the Chaozhou style of gongfu tea preparation for a Yiwu Pu-erh.

Now, for those reading that have no idea what the above sentence means: Chaozhou is a term I've only just come across myself, in reference to a type of teapot made in China's Phoenix Mountain region, where a special clay is dug to make teapots that are perfect for Dan Cong oolongs. Gongfu preparation means taking great care, using skill to produce a beautiful cup of tea. Typical gongfu tea preparation uses a lot of leaf and many short steeps. A Pu-erh is a compressed, fermented tea from the Yunnan region of China. Books have been read about each of these terms, but I won't attempt further explanation here.

Brandon here demonstrates how to break apart a beeng of compressed pu-erh tea, then to use hot water to heat the lidded cup [gaiwan] and the drinking cups, and then to rinse the pu-erh leaves, and finally to serve.

Notice how Brandon has everything nearby and never needs to get up. I love Chinese-style tea preparation because it's fastidious, but it's not fussy: There are no unnecessary movements. All the care taken to make the tea is done in order to produce the most pleasing cup of tea possible, using the materials at hand.

Also notice how the gaiwan [lidded tea bowl] is kept inside a larger bowl in which is hot water. This ensures the water stays at a high temperature as the water steeps. I would think this would work perfectly for pu-erh, but maybe not so well for teas where it's imperative the water is allowed to cool a bit to avoid stewing the leaves.

>> FURTHER OBSERVATIONS
Obviously, this is not your hyper-refined Japanese tea ceremony. It's Brandon at "Wrong Fu Cha," for crying out loud, so what did you expect? (The Chinese gongfu tea practice as demonstrated by the Chinese-American Tea Association video I showed earlier is an example of a more delicate and practiced tea ceremony.) Brandon isn't demonstrating the most perfectly choreographed art of tea, but rather a very relaxed and pragmatic, thoughtful and fastidious way to make a cup of tea. I intend to try this out in the weeks ahead.

>> UPDATE
I've actually been using this method to make oolong and pu-erh teas, which require a high steeping temperature. I frequently have to empty the bowl as the water cools, replacing with hot in between steepings. And because I use an antique bowl and don't want to break it, I don't just pour boiling water into it, but rather use my quite-hot tap water, which is scalding but not boiling. The aesthetic effect is quite lovely, and I like how it keeps the gaiwan hot while it's steeping.

Review: Tea Hub, Da Hong Pao (lightly roasted) 2008

2009-08-16T05:09:00.003-05:00

I recently wrote about Tea Hub's "Organic Da Hong Pao (heavily roasted)," and I urge you to read about it in full. An excerpt:

Da Hong Pao is one of China's famous oolong teas, and is one of the world's greats. It's known in English as, "Big Red Robe," named when a Chinese emperor was so overwhelmed by the tea that he gave his robes of office to an underling and commanded that they be placed at the roots of the tree that produced this great thing he was tasting. It's been cultivated primarily in the WuYi mountains forever, and the volcanic rocky soil produces the tea's very unique flavor.

As with all things, other people have already written about Da Hong Pao at great length, and I love reading information such as this, which I found at The Seven Cups:

In the last 1000 years, hundreds of varieties of tea bushes have been identified as growing in Wu Yi Shan. Out of these hundreds of bushes, Da Hong Pao, Tie Luo Han, Bai Ji Guan, Shui Jin Gui are considered the Four Famous Wu Yi Wulongs. Of the four, Da Hong Pao is unquestionably the most famous. What are considered to be the mother bushes of Da Hong Pao still live in the cliffs of Wu Yi Shan, and are now over 350 years old. Since Wu Yi shan has so many bush types, the famous teas are always produced in small quantities. They will never be truly common products, at least the tea grown inside the mountain range; there are a lot of areas in the surrounding mountains that are producing large quantities of these cultivars. Certainly the most common of the rock wulongs is Rou Gui, a cultivar that some locals rank as better than the more famous teas.

I beg you to read the rest, if you wish to learn about Da Hong Pao.

THE PREPARATION
As before, I made the tea with my patented gong-faux tea stylings, in which I use my very Western tea equipment to approximate as best I can a true gongfu preparation. Namely, lots of leaf, very short steepings. As I've explained elsewhere, tea prepared in this style can be drunk as a book is read: in chapters. Each short steep allows the various flavors to be read separately, rather than all in one as is the Western method of tea preparation. And using a lot of leaf, you have the benefit of many steeps, all with different characters. (I've never tasted a tea yet that allows 39 steeps, but I'm looking!)

1) Rinse
A quick rinse to clean off debris from the leaf, as well as to wake up the leaves properly for a nice first steeping.

2) 1st Infusion: 25s
The tea is transparent and pure, and it has a good mouthfeel. But yet, it's a bit sharp, a touch bitter. I believe this is a fault of my own gong-faux and not that of the tea's. It is ever more clear that I need a competent instructor to help me increase the finesse of what I can get out of the multiple-steeping Chinese tea preparation. In retrospect, for Da Hong Pao, I would start with a quite short steeping-- perhaps 5 seconds-- and then go up from there. This is a tea with strong bones, and it must be respected (even though it is lightly, not heavily roasted).

3) 2nd infusion: 15s
Much more to my liking. Tea is clear, beautifully amber-peach-brown in color. The fragrance is lovely and light, and has a unique minerality that I've come to expect from Da Hong Pao. It is noticeably less "roasty" in tone than the last Da Hong Pao I tasted from Tea Hub.

4) 3rd infusion: 20s
Gorgeous aroma, which makes me think of sculpting clay or slip, perhaps-- a bit mineral, and beautifully rich. It's not a floral aroma, by any means, but it's sweet and sharp at the same time. The aroma seems to carry the flavor at first, but as it cools, the bright, sharp flavors rise up in the mouth, as well. The oolong has a pleasing mouthfeel, just a bit tingly, but with a great presence. This is the best steeping yet, and well worth the price of admission.

(4th, 5th, 6th infusions: No notes taken, so sorry.)

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I really do love this tea. It's got bones, it's pure, it's complex, it is nuanced, and the flavor is utterly distinct. The light roasting allows me to taste the tea itself, rather than primarily the roastiness, which I think is a good choice.

Well done, Tea Hub, on sourcing this tea. Thanks!

[And by the way, I'm quite proud of finding the image above, which is a perfect counterpoint to the heavily roasted Da Hong Pao from TeaHub, which I interviewed previously.

>> UPDATE: I corrected the link above, so the picture of the young monks sends you to the right Web site. I hope you'll visit there, because it's a great site.]

Review: The Tea Spot, Green Twisted Spears

2009-08-15T14:11:00.004-05:00

Most people in the U.S. think of tea as the dusty stuff inside of a tea bag: dark brown or black, ground powder that is not interesting enough to bear mention. Green Twisted Spears, from The Tea Spot, is entirely different.

THE LEAVES

The leaves are two-inch-long, tightly wound spears, per the name, perfectly formed and worlds away from the tea powder most people are used to. The shape doesn't tell me anything about flavor or aroma, but it says an enormous amount about the attention that has gone into its manufacture. This is a very carefully made tea, and I have some hope that it will be interesting. When the leaves are steeped, they are lightly aromatic with a citrus tone, and the leaves remain fairly tightly furled.

THE TEA

A green from Sri Lanka, this is a novelty to me. I've had Ceylon black teas before, of course, and some of them can be quite nice. Now, green teas traditionally come from China and Japan. But more recently, other tea-growing regions have recognized that by producing high-quality, connoisseur-level teas, they won't be as boxed in as they would were they growing only the commoditized leaves destined for mass-produced tea bags. Happily, I discover, there are Sri Lankan tea farms with an eye toward the high-end market.

THE PREPARATION

The Web site gave me no indication of steeping, so I called The Tea Spot and spoke to Jessica, who explained that a heaping teaspoon or maybe tablespoon of tea should go in water around 180F (82C), for two to three minutes. Further, she explained that the tightly wound tea leaves would allow me to steep it "multiple, multiple times," like an oolong. I chose 180F for 2 minutes for the first steeping. We'll see what happens with subsequent steepings, and I'll see how long I like to drink it.

THE CUP

Steeping 1

Golden and transparent, without a hint of cloudiness. The flavor is clean and lively, with a hint of earthiness to it. Sri Lankan teas have a unique flavor profile, which I can also taste here in this green-- earthy, fruity, even a bit buttery. As greens go, this provides that clean mouthfeel, very light, though it has that earthy note I mentioned earlier, which anchors the tea. It's just a little weak, though; 3 minutes would have been better than 2.

Steeping 2

2 min, 82C. taste is mostly same as before. woody quality stronger. Pleasant aftertaste that tastes, oddly, a bit like ghee, the Indian clarified butter I sometimes use when cooking.

Steeping 3

3 min, 80C. The tea weakens noticeably, and honestly it loses a bit too much interest.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I can see why the manufacturer tells us to steep many times, but I couldn't get enough enjoyment out of it to go past the fourth steeping. I like how the Sri Lankan terroir affected the flavor of the green, because it was like finding a friendly acquaintance in an unusual place: say, a friend from church, greeting me when I'm climbing up a mountain slope in Colorado.

I've never had a green Ceylon before, and I'm pleased with the beautiful handcrafting of the leaf, which was sufficiently interesting to merit an experiment with the tea, all by itself. While this tea isn't as nuanced or bold as the Chinese greens I am more accustomed to, when taken on its own merit, it's pleasant. I'd be interested to see what kind of tea the Ceylon producers will be producing in a hundred years, after much practice and developing cultivars specifically for the green tea style.

In all, this tea is beautiful to look at, and okay to drink. One could say this is like those presentation teas that are great fun to look at, but don't necessarily knock your socks off with aroma or flavor.

>> UPDATE:
Found 08.17.09 on FaceBook:

The TeaSpot

sweet!

If the rest of you are intrigued,http://tiny.cc/spearreview Get automatic 30% off all Green Twisted Spears sizes, today only! http://tiny.cc/spearsale

Found on Twitter: Tea Vs. Cancer

2009-08-07T07:02:00.004-05:00

teacraftecm [Nigel Mellican] "Green tea can't prevent every cancer, but it's the cheapest & most practical method for prevention available to the public"- Hirota Fujiki

teacraftecm Hirota Fujiki is a chemist at the National Cancer Center Research Institute, Tokyo Japan - my thanks to Choi Time Teas for the quotation

Video: "Love of Tea," by Chinese-American Tea Association

2009-08-05T22:43:00.005-05:00

The Chinese-American Tea Association (CATA) produced this short video as an introduction to Chinese tea.

An observation: Whereas Japanese tea ceremony is intended to allow one to experience peace and harmony through the actions and carefully controlled environment of the tea ceremony itself; and English tea time is designed to give one a cozy, cultered sensation via the plenitude of accoutrements-- flowered tea cups, doilies, finger sandwiches, and so on; and American tea (well, of this, the less said, the better); the Chinese tea ceremony seems to me terribly pragmatic, every movement designed to squeeze the most flavor and aroma out of those leaves. By being so deadly serious about making leaf juice taste yummy, the Chinese have designed a very efficient process, hidden within all this seeming complexity.

I will have to find out more about CATA, and I'm very glad they spent the energy to create this video.

Chicago Tea Writers Confab

2009-08-02T06:40:00.033-05:00

"I am quite certain, no better tea was drunk in all Chicago tonight, or with a more appreciative group of new friends."

THE CHICAGO TEA WRITERS GATHERING

Yesterday I had more fun drinking tea since... well, I can't remember when. Tony Gebely (World of Tea blog) and I met at the Chicago home of Lainie Petersen (Lainie Sips blog), where we proceeded to dive deep into our shared enjoyment of tea and respective treasure troves. And we took no tasting notes, save some short blurbs on Twitter. Lainie, our generous host, pulled out several sets of beautiful teaware appropriate to each tea flight. In all, we spent about six hours together, gravitating toward Chinese teas, served gongfu style where appropriate.

While Lainie, Tony, and I shared the teas we each brought, we got to know one another better; stories about how we came to love tea, and our thoughts on tea culture in the U.S., and so on. We came to the odd realization that we were undoubtedly drinking the best teas in all Chicago at that moment. I hope we can build on this gathering to become a vibrant part of the U.S. tea Renaissance.

We each had brought quite a number of other teas to the gathering, all of them excellent, but these were the ones we decided upon. (Lainie and Tony, if you have anything to add or corrections to make, please let me know.)

A TEA TORRENT (in two acts)

ACT 1: Lainie Petersen, host

Silver Needle white (Jing Tea). Lainie provided this lovely palate cleanser, a lovely Silver Needle white (Fuding Bai Hao Yin Zhen 2009) from Jing Tea, which I'd tasted before, when they sent me a generous sample. I'm not a white tea aficionado, by any means, as I find it to be too subtle for my taste; but as a palate awakener, it was perfect, and Lainie managed to serve it in such a way that it woke up my interest with some subtler notes in evidence that I hadn't noticed before.
Jasmine Yellow Buds (TeaGschwendner). For once, I found a jasmine tea I could drink. Lainie pulled this from her Cave of Wonders. When I smelled the package, I thought I wouldn't like it at all, because the jasmine scent was very strong. But when she steeped the tea, I discovered this yellow tea, scented with jasmine, is more subtle than I had thought. It's a yellow, not the typical green. I cannot find this specific tea on the TeaGschwendner Web site.
Pre-rain Organic Anji Bai Cha green (Jing Tea). I love this tea, and I had also written it up here. I convinced Tony to nibble on the leaves before drinking, and we all enjoyed the intense, light, refreshing complexity of this tea.
Honey Orchid aroma gold medal #1 2008, single-bush Dan Cong oolong (Tea Habitat). I pulled this one out, and Lainie and Tony were blown away by the long twists of leaf and the intense, ethereal aroma. Lightly roasted, the tea has quite an easy touch. I introduced this to Lainie and Tony, who had not had Dan Cong before. A great start.
Super Tie Gwan Yin oolong (Hong Tea). This was Tony's first contribution to the flight. Daniel Hong is a friend of ours, a tea farmer in China who writes about his tea in his blog, Hong Tea Dao (link above). When Tony compared the regular to the Super, he was amazed by the difference between them and the intensity of the latter. This is a superior, complex tea. As a side note, Daniel wrote earlier this year about a red-tipped TGY that he was personally overseeing, a varietal that is very difficult to maintain and manage, and I'll have to follow up to see how that came along. For Iron Goddess, Hong Tea is a purveyor to keep an eye on.
Fujian Golden Monkey (Teaism). Honestly, the exact order in which we drank the teas is a bit muddled in my recollection, but I'll do the best I can. But after the lighter offerings at the beginning, we moved on to the deeper, richer Chinese teas. This tea, provided by Lainie, was a Teaism offering. The Golden Monkey was a bit on the heavy side for me, but it's definitely one of Lainie's favorites.
Ju Duo Jai 2009, single-bush Dan Cong oolong, Almond Aroma (Tea Habitat). I was a bit surprised by Tony's and Lainie's exuberance over this tea. I mean, I like it, but I thought Lainie's head might lift off her body and float about the room, such was her delight. She is an almond fanatic, she says, and this tea (while not being flavored with almond) rather makes one think of almonds. What I find interesting, over the multiple steeps we got from this tea, is how strong the flavor is over the course of the flight.
Yunnan Gold Silk (Dream About Tea). I don't remember when we drank this. It is a spicy, lovely, affordable Yunnan. We discussed the Cha Dao Web site, and how one of their writers made an extensive study of Yunnan teas, well worth reading.
San Mao Pu-erh. This was from Lainie's stash, though I don't know the provenance. Lainie provided a few steeps from her dedicated pu-erh Yixing pot. It wasn't a connoisseur-level tea, perhaps, but it was enjoyable, and Lainie assured us it was a strongly energy-boosting tea. Of course, buried as it was within the deluge of other teas, I can only surmise about how it would be by itself. We didn't steep it too many times.

20-year-old Tie Guan Yin (Hong Tea). (See notes below.)
You Hua Xiang 2009, single-bush Dan Cong oolong, Pomelo Aroma (Tea Habitat). This was, for me, the highlight of the evening. Lainie started serving Tony's intensely roasted 20-year-old Tie Guan Yin, which came from our friend, Daniel Hong. The first few steepings were very much about the roasty flavor. Then we popped open the Pomelo Aroma dan cong, which had been provided by Imen Shan of Tea Habitat. This lively, intense tea was pure and intense, with the fruity-floral aroma of the Chinese pomelo fruit, which is something of a melon or grapefruit, apparently. Then we decided to drink the two teas against each other, steep for steep, using one of Lainie's Yixing pots for the TGY and a tiny glass pot for the DC, and two sets of drinking and sniffing cups (wén xiāng bēi, 聞香杯: Thank you, Michael J Coffey) from Lainie's cupboards. The contrasts between the dark, roasted complexity of the Iron Goddess of Mercy against the intense but light Dan Cong were outrageously delicious (to steal Lainie's word). I was more drawn to the light Dan Cong, while Tony preferred the depth of the Tie Guan Yin, and Lainie seemed divided. Interestingly, the DC seemed quite consistent in flavor/aroma (prompting me to note that the dan cong seemed as intense on the seventh steep as it was on the second), while the TGY was changing pretty dramatically from steep to steep, as the roastiness gave way to the more characteristic oolong complexity. The TGY leaves were perfectly black and rather scary looking, reminding me of the black blob creature that comprised the black suit worn by the hero in Spider-Man III. The DC leaves were so long and perfectly formed, and they opened a bit more quickly than the TGY. For me, pairing the two teas allowed each sip to be fresh and intense, rather than losing interest. I was impressed at how strong both teas were after maybe seven steepings each, when we ran out of time. Lainie kept the two teas in the refrigerator and planned to continue steeping on into the next day. I'll be interested to find how far they went.

ACT 2: Dream About Tea, host Hong Wu

After all of that beautiful, complex, amazing tea, we were elevated and delighted (and in my case, quite chatty, whereas Tony seemed to be relaxed and peaceful, and Lainie remained ever the competent and generous host). Lainie, Tony, and I decided to move the party on to Dream About Tea, where Tony left after a good look at their serious collection of teaware, pu-erh bings, and loose-leaf teas. Lainie and I tasted the following:

Pu-erh. This had been extracted from a seven-layer bing and served in a tall, clear glass, and was fruity and light. As I got down toward the bottom of the glass, where the pu-erh had fallen, the brew would get quite bitter, and I would then refill the glass and drink the light, sweet, fruity tea again. I'll get you the exact title of this tea when I can. Dream About Tea is about to open their online store, and these teas will be able to be shipped directly.
Lu An Gua Pian, green tea. Lainie had this one, which I tasted, and it was big, full, green leaves and quite refreshing.

OVERALL IMPRESSION

Well, I'm sure I forgot something, and I wish I had written at least something down at the time, so I wouldn't have to rely on my shaky memory two days later. I was delighted to meet in person the two other tea writers that I know of that live the Chicago area. Together, we were wondering at the fact that Chicago, being a world-class city, has not developed its tea culture in the same way Washington, D.C., or New York, or particularly San Francisco have. This is not to say there are not some serious tea companies here (Ten Ren, Chicago Coffee & Tea Exchange, TeaGschwendner, Dream About Tea, and Todd & Holland spring to mind). But nevertheless, we were thinking about the fact that we live in a coffee-drinking culture here, and it's rare to come across another tea drinker. We'll be exploring that together in the future.

Drinking so many first-rate teas was delightful and invigorating, and I wish everyone could have this experience. Tea is a great way to make new friends.

Thank you, Tony and Lainie, for coming together like this. And Lainie, you've been a great host. Cheers!

>> UPDATE:
Well, with any post of this sort, there were bound to be some mistakes and omissions that needed correction. Above, I added Jasmine Yellow Buds, by TeaGschwendner; finished writing the Super TGY post that had been partially deleted; corrected the names and attributions of Lainie's teas; corrected the steeping method of the 20-year TGY; and added in the name of our host at Dream About Tea.