Thanks, Mom! (2018 Vahdam, Okayti Premium Darjeeling Spring Black Tea)

Christmas, 1983 or so. My mother engineered a Christmas to remember. Kate and I were as always excited about the holiday, because at our house, we CELEBRATED. My parents' room was locked for the entire month of December, and my mom and dad would wink and make the "I have a secret" sign we used (thumb against nose twice, bumping hands together twice in a complicated gesture I'm powerless to describe properly). Christmas morning came, and Santa arrived. Schwinn 10-speed bikes for both of us, plus the 100 or so other gifts scattered through the house.

Every year is like this. My June birthday month has been renamed "Stevuary," because the party starts on the first day of the month, and continues on and past the 23rd. Each year, my mom tries to give gifts that are perfect. (Yes, Dad gives gifts, too. But no one I know can hold a candle to Mom, who makes it her life's business.) We never know who is going to be the recipient of pure perfection, but it's always at least one of us. One year, it was the expensive Russian teacups (podstakanniki, which I was informed by one of my former Russian students that I've been boldly mispronouncing for years, and the which I can't force my mouth around no matter how hard I try to copy her accent.) Another year, a sibling's difficult bill would be paid. A special gold head joint for our budding flutist. And on. And on. My parents were not wealthy people, but we always felt rich because somehow price never seemed to be an issue. Santa would come, the tree was surrounded with a knee-high drift of presents marked, "From SC," in my mother's graceful, old-school script.

This year, Mom had a health scare. When she was young, she had an undiagnosed cough that doctors treated with codeine and other palliatives. She coughed her way through high school, got better, and never thought much about it again. Then a couple years ago she found out she had cancer, and it would be treated with surgery and radiation. Unknown to us, the radiation that would save her life from the dreaded C word would also burn her lungs, reducing their function drastically. Eventually, she ended up on oxygen with fairly limited mobility. This means no more trips to the mall. And right about Christmas, Mom's breathing eroded to the point where she could barely talk for the coughing. (She was holding out against going to the doctor, convinced that what turned out to be a bronchial infection on top of her lung disease was going to land her in the hospital. Happy ending: She got meds and was soon well after the holiday season was over.)

And yet. Christmas must go on.

Mom has discovered the Internet.

Now, saying that makes my mom sound like a n00b. Yeah, nope. She's a pro. She broke the Internet making the best Christmas ever.

The last couple of years, as you may have noticed (those two of you who still know this blog exists), I've been too busy with real life, and not inspired enough to really write about brown leaf juice. How many more Simpsons references and high art images must I come up with every time I drink a cup of tea? Instead, I've been working on a novel (and, yes, there is tea in it, though I'm editing it out because only real tea-holics would appreciate such focus on gaiwans and gongfu), and on teaching literature, and helping my brother resurrect his very excellent business. So as a consequence of changing priorities, I'd rather run out of good tea. I was living in a tea desert. I was on one of the outer rings of Saturn, so far as tea was concerned. I was tea-ed out. I had no fu in my gongfu. I was an ex-tea-er.

Then December rolled around, and Mom found something new: TeaGschwendner's tea advent calendar. Hung on my classroom wall, I would open one each morning, and the students would pick among the stash what to drink for the day. I had to remember some of my high school German to describe to the kids what was inside each packet, or I could simply cut them open (the packets, not the students) and let the kids sniff and decide. Most of the teas were flavored, and so not my bag at all, but it's slowly converting the kids to the Good Stuff.

And then Christmas rolled around. Unbeknownst to me, Mom had spent weeks reading my old tea blog, finding which teas I had loved the best, and then going online to read all my friends' blogs to get their opinions on what the best Darjeelings were, and where to find them; and how to get her hands on dan cong oolong; and fancy greens; and a full pound of high-end Assam for day-to-day drinking. This lady is thorough when she does her homework.

Such a ridiculous, amazing Christmas. Mom bought presents like they were going out of style--not terribly expensive, but perfect for each of us. (Or were they? Price never seems to be the point; Mom gives gifts that are correct, and if that's five cents or five hundred dollars, it doesn't seem to enter into the calculations for any of us.) She celebrated Christmas like it was going to be her last one with us. The kind of gift giving I remember from when I was little. An embarrassment of riches.

And, no, I don't mean the tea.

. . .

Vahdam Tea (an Oprah Best Thing) distributes Darjeelings, among other things. This morning my wife made me the Okayti Premium Darjeeling Spring Black Tea: Single Estate, Private Reserve.

Golden-brown liquor, as one would expect from a Darj. But the flavor: sparkling, with something that reminds one of cherries, perhaps--fruity, to be sure, but only in the sense that it reminds me of fruit. Done correctly (as Suzanne did, saints be praised!), the tea is fragrant, able to grab my attention from a full five feet away. The aroma closely aligns with the flavor of the tea itself, which is not always the case. Gentle but bright, not too sharp, and utterly enjoyable. It is for moments like this that I drink tea, and read great literature, and write, and think, and study the Bible, and talk about what I love. It's the times that make me feel awake after a long winter slumber, that make it all springtime inside without its cleaning.

Thank you, friend(s) who remember this blog. Go grab some Darjeeling and let me know what you've been drinking lately.

Phoenix Tea Sindano Fedha (Silver Needle): Kenya

"Mr. Knoerr, may I have some more?" The tallest boy in the school, good at sports, loud and energetic, wants a second tiny cup of Kenyan white tea. The room is unusually quiet today, because Caleb's friends have somehow convinced him to stay mostly silent—a feat I find astonishing and which I could repeat. He wrote his request on a piece of paper and handed it to me before accepting a refill.

Throughout my adult life, I've resigned myself to being alone in my interests, listening to 20th-century classical music, and reading books no one has read and no one has any interest in reading. So it comes as a continual surprise that my students want to share in (and demand, in fact) the most esoteric of my interests, tea.

Earlier in my blog, I wrote many times that the reason Americans don't drink tea is that they don't know what they're missing. We Americans, like everyone else on the planet, like the good stuff in life, when we know it exists and that it's worth the effort. Back in the '70s, when I was growing up, TV commercials (remember those?) sold Folgers coffee with flavor crystals, which brand my parents had in big canisters in the fridge. It was predictable, and it was better than whatever sludge came before, I guess.



But then the '90s happened, and Starbucks and microbreweries changed the way we drank. Coffee went from a cup of Joe to a double-mocha Venti Josephus; and Stroh's went by the wayside for Hop Zombie I.P.A. When we take some time and observe, we can really enjoy things once in a while.

(Here's a quick report on a Kenyan Silver Needle tea from Phoenix Tea. I had it awhile back, and I'm only now completing this write-up. Pardon, everyone who ever lived, for being so tardy!)


Steep 1
Pale, transparent gold
5 min steep, for fun
bright, sharp-edged at this extreme end of taste; light and floral with less
lactonic, milky hint under the brightness

Steep 2
Almost a chocolate first note, milky, white chocolate, a bit floral, vanilla, strong. "Yeah, it's different." "It smells like girls." High note of lilac, perhaps. Drying,

High-quality white tea, buds perfect,





Students line up for a white tea from Kenya, coming back for seconds.

{ Original bottle of Chanel No. 5 }  

"Oh, it's so fragrant."

The aroma coming off the pot of freshly steeped First-flush Darjeeling provided by Phoenix Tea is, well, breathtaking. Floral, fruity, multilayered—the scent coming from the carafe is worth the price of admission.

According to The Fifth Sense website, the psychology of smell is worth exploring, because this sense triggers the brain's limbic system, which processes "mood, memory, behavior, and emotion." An extended quote:

{ Cherry Blossoms,  Japan }

Smell and Memory 

The sense of smell is closely linked with memory, probably more so than any of our other senses. Those with full olfactory function may be able to think of smells that evoke particular memories; the scent of an orchard in blossom conjuring up recollections of a childhood picnic, for example. This can often happen spontaneously, with a smell acting as a trigger in recalling a long-forgotten event or experience. Marcel Proust, in his ‘Remembrance of all Things Past’, wrote that a bite of a madeleine vividly recalled childhood memories of his aunt giving him the very same cake before going to mass on a Sunday. 

 

Smell and Emotion 

In addition to being the sense most closely linked to memory, smell is also highly emotive. The perfume industry is built around this connection, with perfumers developing fragrances that seek to convey a vast array of emotions and feelings; from desire to power, vitality to relaxation.

Parfumiers get it. Purveyors of fine teas get it, too. One may observe that our attraction to tea reflects this connection, as well. Drinking a cup of tea can bring about a state of hygge, the Dutch term for a sense of warm, comfy well-being—perhaps partially because of the presence of subtle relaxants (L-theanine, theobromine, theophylline), and most certainly the result of aromas that stimulate that part of the brain that influences memories and behaviors.

{ L'amour des Trois Oranges, Sergei Prokofiev }

Simply put: If you smell something that strongly evokes relaxing moments in your life, it may lead to a resurgence of relaxed behaviors and and habits of mind that will temporarily override or influence the present mood of tension, or striving, or frustration. It works on Thanksgiving, of course: the smells of turkey, and pumpkin pie, cranberry with oranges, and green Jell-O with weird salad things floating in it—all these fire up the neurons, with thick myelin sheaths leading the mind down paths not accessed since the last time you smelled these particular aromas. Habits quickly reassert themselves, and the smells of hearth and home become part of the structure, the mechanism by which the comfiness of home invades your personality so quickly and draws you into its embrace.

Today I drink a cup of tea with my students, sharing the pleasure of something new. The first steeping is, alas, slightly oversteeped, leading to a slightly bitter experience. Now, Darjeeling teas are like a particularly high-maintenance friend: If treated correctly, the friend is nothing but pleasure and delight; but if not given the proper care, bitterness and insipidity result.

Nevertheless, the aroma coming from the leaded-crystal carafe I use evokes a thousand happy cups of Darjeeling past, bringing with it a sense of balance and well-being that I associate with a relaxing cup—without having had anything to drink yet. Clearly, I'm highly suggestible, but nevertheless the observations above hold true: I feel like I've had a great cup of something delicious, happy, exciting, relaxing, delightful, and not a drop has passed my lips. Sharp and bright, lush and complex, a walk down a path with hidden gardens over a high wall. What is it I'm smelling? How can it be so evocative?

All that from a cup of leaf juice. Astonishing, isn't it?

{ Santa's zeppelin and angels have something to do with tea, I promise. }  

For Phoenix Tea's offerings, please go to their website. The proprietors know what they're doing, and they are happy to provide guidance if you need help making purchasing decisions. Only a few weeks are left before Christmas, so please consider giving a gift that can evoke memory and delight. Your loved ones will thank you, and hopefully during next year they'll remember with fondness the warmth of your love and friendship, as they sip your gift of tea.

Dan Cong Oolong: INSANE TEA EXPERIENCE

{ Takanori Aiba's Treehouse Bonsai,
a creation of an insane person of the highest caliber }

If one were to look in the sidebar of the humble 39 Steeps tea blog, one might see 39 Steeps Radio, featuring one (1) sole, lonely transmission: a conversation between me and the lovely Imen Shan, owner of Tea Habitat, who specializes in the fabled and elusive dan cong oolong. If you read her website, Tea Obsession, you will find she's an insane person, in the best possible way.

{ Pancho Villa was also
an insane person of note }

And were you to peruse this lonely radio program of one episode, you might find it was made years ago. It's taken me this long to gather the gumption to write anything about this special tea.

But I've finally hit my wall with waiting around for some muse of tea who will enable me to write about something above me, so to hell with it. Readers, now you shall be able to read my musings about something I am manifestly unable to write about adequately, so buckle your seat belts as I strap on my bandolier of purple prose and my machine gun of superlatives, Pancho Villa style, and start shooting my mouth off.

SO WHAT IS DAN CONG OOLONG?
AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?

update update update
(Whoops! I hit "Go!" on this by accident, before I was ready to publish. So stay tuned for the rest of the article about this astonishing tea.)

Twigs and Leaves: 2015 Hojicha, Phoenix Tea

{ Sticks Framing a Lake, Andy Goldsworthy }  

"Tastes like bark."

"No, tastes like water."

Yesterday I wrote on Facebook, "Watching my Valeo students, who are my new 39 Steeps Tea Club, rush up for high-end ‪#‎tea‬ from Phoenix Tea is akin to witnessing a cow being eaten by piranhas. They're enjoying themselves, learning to drink the good stuff, and being alarming, all at the same time."

My students, who are Young in the Ways of Tea, are meandering toward the observation that the Hojicha carried by Phoenix Tea (and which is happily affordable) makes them think of a life connected to nature—like a walk outside, like the smell the forest air takes on after a rain. Or maybe just before a rain? Well, something to do with a rain, anyway.

Hojicha, as my more attentive students now know, is made from the stems of the tea plants whose leaves have already been plucked. The Japanese, who don't have endless land upon which to grow their tea, have developed a frugal system in which they don't waste anything they can brew.

What little I could get of the tea—after the tea sharks had had their way with it—was an easy pleasure. It's been awhile since I've made tea for my students, so I'm rusty, and this tea was a good one to start with. Woodsy, surprisingly smooth, and good for teenagers who had no idea what they were tasting. I chose this tea because, being affordable, I wasn't as anxious about screwing it up while I get my tea chops under me again.

I'm trying to relax as I write this, focusing on those few tea friends I know who would read this, like I did when I first started writing tea reviews. Somehow the knowledge that strangers have read this blog close to a quarter million times is a trifle intimidating. So back to basics. I'll pretend I'm back in the Facebook group, discussing what I think about this or that.

{ Miss Twiggy }

I'd buy the twiggy hojicha again. It's inexpensive enough that it's easy to experiment and play around with, while being sufficiently highbrow to feel like I'm giving the students and my fellow teachers something interesting to dig into.

When I'm sharing tea, you see, I'm not just providing a service; I'm trying to wake myself up—and not with the caffeine alone. Because I tend toward pretty serious depression, I value that which will make me aware that I'm alive, pull me out of my funk, get me past the listlessness, and let me have some enjoyment in the moment I happen to be in. Good music does this. (Today I was listening to a combination of Ralph Vaughan Williams and medieval stuff from Spain.) So does time talking to some very few of my friends. So does spending time with my lovely Suzanne. Surprisingly, so does teaching English literature. When I can dig in, delve into my interests and share them with someone else, I feel like I'm touching a live wire. And if a cup of golden-brown leaf juice can help me do that—well, fantastic.

{ The 39 Steeps tea blog's stately progression }  

Hi, all!

It's been awhile since last I wrote here, and awhile before that, and so on. I'm regularly irregular, it seems.

I've been teaching at Valeo Academy, and over the last year my students—including, surprisingly, a number of high school boys—have taken an interest in the tea I have been drinking.

So last term, they drank, and drank, and drank my tea, sampling and discovering why the Good Stuff is, in fact, the good stuff. And they drank my tea until I completely ran through my dragon's hoard of Camellia sinensis leaves. Fie!

And a few of the students came up with the wise idea to actually cough up some money to help me buy more tea. Thus, The 39 Steeps Tea Club is born. Though anyone at Valeo can sample the tea, the kids who added some money to the till get bragging rights as founding members, and they get to drink anything I have, until I run out of tea again.

Our first tranche of tea has been generously provided for us by Cinnabar (Virginia Wright), the author of Gongfu Girl and numerous other writing outlets; and Brett Boynton of Black Dragon Tea Bar blog. Together they are the proprietors of Phoenix Tea Shop, which has been around for about five years at this writing, since 2010. When I contacted Cinnabar via Facebook, I told her my budget and asked her to come up with an unflavored tea care package for my students. And wow, did she and Brett provide.

In the days to come, I'll begin showcasing tea again on the blog, hurray and heaven be praised! I know I take a circuitous route to writing here, so we'll see how this goes. Thank you for your patronage. And thank you, Phoenix Tea Shop, for providing my students and me some delicious teas.

A tea barista is born!

{ A typical tea barista,
hopped up on caffeine and English literature }  

This term, I've become my English students' tea barista. I've shared with them puerh, introduced glorious oolong, and let them get to know beautiful red teas (by which I mean, black teas, but I wanted to avoid the alliteration). I get the kids jazzed up on caffeine and L-theanine, talk poetry and literature, then send them on their merrier way. I'm told their gym classes are livelier with less-lethargic students.

It all started with a student whom I'll call, "Nadia," because that's her first name. She was not feeling well, and she begged for a bit of tea to soothe her aching throat. And, being the accommodating sort, I wanted to help. My schedule was inconvenient, and I couldn't stay away from my classroom to make her tea, so I walked my tea table over and plopped it on the edge of my big teacher's desk at the head of the room.

I made Nadia some flowery stuff I hadn't drunk and didn't want to drink, but which I thought she might enjoy. And enjoy it she did. Then I saw how some other students had procured teacups from somewhere, and they were sharing the rest of her pot. Hm, something I hadn't expected.

Now, the students had heretofore watched me drinking my good tea, and they were interested, but I hadn't really shared the stuff before. It had always been made already in my office, and then I would bring it to class in a pot for serving to myself during class. But now: Tea was right there, in front of them, on a cool bamboo tea tray with a lot of funky accoutrements. And I had a beeng of puerh, which I wanted to try out.

That fateful day, I cracked open the puerh, and a bunch of tea appreciators were born. My friends at Jas-eTea (pronounced, \ˈja-zē ˈtē\, if I'm not mistaken) and at Yunnan Sourcing had recently sent me a pirate's treasure trove, an embarrassment of riches, a veritable Smaug's horde. Puerh in several varieties, and dan cong oolongs, and blacks, and reds, and I don't know what all. I started with a nice, ripe puerh.

"Oh, you won't like this," I shared in an aside to some of the boys, who seemed interested, "because it's manly man tea, and you don't have enough testosterone to drink it." The trap was set.

"What?!"

{ A Burmese tiger trap also serves to catch teens' attention }

"No, really. I mean, you obviously like the flowery tea, but you wouldn't want to drink this puerh, which often reminds people of tobacco, and rubber tires, and smoke, and leather, that kind of thing. It's like nothing you've ever had, and you can't enjoy it."

"No, we can drink it! Please, let us try some." Much sniffing of tea. "It smells great. I'll drink it." Deep basso rumbles from the cool kid in class. "I'm sure I'll like it."

"Fine, you can try it, but if your idea of tea is foofy chocolate-strawberry-souffle tea-like beverage, you're going to be disappointed."

The snare thus set, I pulled a yixing pot from its box, set out the Taiwanese sniffing cup sets, and started heating up the water. With intense focus, the guys—at this point, the girls were still uninterested—watched as I opened up the beeng of puerh, carefully stabbed into it to divide out the leaves without breaking them, and plopped them into the tiny warmed pot. Sniff, sniff. The kids got a whiff of tobacco, of subtle smoky vanilla, and that interesting hay barn aroma that makes you feel like you're in the healthful outdoors.

Pour, pour. I show the guys the whole crazy rigamarole of the sniffing cup inside the drinking cup, the flipping of the cups, catching the aroma of the tea. All the while, I explain where puerh comes from (Yunnan, of course), the way it's double-fermented, the idea of its aging, the puerh boom of the '90s, what gongfu is, and so on. The tea is served.

Flip, flip; Sniff, sniff; drink, drink. Sharp interest. They like it. I give more information. "Did you know . . . " that young men at university are the fastest-growing group of tea drinkers, and they and bond traders like it because it helps them focus without getting jittery? It's a productivity hack, you know. And though lots of people tout puerh for its health and weight benefits, I just drink it for the feeling of elevation, relaxation, and the enjoyment of my senses opening up. And being a tea appreciator involves being observant, which this class is all about. And you might just be the only high school students in Illinois drinking puerh tea with their instructor this afternoon. Interesting, huh? "Did you know . . ."

And that was about four months or so ago. Tea every day. The girls are now equally interested, and the students are collectively the worst bunch of tea beggars I've ever encountered. I should put out a tip jar. They write the "Tea of the Day" on the board when I have something interesting to share. The girls like the greens and the dan cong oolongs, and my original set of puerh drinkers remain fiercely loyal to that compressed tea. And when my students begged me to teach them about tea (in an attempt to get me off track), I gave them a whole lecture on the story of Keemun tea and English Breakfast, a list of the Ten Great Teas of China, and had them take a test on it, for credit.

So what's all this about then? Tea is a metaphor, a means to teach the art of observation and enjoyment. Reading Dostoyevsky, or Wallace, or Faulkner, or cummings, or the Word of God; or listening to piano works by Ravel; or drinking tea. Observing, enjoying, processing, organizing, writing. It all comes together, and I hope my students learn something about how to really enjoy life in the quiet, small things. I know that, through the experience, I certainly have. Being an English teacher–barista and sharing from my tea hoard has become one of my great joys.

Brother, Can You Spare $1700?

It's Christmas, and so my mind turns to ways my reader can make my life even better. And so I present the Confluence Topographic tea table, which you can buy for me at Artonomos.com for only $1700. But act quickly, because the artist only created 100 of these babies.

Nothing matches sharing a cup of tea with loved ones on a picturesque lookout overlooking undulating mountains, winding rivers, and calming lakes. Confluence gives you a miniature version of the experience.

Confluence is a wooden tea tray that serves up to 6 persons. Carved out of Birch plywood, it creates a beautiful landscape like form. The layers of the ply accentuate the undulating landscape through their alternating dark and light seams. A large central reservoir is created by the terrain. Excess tea will naturally flow towards the reservoir and form a miniature lake. As the tea gathers, the level gradually rises just like a lake does when it rains.

The tray has been processed on both sides such that a thin layer remains. The underside of the tray is as mesmerizing as the top. Supported on just four points, it visually floats above any surface.

Must, must, must have.

Yep, just $1700. Christmas, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

The Cask of Puerh

A FEW WEEKS AGO, my charming, bloody-minded freshmen and sophomores at Valeo Academy cackled with glee at Montresor's antic vengeance over the wine-clotted soul of his frenemy, Fortunato. That is to say, I taught "The Cask of Amontillado," by Edgar Allen Poe: and while doing so, I thought of you, my dear reader. So before I explain why, will you take a moment to click on the caption of the image below and go to the (I promise you, short) story, which you will be able to read in next to no time?

{ E. A. Poe }

Budda Teas: Yerba Maté

{ Indonesian Hotei sculpture }  

yerba maté

Yerba maté is not a tea, but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to enjoy or write about it. I don't think Happy Buddha would have minded me taking a foray away from Camellia sinensis for a change of pace.

Buddha Teas sells mid-range, commercial-grade teas that seem well designed for the burgeoning American tea-drinking market. They're prepared in organic-looking teabags which are individually sealed for freshness.

Most Americans have never heard of maté, but being happy to experiment, they would probably like what they find. Yerba is caffeinated, rather hip (being Ché Guevara's favorite drink when he wasn't killing people while looking dashing), and containing some good nutrients.

But that's not why we drink it. We drink it because it's interesting and it tastes good.

Buddha Teas does not publish information about where they source their teas and other infusions, which means there's no way to identify the drinks' provenance. But because the market for yerba maté has not been developed in the West to the degree that coffees and teas have been, this is par for the course.

what is this stuff, and why should I care?

Maté derives from the leaves of a South American, evergreen holly tree, Ilex paraguariensis. It's been a staple in South America for—well, forever, it seems.

The Axe (pronounced aché) people of Paraguay first discovered yerba's invigorating qualities. The Axe did not fare well in their interactions with westerners, and their lands have been shrunk down to less than 50 km in a mere two reservations in Paraguay, and they have experienced privations, massacres, and enslavement; along with being confined to reservations away from their ancestral lands. It was during this disastrous period of interaction with outsiders (from the mid-1600s to present) that the Axe shared Ilex paraguariensis, and its popularity spread throughout South America and beyond.

Americans are largely unaware of the ubiquity of yerba maté south of our border. Rich families were known to keep a maté girl on staff, whose job it was to keep the water coming. There's quite an involved process to making an infusion of maté, involving gourds and special drinking straws, which I won't go into here, because it's beyond the scope of the drink I have before me.

{ For the life of me,
I don't know how people can find
vicious murderers cute. }  

I love maté. I was first introduced to this about 20 years ago in a trendy café in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, at the University of Illinois. A lady was drinking from a shiny silver straw and a chased-silver gourd. I'd never seen nor heard of anything like this before, and I of course had to know more. Yerba maté, I was told. The shop even had the mate, the gourd, and the bombilla straw, which I played with as the shopkeeper kept the hot water coming. Charming, and a completely new flavor.

My kind mother-in-law purchased a mate gourd for me with its bombilla, but I find I can't get the hang of the slightly gourdesque flavor that I've not yet successfully driven from the instrument, alas. So I'll make my maté in a china gaiwan, from which I can easily scrub the aromas so they don't affect subsequent steepings. For this experiment, I'm using my usual teacup, a Russian podstakannik and its glass, for the maté. Not exactly kosher, but who's to know? The result is not nearly as strong as a South American's experience, which I've found to be a bit much for my wimpy tastebuds.

the cup

Buddha Teas sells their yerba maté in its roasted, rather than green, form. Their roast style is quite light, making for a quite airy cup. Pale green in color, lightly fragrant, the brew is remarkably unlike the more heavily roasted stuff I'm used to.

The teabag (matébag?) is kept freshly in its packaging, though I don't know how long it was in other
packaging until finally deposited into its bag and sealed. Boiling water, about 5 minutes steeping time (longer than what I would allow for a similar amount of tea, but because there are no tannins to deal with, bitterness is not an issue).

The end result is a young flavor, green, light, like flowers on water. If you haven't tasted yerba maté before, I don't know how to describe it to you other than this: It's similar enough to tea to make you compare them, but different enough that the flavor profile is surprising and unexpected. Clarify much? I thought not.

I think I'd like the brew more if it had been stronger, sharper, more biting, more complex. The flavors are pleasing, though, and ones I was happily familiar with from earlier experiences with maté. The presentation of maté given by Buddha Teas is similar to that of a white tea, with aroma and lightness being the primary characteristics.

Thank you, Buddha Teas, for giving me an experience of your yerba maté. I wish you well in your business!

Golden Tips Tea, Mankota Exotic Assam 2014: "Oh, that's good. Shut up."

{ "Celtic Gold," by Gea Austen, via DeviantArt }  

"Oh, that's good. Shut up."

When I steeped the Golden Tips "Mankota Exotic Assam," which is from the Mankota tea estate in Assam, India, I was not expecting terribly much. That is to say, I don't typically get excited by Assam teas, because I'm more of a light-and-bright Darjeeling drinker.

The aroma came to me in my office, wafted by my desk fan. Meaty, like beef soup, deep and dark to match the color of the transparent brown liquor. Float a sauteed onion and some carrots in there, and you could serve it for dinner.

Until you hit the taste. Bright yet rich, and as I said, beefy, a touch of a nutty quality, with a pleasing sharpness you wouldn't ordinarily expect with that flavor palette. Fairly simple in its overall manner, yet entirely pleasant.

I followed the packaging directions, 1 tsp, boiling water, 3.5 minutes. Typically I'd try a gongfu presentation, but when I haven't met the tea before, I prefer to follow the instructions of those who know something about it. And if it ain't Baroque, don't fix it. I increased the time to 4.5 minutes for the second steeping, allowing it more time to develop. As always, I try to allow the tea to sit a couple moments before drinking so it can "bloom," to borrow a term from the coffee types. Those first few moments make a big difference to me, causing more complexity to develop in the cup before a tasting.

For my taste, even though I am inclined to ignore Assam teas as a general rule because of the heaviness in the taste coloration, this Mankota by Golden Tips has a light brightness that offsets it and makes it more of a self-drinker. It's not asking for any additional milk or sugar, which is a bit unusual for these heavier-styled teas. It's enjoyable and well worth the time for a couple steepings.

GOLDEN TIPS, a company I've just discovered, has quite an impressive array of India teas from Darjeeling, Assam, Nilgiri, Sikkim, Kangra, and Nepal, each fastidiously marked to establish flush, exact date of picking, and so on. Really nice to see such a variety of high-end teas available for anyone to buy, curated by a company in business since the early parts of the last century. Thank you, GT, for your gift of tea!

"A Painful Pot," creepy dragon teapot sculpture by Johnson Tsang

{ Johnson Tsang, "A Painful Pot" }  

Johnson Tsang's sculpture, "A Painful Pot," caught my eye today. A Chinese dragon crushes a vessel, not unlike a boa constrictor making a meal. The malevolent serpent clutches the deformed pot, its claws sinking into the bulging material. A snarling, spitting creature's mouth serves as the spout for an unusual teapot design.

Because this object has no handle, the serpent would likely burn your hand on contact if you were so foolish as to try to pour. This sculpture in the vague shape of a teapot suggests none of the tranquil comfort one expects from a good cup of tea. It's an image of devouring supernature red in tooth and claw; cruel, fiery death; a cold, suffocating embrace.

This is not Grandma's teapot. Unless, of course, your grandmother held no sentimental expectations of well-behaved crockery.

Please visit Johnson Tsang's website for lovely photos of his ceramics studio. Lots of cool, creepy stuff there.

The Song of the Second Cup

{ Calibrè sells caffeine }

Today I sit at Calibrè with a cup of their Yunnan. It's a coffee shop, so they don't specialize in tea. That being said, the folks here will actually stop and serve a decent run of gongfu, and they even let me come in with my own tea and serve it (so long as I shared some of my stash with them!).

Their Yunnan, which comes from Intelligentsia, is not half bad. It has that lovely balance of smooth and bite, with characteristic aroma, which I read comes from the Da Yeh varietal particular to Yunnan. I don't know anything about varietals, so this is useful to learn.

The first cup from the chahai was a bit sharp, with more bite than I wanted. But the second cup! The complex layers of flavor were suddenly approachable, with fruit and spice balanced nicely. I understand that as the tea cools, some tannins become insoluble, and they are thus unable to affect the taste. (Thank you, Nigel Melican!)

The practical upside is that flavors are hidden behind the dominant bitterness until the tea has had the chance to cool a touch, and then they're revealed as those tannins fall out of the flavor palette. And thus, to my taste, the second cup is golden. I need to remember to let my teas sit a bit, maturing in the cup, before sipping, for the greatest effect. This works with most black teas, including those from China and Darjeeling, and some oolongs. (Well, I imagine the chemistry is the same with all teas; but teas with a strongly bitter front end would benefit most from this practice.)

SO WAIT A MINUTE if you think your tea is too strong, or black, or bitter to be drunk without sugar and cream. That way you can train your tongue to enjoy the complex flavors in the tea (uninhibited by cream and sugar, which hide the true nature of the cup).

Happy cupping!

--The Management

Calibrè Coffee: A Touch of Gongfu

{ Calibrè Coffee does gongfu }  

Winter 2013–2014 is over, and the snows are over and past. Now I can wear shorts again and sit, enjoying the solitude of my own thoughts and a bit of gongfu at Calibrè Coffee, here in Barrington Hills, Illinois.

Calibrè is a nice little coffee shop in an outdoors mall in Barrington Hills, which my wife and I discovered while walking off a particularly filling sushi dinner nearby. The shop is too easy to miss, its signage blending into the surrounding buildings; but once inside, it's hard to miss the attention the staff gives customers.

This is a place that focuses on coffee. They treat the brew with quite a lot of care, attention given to single-origin beans and the French Press, V60, and Chemex delivery systems. Suzanne (who can still drink coffee) assures me the V60 Ethiopian she had recently--or whatever that was--was crisp and clear, beautifully done. The pour-over method is slow, thoughtful, and a pleasure to watch.

And when Ben, the manager, brought out the Tieguanyin and the simple, white porcelain gaiwan, I was sold. You have to understand: Here in the Western suburbs of Chicago, now that Teegschwendner closed their shop, decent tea is hard to find. Sure, I can drive an hour to the southwest to Dekalb, but my area is empty.

But Calibrè Coffee the rescue, and I'm delighted. They have exactly two teas worth drinking--Tieguanyin and a baozhong--but with a staff who can wield a giawan and handle a gongfu flight, it's a joy. I can sit, and sit, and write, and read, and think, and Ben and Diane make the experience a happy one.

On a basic level, gongfu is, of course, simply about lots of leaf and a series of short steeps, using decent Chinese teas that can handle that preparation style. Add some style points for good water, pressure on the leaves, right temperature, good timing, and you've got a good six, seven cups out of a gaiwan carefully prepared. 

As I type here at the wide marble-ish table, Ben keeps 'em coming, cup after cup of beautifully amber tieguanyin (Iron Goddess of Mercy), highly fragrant stuff from Intelligentsia, where they source their coffees. 

I introduced the staff here to Thunderbolt Tea's Darjeeling recently, and who knows? Perhaps this place will soon be one of those outposts of tea culture I'm looking for. Until then, I'll happily drink my oolong, grade papers or write in my book, and enjoy the live music and my own company.

Thank you, Ben, for being willing to spend the time to actually do tea. It's all about care, about thoughtfulness, about being a great host. I'm grateful.

GREEN HILL TEA: "JADE OOLONG (PREMIUM)"

{ That's some jade there, all right. }  

Jade Oolong, (Premium) by Green Hill Tea.

My students wanted to know what "jaded" meant. Of course, I knew the basic meaning: to be tired, cynical, unenthusiastic. But going to the more obvious meaning, it means a faded green, a pale echo of the bright color we see in our mind when we imagine that color.

Green Hill does not identify the source of their Jade Oolong, other than to say it's a high-mountain (2200 feet) crop from China. Generally speaking, I like to know where a tea is from, because I'm still learning and want to educate my palette as I taste. 

So in this case, I rely entirely upon my observations. I infuse with water just below boiling. Unfortunately,  here at work, I rely upon an electric kettle of filtered water, rather than my Japanese white charcoal setup I have at home. 

Dry, the leaves are tight and richly green, and quite fragrant. Wet, they take on a seaweed aroma, not unpleasant, which reminds me of the scent of the seashore. I depend on my sense of smell for my first introduction to a tea, and this is . . . okay, but not an unadorned delight. So this tea is not all about the aroma of the wet leaves, then. Good to know.

The wet leaves are a characteristic Chinese oolong: large leaves, which have readily opened up in the first steeping. So not very tightly twisted. Quite a bit of complete leaf, some broken, very little stem.

FIRST STEEPING. The liquor is -- wait for it -- a pale, jade green. You didn't see that coming at all, did you. The tea is good, quite good. It's a straight shooter, with a moderate vegetal quality, a flowery high range, and very little at the bottom of the register. Smooth, but with a hint of drying, a touch of an edge, which sharpens the senses. This tea wants you to stop and pay attention to it, rather than sitting good-naturedly and minding its own business. I enjoy its smoothness, and the huigan, or aftertaste (one of the few Chinese words I easily remember, so I use it often) holds in the mouth for minutes. Again, quite a straight shooter. The flavor of the tea and the huigan are closely linked, and I do not get a wide variety of flavors that develop in my mouth and nose over time. Though the tea liquor itself is green, it doesn't taste green, if you catch my meaning. It tastes golden-orange: mellow, a hint of brightness, burnished, open, not overpowering.

SECOND STEEPING. On the second steeping, I went rather long, with a moderate amount of leaf. The appearance of the cup is still a clean, pale green, as transparent as you would hope it would be. The cutting edge of the tea has arrived, and the vegetal note is more pronounced. This is not an especially assertive tea, so if you want a tea so strong you can stand a spoon up in it, you'd be better off with a meaty assam or an opinionated Ceylon mix. But even here, the smoothness and laid-back quality of the first steeping is long gone. This oolong is balanced between the acidic brightness, the slight dryness, and the overarching floral smoothness. Nicely done.

SO WHAT ARE THESE OBSERVATIONS ALL ABOUT? you may ask. I want to remember what I drink. I want to remember what I think when I'm cupping tea. Flavor and aroma are tightly bound to memory and place, and I want to capture some of my life I pass through it. This moment is green oolong, lightly sharp flavor, blue sky, end of winter, bare trees, deadlines I need to meet, anxiety I'm holding down, beloved by family, enjoying my teaching job, quiet moment in the midst of some familiar struggles, needing more sleep, wishing I were traveling, enjoying Shakespeare's "As You Like It," and trying to get back to work captioning. In other words, pretty much a normal morning, with a lovely cup of tea worthy of attention, rather than just let slip by unnoticed and unmarked.

New Lipton's Commercial: #BeMoreTea + Kermit the Frog?!

I love the Muppets. I grew up watching Sesame Street, and of course the eponymous TV show that came out when I was in my early teens. In a parallel universe, a Steven Knoerr is manning Lovable, Furry Old Grover, even as we speak.

And he's probably drinking Lipton's, too, trying to #BeMoreTea.

ADAGIO TEAS: "Sencha Premier" is a touch of summer

{ Robert Mullenix, each by name }  

"Oh, that's lovely. That's my favorite so far." This from the principal of my school, as I shared with her a small cup of Sencha Premier, provided by Adagio Teas. Alas, I'm reviewing the last of my stash.

Crisp, deep green leaves when dry. When wet the leaves resemble cut spinach, though of a paler hue. Look at the deep, forest hues in the painting above by my hero and closest friend, Robert Mullenix. The leaves themselves carry that forest underbrush color; and the liquor is, in contrast, the rich golden straw color you can see on the leaves above: yellowish with a hint of orange.

I tend to steep a lot of leaves for short periods, following what I understand of the old gongfu method of preparing tea. I've steeped this tea about four times-- very short steeps, lots of leaf, high temperature (instead of the low 140C you might usually expect for a brew like this if steeped for longer periods). Only the faintest bitterness on the first steeping, and then from then on it was smooth sailing. The second steeping was the richest, with a sensuous energy that made me bounce (calmly and with great decorum) around the office, high energy and lots of focus, enjoying the tea high without any jitteriness.

I did have to go to the bathroom a lot today, though. (TMI? I thought so.) I think I must be one of the best-hydrated people on the planet, though.

Aside from all the purple prose above (I am writing a book, you know), I want to say how much I enjoy this stuff. It's bright, and even months after it's plucking, it's still kicking. Typically, a green tea has a pretty short shelf life, but Adagio did a good job with packaging, which keeps the tea in fairly good condition. None of the flat, uninspired insipidity you'd expect from a green in mid-January.

I hate Winter in Illinois. I look outside the window, and it's been a shifting slate sky all day, reflected in the snow below. Having something that looks and tastes green and reminds me of Summer, and sun, and all things hot . . . well, it's brilliant. And if it can keep me awake through the dismality of this Arctic Vortex thing, well, all the better. I'd rather be hibernating. But instead of that, I'll settle for this. For now. Until I move where the sun is always shining.

Meanwhile, go to Robert's website, and pop over to Adagio to pick up one of their tea gizmos (intenuiTEA), which I use when in the office for all my loose-leaf tea. I was initially reluctant to try such a thing, but it's really pretty ingenious, and I'm glad I've made the leap.

I hope you are all surviving this horrid winter, and please keep warm with a good cup.

{ This is me, thinking of brighter pastures }  

confessions of a tea blogger (i've been tagged)

{ Laura Marie Meyers, will you please stay indoors for a change? }  

I HAVE BEEN SHAMED into writing on The 39 Steeps again by a certain tea blogger (Cinnabar, I'm lookin' at you). Baby, it's cold outside, so I'm stuck inside with two increasingly inert children, so I'll play.

confessions of a tea blogger

1. First, let's start with how you were introduced and fell in love with the wonderful beverage of tea. At University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, a couple of events came together. I was near the delightful Walnut Street Tea Company, at a time I was struggling badly with asthma symptoms. Walnut Street had Darjeeling. They had oolong. They had Russian Caravan. They had the basics, which introduced me to the world beyond Lipton's. And I discovered that, for whatever reason, the constant tightness in my chest from asthma eased somewhat when I drank tea, even though coffee had no such effect. It didn't stop me from drinking coffee (that came much later), but it did feed my curiosity and convince me that perhaps tea could be interesting.
2. What was the very first tea blend that you ever tried? Constant Comment, by Bigelow. it was enjoyable, and part of discovering that tea wasn't disgusting. At that time, I drank coffee and tea in all their flavored varieties, particularly in one of UI students' favorite restaurants, the Courier Café. I spent many, many hours there, drinking Chocolate Soufflé or Hazelnut Delight coffee blends. And there, I first sat across a table from Suzanne Virginia Gonzalez, who would one day become my wife. I had never believed in love at first sight, even while I was experiencing it myself. Only in retrospect did I realize that she had me from the get-go. Now our four-year-old daughter is interrupting every other sentence, and I'm trying to write around her snowed-in craziness. What does that have to do with tea? Well, tea was there, and I was there, and Suzanne was there. And lurve was there.
3. When did you start your tea blog, and what was your hope for creating it? I live for those moments when I experience something new. No, let me rephrase that: something enjoyable and new. A poke in the eye with a red-hot spork would be new, but it's not on my bucket list. That being said, I had shifted my drinking habits from coffee to tea at some point, and I found on Facebook a delightful group of tea drinkers, titled "A Cup of Tea Solves Everything." While I don't quite agree with the aforementioned sentiment, I did enjoy the opportunity to discuss tea with my friends. As a sort of online journal, I started writing reviews there as a way of keeping track of what I was learning about tea, so I could go back and buy more of what I loved, and also to help other readers with their tea journeys. At one point, the group was shut down for a week or so, and I panicked: All my reviews were gone! When it came back online, I made a blog, copied-and-pasted as many of my reviews as I could find, and The 39 Steeps was born. From there, it took on a life of its own.
4. List one thing most rewarding about your blog and one thing most discouraging. I was quite surprised that anyone would even read a blog written by me, being such a narrow niche interest, and because I am just some guy with an enjoyment of tea and a computer. Most disappointing was that once you start a blog, you have to keep the blog running, and that proved difficult when I ran into some personal difficulties and suffered from "major depression," which makes regular writing difficult if not impossible. I hate disappointing people, and disappearing for months and years at a time on a blog is truly a self-defeating cycle that only makes it harder to write.
5. What type of tea are you most likely to be caught sipping on? I live, love, and breathe fist-flush Darjeeling. The complexity and brightness are incomparable. That being said, as my tastes change over time, I'm finding myself drawn to impossibly complex high-mountain oolongs from China and Taiwan, or puerh when I can afford it, or many other single-estate, orthodox teas.
6. Favourite tea latte to indulge in? Well, I don't, sorry. I don't have an espresso maker at home (because I'm a recovering coffee addict, and it makes me into a crazy person to drink it), and drinking tea out of the home is almost always a losing proposition. I do like Thai iced tea, though, if that counts.
7. Favourite treat to pair with your tea? Silence and a book.
8. If there was one place in the world that you could explore the tea culture, where would it be and why? Taiwan. They have the craziest, most intense tea culture in the world, and I'd love to sample it. But I'm most likely to actually visit the Himalayas, Nepal and Darjeeling, because that's the center of my tea experience and the focus of years and probably a thousand gallons of tea drinking.
9. Any tea time rituals you have that you'd like to share? I love, love gongfu, Chinese style. As I see it, there are three predominant tea-drinking cultures in the world. There are others, but they are less well known and acknowledged. The British tea seems to me to be focused on the accoutrements and social aspects of tea, with a focus on doilies and who gets to pour from what type of teapot more than a focus on the actual tea itself, which is often flavored with milk and sugar to cover up the bitterness of the oversteeped tea. The Japanese have elevated tea drinking into a religion, and the act of making tea--the careful attention to every motion, every breath, every aesthetic aspect of the experience--can bring one into a meditative state conducive to living deeply. Chinese gongfu, on the other hand, is often messy, noisy, and terribly pragmatic. The 197 steps they take to make a cup of tea are there not for social, nor meditative, reasons; they're there to make the best freaking cup of tea they possibly can. And if it takes 17 gallons of boiling water out of a zisha clay kettle over a fire made out of expensive Japanese white charcoal, filtered with the tears of unicorns, into a teapot designed specifically for this tea and this tea alone, then they'll do it. For the tea. How could I not fall in love with that?
10. Time of day you enjoy drinking tea the most: morning, noon, night, or any time? I find myself making tea whenever I can get a quiet moment to myself. It's best when other people are around, so I can share discoveries with them. Now that I'm a high school Literature teacher, I have been sharing with other teachers and my students, which makes everything taste better. In a way, drinking tea has been much like teaching Beowulf: unlocking the fun and beauty for people who otherwise would go away without knowing the good stuff is out there, just waiting for us to delight in it.
11. What's one thing you wish for tea in the future? Two things, or maybe three. I wish for an American audience for the good stuff, which will make it possible for me to actually go out of my house and get a decent cup of tea. Since TeaGschwendner went belly up in my area, I can't find a cup of tea worth drinking that's within easy driving distance. Second, I wish for better, more sustainable growing practices, which are careful of our stewardship of the environment and the welfare of the people involved in producing the tea we drink so happily. And thirdly, I WANT MORE TEA! Running low in my cabinet is the pits, and it makes me feel bad when I don't have it in my budget to go buy the stuff I want. 

SORRY! I just don't have someone to tag. I'm like that, I'm afraid. Thank you for reading, and I hope to have more content to pop up on this baby every once in a while.

Shakespeare's Tea Caddy, If Shakespeare Drank Tea, Which He Did Not.

{ Tea Caddy from Shakespeare's Very Own Mulberry Tree. }

Shakespeare did not drink tea.

No, no, I kid you not. Unless you believe conspiracy theories that make the writers of his plays into Roger Bacon, or Francis Bacon, or Kevin Bacon, we know a man named William Shakespeare died in 1616. The United Kingdom never saw tea until 1658, and it wasn't until 1665 that the East India Company started importing it to the UK.

NEVERTHELESS, once upon a time, a certain Shakespeare fellow planted a mulberry tree. A century or so later, the Most Reverend Francis Gastrell purchased New Place at Stratford-Upon-Avon and was so overwhelmed by annoying fanboys wanting to see the tree that he decided to chop it down and burn the corpse. Of the tree, that is. (On a side note, in a fit of pique, Gastrell destroyed Shakespeare's home because he didn't like the taxes on it. Quite a piece of work, eh?)

But wait! Brilliant entrepreneurs instead got hold of the mulberry's remains, chopped it into craft-sized pieces, and they started making tchotchkes out of the wood, which they began selling to tourists. To this day, Stratford-Upon-Avon maintains is mercantile charm.

{ Paraphernalia, Just Like Mom Used To Make }

According to The Daily Mail,

A tea caddy carved from a mulberry tree may have been planted by Shakespeare himself has gone under the hammer for £13,000 at auction. The antique - which features a tiny carved bust of the Bard - was whittled out of wood recovered from the famous tree planted outside the playwright's home.

Apparently, Shakespeare planted the tree because landowners were getting in on UK silk production--yet another replacement for import from China that the Emperor was not happy about.

So if you like your Shakespeare, you like your tea, and you like your history: well, too bad you didn't get there first and buy the caddy to add to your collection!

Brothers K and the ingenuiTEA gadget

{ "ingenuiTEA, with Russian novel and office window,"
media mixed with afternoon sunlight, 2013 } 

As many of you have surmised from my last post several weeks ago, I am now a teacher of English literature. And I have an office that is not embedded in my home, which is a giant plus for me, forcing me out of my cave and into the wide world. I find it a bit exhausting, because PEOPLE. You've perhaps noticed that I avoid taking pictures, because I don't have some cool macro lens, and my knowledge of photography is limited to . . . well, the above. But it's a moment I caught, with sunlight, tea, and Russian literature combining pleasingly.

Because I'm in an office, I've been casting about for a way to make tea that isn't completely hopeless.

I'll tell you about the tea later. Today I'll focus on the ingenuiTEA, which is available through my friends at Adagio Teas.

Happily, there are many tea gadgets out there, ranging from amusing tea balls, to mini French presses, to cast-iron tetsubin with mesh baskets for the tea to float about in. This is a testimony to the growing tea culture in the US and elsewhere, and it behooves us to take advantage of these fun accouterments to our tea-drinking experience.

The ingenuiTEA is one of several similar devices, sold by a number of online tea marketers, which are a boon to the office-working tea drinker. The device above is made of clear plastic, and it has a removable mesh strainer for easy cleaning. It invariably makes the students and staff ooh and ahh over how cute it is. The ladies, that is. The young guys do not ooh and ahh over anything, but they do try to ask me questions about tea so that they don't have to discuss 19th-century Russian literature.

I brought the ingenuiTEA and a Darjeeling oolong to class recently, and I gave the students a point on their test if they could guess where it came from. Several of them got it right, just by sheer luck.

Adagio's device is an open container into which I can pour my boiling water, and the tea leaves have plenty of open space to steep. Once they're ready, I place it on top of a cup, and a cleverly hidden lever inside opens a sluice through which the tea pours into the cup below. I've discovered how much my cup will take, so I don't overflow as much anymore and endanger my computer hardware.

I like gongfu cha, and I also like convenience when I'm at work. This thing sits at that sweet spot, where I don't have to bring in a complex set of teaware to get a decent cup of tea, and it takes what seems like a rather complex system I have at home and simplifies it for the workplace, where mucking about with six or seven different implements just isn't practical.

It won't replace my precious purple-clay teapots or my gaiwan and tea table, but it's just right for making a cup of tea that honestly tastes almost the same (particularly because I use good water that I've purified using Japanese white charcoal, as well as decent tea), and it makes my afternoons much better.

If you haven't experimented with such a device, please drop by their website and try one out.

http://www.adagio.com/teaware/ingenuiTEA_teapot.html