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 }  

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