Upcoming Tea Series

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.