Up in the Mountains.

Pretty spring flowers.


Which is my tea for today certainly is, very floral. It is Adagio's Ali Shan and comes from the highest peaks of Taiwan. In the can it smells like a flower laden heaven, it is so sweet, not sugar sweet, but that of nectar. The tea is almost green, tightly wrapped in little balls. I rinsed it with boiling water, waited a minute and then added the water and infused it for 1.5 minutes. The resulting brew was a soft gold, with the same wonderful aroma, slightly muted. The tea feels thick and full with a great orchid floral taste, grounded with a vegetal edge.

The second infusion was 2 minutes and had more of a vegetal character, but not green - more in the neighborhood of squash. It remained thick tasting and as it cooled, more of the floral character came out.

Since I was playing around with another tea, I did a third infusion of boiling water. The color was nearly the same gold and the more floral aroma had returned. The taste was weaker and I would say the floral edged out the vegetal by a good bit. Altogether a really tasty interesting tea.

The tea leaves, which started out less than a quarter inch in diameter, unfurled to be quite large. One was 5 inches long! They were pretty green when I finished and you could see where the bugs had chewed the edges, which forces the plant to produce an enzyme that produces good flavor, in addition to the tea master's art in production.


My second tea was an Oolong from Nilgiri, but you have to wait until tomorrow for the review.

The Tea Giveaway will close Sat. Nov 6 at 2 am. Just in time for us all to turn our clocks back and get 1 hour less sleep.

TEA GIVE AWAY

Same barn, different view.




I misled you yesterday. When the tea cooled the second infusion was every bit as good as the first cup. Hot, it was blah, cool it was not.



So, how was your Halloween? "Rescue " some good candy from your kids? We were told we'd have less than ten but we had 18. Our whole side of the road is retired pastors and the development across from us is mostly retired too, so there aren't a lot of kids to show up. The best costume was a banana and a Sylvester "puddy tat". Sadly, the kid didn't know Tweetie's song about him.





**I have a super abundance of tea. Therefore I am going to do a Give Away. The first 5 people from the USA who leave a comment will receive a bundle of tea in the mail. Please tell me if there are some you really hate and I won't send those. Most of the teas will be black, with some green and some flavored.**


Today's tea is from Kenya. A lot of tea comes from Kenya and most of it winds up in teabags or some nondescript blend. Several years ago there were some excellent full-leaf teas appearing and then, due to a number of people factors, it was hard to find good Kenya tea. However, in the past 18 months, most of the teas I have had from there have been excellent. This looks to be one of them. Again, I have raided my Upton's stash to bring you their TK30 Bold Leaf Superior Golden Kenya TGFOP [Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe]. The smell is exquisite - tobacco, floral and a sharp note of perhaps citrus. The leaves are about medium size, with 1/3-1/2 being gold tips.

I brewed it for 4 minutes with boiling water and the aroma just continued, only with that "fresh wash on the line" scent on the edges, and more citrus. It is a surprisingly light golden brown. The citrus really comes out in the flavor, which is medium light and sweet, but not at all sugary. There seems to be a strong component of berry present also. Altogether a very good tea. I would use for afternoons, or for people new to "real" tea or a tea party, as it has a special taste without being so "out there" that few people would enjoy it.