Tea fix, Pear and Yunnan

Okay, I've had about 6 cups of tea and I am no longer cranky. See,it's the simple things that keep us going. Even when we have to deal with bureaucracy. I spent 2 hrs today trying to get social security to accept my ID, password, spell my name right and get my address right. Result - I finally told the on line guy that since we were back at the beginning with nothing accomplished I was hanging up. Then he asked if he could help with anything else! I'm old enough, they really don't have to make it worse. However, due to my tea fix I was still polite; ready to chew nails, but polite.

I tried Simpson and Vail's Pear Tea today. This is a bit unusual in that it is a quality black tea. It smells very pear-y, really too much so for my taste - more like pear nectar than fresh pears. The tea leaves are really black and mostly of a good size. I brewed it about 205 for 3 minutes and it still smelled very strongly of pear. The sad news is I didn't care for it. The pear flavor was much too strong and not the nicest. I like to taste my tea and if there are additions, I want them to be a hint, a lure, a siren, not a call girl. Simpson and Vail do a lot of very nice subtle teas, but sometimes they just go a little nuts.

Later on I had some of my favorite - Yunnan Gold. I could drink this stuff forever, I am that fond of it. The label says Imperial Golden Black Tea [Imperial Gold Dianhong]. I have no idea what company it is from. I compared the label to all the others I have and it didn't match any of them. Anyway, the dry leaves were a good mix of golden buds and very large dark brown twisted leaves. Less gold than I would have expected in an Imperial designation. It had that characteristic Yunnan scent and brewed up into a beautiful dark brown cup that was quite satisfying. Not the best I've had, but quite good. If it had been the most superb I would've been really unhappy to not know where it came from.

The photo above is another Swiss watering trough, this one beside my great-granfather's house. The water in it continuously runs from a spring higher up the mountain and it tasted like liquid heaven. Wish I had some to do my best teas in!

Mango Tea and Pear Tea

The picture -Still in Ravenna, same church, side aisle.
We canned peaches today. I love the smell and the wonderful
satisfaction of opening them in the depths of winter. I feel conn
-ected to all those women before me who provided for their families. I put some candied ginger in with them and they are
sublime.
Decided I needed a tea to go with the smell in the house, but lacking a peach tea, I looked through my samples that I am trying to try,[ so I can go on to the new ones - so disciplined!] and found a mango Ceylon.
This particular sample is from Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse in Colorado. www.boulderteahouse.com I don't know when or where I got it, but it's been a while. Upon opening it, there was a very clear smell of a very fresh Ceylon with a nice breath of good dried mango. The leaves were small and very very black. I brewed it the standard, for me 212 degrees for 3 minutes. It was really good, with a very nice mango flavor on top of a surprisingly good Ceylon.
When I went to their website, they no longer had this particular tea, but they had another mango that sounded just like it - I may have to buy some.
I bought some new storage tins and one of the new teas I got was going in one - Simpson and Vail's Pear. The smell is wonderful - really like pears, not pear candy or fake pear flavor, but good dried pears. Can't wait to try it but I am going to make myself wait until I make the Swiss dried pear bread I bought the tea to go with. Isn't that an awful sentence?