A Bit O' Green for the Irish

An Austrian farm chalet with hay stooks in the front yard - those
very neat orderly lumps I bit you thought were shrubs.

Sure and begorrah 'tis a grand day for the wearin' o' t' green. With a wee bit of trottin' mouse tea for me Irish Breafast from me grand friend, Ruthie Toothie and a bit of green tea for the afternoon with a wee slice o' soda bread. Actually my ancestors are all North Irish, but Irish is Irish, especially today, when for one day even a Tibetan can be Irish.





The cup of green comes from The Puritea and is their Gunpowder Green. The little pellets are so tightly rolled that after 10 minutes in hot water they are barely unfurled. They smell very "full" and rich, but I can't identify the scent. It is, however, very pleasing. What I am drinking has only been brewed for about 2 minutes and it is a bit of an odd color, a somewhat murky pale old gold of a green, if that makes sense. As I sip it it reminds me of strawberries, wood violets, earthy woods, green lawns, all at once, with maybe a bit of toast thrown in to make it even less clear. It feels very full-bodied and rich in my mouth. It is wonderful stuff! The brew from the leaves that are still brewing [fifteen minutes and still not all unfurled] taste really good also, unheard of with green teas! There is a definite sweetness and floral addition to this part of the brew. I have never had a green tea like this and I will surely buy more, it is so interesting and I just love it.

Of Lambs and Calves and Tea

Oh yeah, Spring is "a cummin' in". Our neighbor farms have new calves and another has two new lambs. They are just so, so...new! Tiny hooves, big eyes, soft little noses. But they know what's what as they bump their mother's udders for milk. When I was on the farm it was my job to wean the calves and teach them to drink from a pail. It usually took about two days. It was the beginning of the gentling process so they would be easy to handle as they grew up.

That doesn't have much to do with tea, but Upton's does and I am drinking some of their Kairbetta Estate Nilgiri BOP CL/CH, which means, broken leaves, Chinese clonal. And they are - quite small bits, but definitely not CTC. I am only brewing them for 3 minutes, with boiling water. The dry leaves have a kind of sweet earthiness, while the brewing tea has a good bit of malt along with the earth. Even at 3 minutes, the brewing is almost over the limit. The tea is definitely malty, nutty, roasted tasting. Actually, this is one of those teas that I think is best with some milk. A good breakfast tea or one with sturdy foods with strong flavors. A good St. Patrick's Day tea. Which is tomorrow, you know. Celebrate, all you Irish. I am surely a European mutt, but I only have a bit of Irish, and Northern at that. But I celebrate with some nice soda bread and Irish stew. Irish Breakfast Tea for the first meal of the day and maybe Irish Cream from a local shop to end it.

Uh Oh, Ernie is on top of the fridge, contemplating a jump into the cupboards, so I'd best go do rescue detail - of MY stuff, he's fine.

Flowers for Early Spring.

It is always wonderful to me to see the early early signs of Spring. Yesterday I noticed the moss in the woods is greening up and some is beginning to sprout the seed stalks. When I was a kid, my cousins and I would gather moss and tiny plants for terrariums. They never lasted long, as we would water them too much or not enough.

When the deer came through the yard last night I saw that their coats were getting shaggy, in preparation for shedding their winter coats and returning to their pretty red ones for the summer. They are also pretty thin, so it is a good thing there are big patches of grass showing. In the brook, some of the weeds on the bottom were beginning to get green. Best of all I heard a red-wing blackbird singing and finally saw him, high up in a tree. At the moment I am watching a squirrel's contortions to get the last few seeds out of the bird feeder. I am torn between annoyance that they can eat so much and amusement with their antics.

Tuesday March 15, 2011
Didn't get too far yesterday, did I? Today the crow state is having some sort of meeting in my backyard. I wish they would come to an agreement and move on - they are noisy buggers.

Well, I will move on then, to the tea! Today I am returning to the blacks and my choice is The PuriTea's Jasmine Golden Yunnan. I am really eager to try this as I have not seen jasmine paired with Yunnan tea before. Upon opening the packet, there was a rush of a very sweet, almost candy, almost cherry, scent. It quickly was clear it was really jasmine, backed by some of the woodsy spicy aroma of a Yunnan. I can hardly wait until it is cool enough to drink. Being the coward that I am, I am brewing it for 5 of the 5-7 minutes they recommend.

It worked, the tea is pretty good. There is a very mild base of earth, wood and a tiny bit of spice, with the flights of jasmine above it. I really would not have believed that it would, the two seem so disparate. The Yunnan could have come through a bit more, but then it may not have worked at all. As it cools, there seems to be a bit of cherry or plum in it. I think this has been done quite well, as I think it would be difficult to pair the two.

Did you know that the green teas that are used in jasmine tea must be stored for a few months until the jasmine blooms? Also, it can take up to seven times of layering jasmine blossoms with the tea to produce the right flavor and scent. Makes me appreciate it even more.

A Bit of Wine, a Bit of Oolong

Speaking of vineyards, here are some German ones, much like the ones I once picked in to earn money for college - steep! Was it only Sunday we had a blizzard? Here it is Sunday again and we have had torrential rain and flooding. Of course, our front yard - where I want to plant!!!! still looks like Siberia, but I am encouraged by nesting sparrows, in spite of the fact that the ground in back is so soggy that the bird feeder fell over. My friend Lee is going to make me a bird feeder holder that is embedded in concrete encased in a tire and adjustable so I can get the seed above the deer's reach. And when the bears raid it in the early spring, it will just tip over instead of getting all bent. Bertie Baby, our orange Fluffernutter cat with the magnificent tail, is out in the ditch - which is running- bottoms up, tail waving in the breeze, mouth open, just in case there really is a frog there and I have been lying to him about when they'll appear. Oh well, keeps him out of trouble. Last weekend we all went for a short hop on the Cayuga Wine Trail, and tasted some truly lovely wines at the King Ferry Winery, two of which were some super Chardonnays. Today I thought I would compare The Briar Patch's Chardonnay Oolong and see if it smells and tastes anything like the wines I bought. I first rinsed the leaves with almost boiling water and then infused them for about 3 minutes. What do you know, it smells like Chardonnay and tastes like it, too. A lovely, fruity, grapey experience, but underneath is a very pleasant floral/fruity Oolong. A very nice blend. The Briar Patch is one of our local tea spots in Owego, NY, and can be reached online at http://www.owegobriarpatch.com/ Her prices are quite reasonable and you can buy in small quantities.

Autumn in the Early Spring

A church in Sorrento, Italy.


I can hear a lot of new birds in the woods and the red-bellied woodpecker finally has at least a girlfriend, if not a mate. It is supposed to rain all day and all night and where all that water will go is a mystery, as there are no ditches and the streams and rivers are full and the ground is frozen. We are only in "those d******n potholes" season and not yet into mud.







I made a discovery - if your cup is very full, you can't really smell the fragrance of your tea - it dissipates too quickly in the air. I really like the relatively tall and thin Chinese scent cups - they kind of look like a small juice glass. They do capture the aroma.







I had another interesting tea. This is Arya Clonal Exclusive Autumnal Flush '09 from Darjeeling, India via Thunderbolt Tea. Generally one thinks of Autumnal Flush teas as having a fairly high dose of muscatel grape aroma and taste. Not this one. First of all, it smelled like peanuts, yes, peanuts. I never had a tea smell like that. The brewed tea, as you might expect had a full, rounded nutty, toasty taste. Definitely different, but delightful.









I decided to clean out my teas, giving away or composting the ones I either don't like or are too old. That should take a while. I found some Bolivian Long Leaf from Simpson and Vail, which I reviewed last on Nov. 29, 2009. Then I said it was floral, astringent, vegetal. This time around, with a different year's tea, I found it to be mostly malty and tasting definitely of walnuts. It is earthy, but has a sweet edge that is very tasty and smooths out any roughness you might get from the walnuts and earth. It is always interesting to me to see how tea changes from year to year, even though I want my Prince of Wales to forever be unchanged. I guess I expect blends to be the same but tea from particular place I want to reflect that harvest's conditions.

A Tea for International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day. Celebrate, bearing in mind that we, as well as our sisters around the world are seeing our rights eroding or about to erode. Stand up and be counted! Noone is really free until we all are free.

I was trying to figure out how many seasons of the year we really have. Summer is pretty straightforward unless it is like the one when it was 42 the end of July. Then there's Fall, but Indian summer may or may not come in there. We're okay as we slide into winter until January (February this year) when there is the January thaw. Sometime the end of February, beginning of March we have "False Spring" which segues into "pot-hole road rage" season when you hope to make it to real spring with all your tires and both axles. There can be several of these. Finally it is Spring! But then there is Mud Season and every shoe and boot we own is caked with the stuff. It finally dries out and we think we can relax but wait, there is False summer - those 90 degree days in April that ensure you only have daffodils and other pretty flowers for one swiftly done day. Finally, after all that, is Summer. You count them, I'm tired.

To celebrate Women's Day and rising temperatures, I have having some Formosa Hsinchu Baihao Oolong, aka Oriental Beauty. This comes from Aura Teas. The dry leaves don't have a lot of scent, but as the first minute long infusion brews, a distinct lemon or lime rises from the pale old gold colored cup. This very refreshing tea tastes of a fresh green salad with citrus juice poured over it. Yum!

By the second infusion, the leaves were still only partially unfurled. They are huge and a pretty brown. The tea this time tasted more of fresh salad, but with only a little citrus. I could hardly wait for the third and I was very nicely rewarded. By now the liquor was a medium and very floral smelling, to me, it was like pansies, whose scent I love. The tea had a wonderful sweet, delicate floral taste and sadly, I had to stop, but it was wonderful while it lasted.

I am officially now a happy tea camper - my order for Black Currant Loose Leaf Tea has arrived from Tea Forte and very nice it is and they were good about packaging, even

Going Wild with Oolong

Blogger thingy won't do paragraphs again

"I knew a crooked man, who lived in a crooked little house on a crooked little street" in Bacharach, Germany. The house, still in use, was built in 1368.

Our friends left early yesterday in hopes of beating the bad wether. I was going to write and tell you how early Spring was well and truly here, with rain and a lot of open ground and water in the low places. Suddenly it started to snow! It snowed. it snowed all day and it snowed all night. This morning it was not snowing, but we could not open our front door. I think there is about 18" of new snow. However, the alder twigs are turning tan and the willow twigs are turning yellow, so Spring is definitely marching forward. The pileated wood pecker (of Woody Woodpecker fame) is drumming in the woods and the mourning doves are courting, so what is a little snow?

The reports from both the Darjeeling tea fields and the Chinese is that the weather is just right for this year's crop, so barring unforseen bad wether, they are excited that this year's tea will be plentiful and good - something to truly look forward to.

There is an excellent article/interview with Nigel Mellican about sustainability over at http://.chadao.blogspot.com/ . Nigel is one one of the "tea greats" with wide, wide experience in all phases of tea, fromplant to pot. it is well worth reading.

For something shorter and "funner", go over to www.techtea.tv/tea-facts-infographic for a poster-type graphic of lots and lots of tea facts. It's a really neat idea and again, worth checking out.

For you contest mavens, Bigelow tea is having a contest until March 15th. Top prize is a $200 gift certificate for their products and there are several $75 certificates as well. just go to http://www.bigelowtea.com/ and follow directions. May we all win!

At last, the Royal Couple of the Year (Will and Kate) are now available for your persoal afternoon tea! See them at http://www.stephcupoftea.blogspot.com/ Invite them to your next tea party.

Now, let's see, which tea goes with a blizzard? Ah, yes, Wild Oolong from Life in Teacup, for the wild weather. I first washed the leaves for a few seconds with water off the boil and then brewed my first cup for about 1 minute. The leaves are a fairly bright green and the brew smells of orchids with a hint of mint. This is a new one for me with Oolongs. The liquor is a pale green-gold. The taste is a very soft floral with a great accent of Spring!!!! green.

The second infusion was about 1.5 minutes and the scent had shifted around to more predominately green with floral overtones. The taste was still floral and green. The third infusion once again had more a floral aspect with a more blended accent of the green tones. On the whole, the tea just said "refreshing, refreshing!" It made my mouth feel as though it needed more and made me feel awake and alert. All this from what is really a pretty delicate cup.