A Banana In My Tea

Today can't decide if it should be sunny or cloudy.  Sadly, I think the clouds are winning.  However, I have the perfect antidote - tea!  Mine is from Upton's, their T151, Formosa Black Keemun.  I'll bet those Anhui farmers don't approve as they consider theirs to be the only authentic one.  The smallish dark leaves of this Keemun smell like - you'll never guess - bananas!  I had to sniff several times to make sure, but there it was.  Very strange.  However, as it brewed for 5 minutes with boiling water, it shifted very sharply away from fruit and down into very very darkly earthy.  None of this is the Keemun I am used to.

Howsomever, by the time it hit my cup it was very pleasant, still earthy, but moderately so, with well-rounded edges that finished off with a nice, old oaken barrel edge.  The entire experience was definitely new to me, with none of the wineiness or slight smokey character that generally denotes a Keemun.  Tea is so wonderfully itself, always ready to surprise and delight.

I got a funny cartoon in the mail.  A bunch of socks were in group therapy for lost socks.  Well, I need one for lost glue.  I have bought 3 things of Gorilla Glue in a year and had to go buy another one today.  This, after a great deal of effort to put tool and fix it things in ONE and only one place.  That has nothing to do with tea, as you might imagine.  It may one of these days, as I have far too much of it and I need to do another clear out.  Always put to good use for compost or helping clover seeds take hold in the lawn.

The potted ginger root report:  for several days there has been a bump on the top of the soil and today the first small green shoot has appeared.  Hooray!  Lots of nice ginger later this year for tea and goodies.

A very typical Swiss chalet.  This is probably one of the older ones, made from wood.  The new ones are made from concrete made to look like wood, because of the fear of fire in the mountains.  There aren't a lot of bodies of water available for fires.

Honey in Mud Season

The Catholic Church in Durlach. I love churches, as you may have guessed. Notice the green leaves!


Ah yes, another sign that Spring is coming, at least for us in the Northeast – Mud Season! This is between winter and spring, when the frozen ground begins to thaw and we all wear boots, sometimes with 5 pounds of mud caked on the bottom. But the creeks are beginning to flow and soon we will hear the peepers calling to their potential mates. It's worth the extra work, the extra pounds to haul around, to know that soon there will be peepers and skunk cabbage and pussy willows.


Aura Teas has kindly sent a number of people some samples of their teas. This one is Formosa Natural Wuhe Honey Black. It is from the Hualien area of that island, on the west side of the Central Mountain Range, looking toward the Pacific ocean. It is said to be the most beautiful area of Taiwan (Formosa). This tea is grown without pesticides and is therefore attacked by the same bug that causes other tea plants to produce an enzyme that eventually gives us Bai Hao or Oriental Beauty Tea ( another on my long list of favorites.) This enzyme causes the leaves to be sweeter. Good bugs, keep up your work.

I have never had black tea from Formosa, so I was really looking forward to this. It is indeed black, with twisted leaves and a few brown ones for color. I brewed a teaspoon and a half with water just below boiling for 2 minutes. It smelled of burnt sugar, or crème brulee with some dried corn silk edges. The leaves were not done unfurling, so I moved them to another cup for a second steep. The tea is a nice dark amber and very very smooth, quite unlike many black teas. There is no smokiness to it, but a deep comforting brown taste with a delicate honeyed overlay. A very,very nice tea, good for any time of day. The second cup was not as deep, but it was a tad sweeter and you could see the tiny bug bites on the edges of the leaves, which shows their authenticity. This tea was one of the “Top Ten Teas of Formosa” in 2007. Worthy of that honor, in my opinion.

Rudyard Kipling's Oolong

An old church pulpit in Germany.

“We had a kettle; we let it leak:

Our not repairing made it worse.

We haven’t had any tea for a week…

The bottom is out of the Universe.”

Rudyard Kipling (author of The Jungle Book )
from The Voice of Tea Blog

I thought that was a neat quote, worth repeating for you.

Today is one of those wet, gray, chilly days that goes through all the layers of clothes to make your bones ache. A very good day for tea. I decided to try some of Aura Teas Formosa Muzha Tie Guan Yin. It comes in tightly rolled pretty brown balls, with the warning that they will greatly expand. I brewed it first for about a minute with water at about 190 degrees, 1 teaspoon per cup. Initially it smelled of that old-fashioned bush – mock orange and I was so pleased, as that is one of my favorite scents in the world. Sadly, it did not stay that way and became more heavily roasted tasting. When I looked it up on their site, I saw that it was an old style heavily roasted TGY. I really don't like that style of Oolong, so I didn't even finish the cup. I hope you all realize that is personal preference speaking and not a slam about the tea. I have had several Aura teas and they have all been of excellent quality. This is from samples they sent me to review.

To counterbalance it I brewed myself some Lady Londonderry, which is about as frou-frou floral as you can get.