Intrigue In A Tea Cup

I have often contemplated trying to grow my own tea bush.  This could be a problem as I live in New York and we can have sustained periods of below zero temperature.  I know you can bring them inside, but I already have 4 gargantuan pots to haul around and I'm not sure I really want another one, especially one which has to be brought in when the temperature goes below 50.  I am simply not that organized.  I did hear a good idea about big pots, which I will pass on to you.

If your plant(s) are shallow rooted, you can put all those peanuts you get in packages in plastic bags and then put them in your pot and then add soil, so your pot is lighter to carry about.  If you don't have peanuts, use perlite.  The other thing you can do is cut a piece of styrofoam to fit inside your pot at the depth you want, making sure to add some drainage holes.  I don't know if this would wok with a tea plant, because I don't know anything about their root system.

I ordered some teas from Siam Tea, www.siam-tee.de which specializes in teas from Northern Thailand.  This company is new to me and owned by Thomas Kaspar, who writes for the English Tea Store blog.  I was very pleased with their service.  The first tea I am trying is Shi Er Black Pearls, Doi Mai Salong, North Thailand.  Black they are, little balls, with some tails attached.  I wasn't thinking and just bunged them in my tea strainer for 3.5 minutes.  When I went to pull it out, it was absolutely stuffed with big  leaves.  Live and learn.

This is easily the most intriguing tea.  The dry tea smelled of roasted wood - not burned, roasted, as if it were meat.  There was also a bit of dark toast and roasted corn.  As it was brewing it gave off a woodsy, flowery, toasted acorn aroma.  The tea was a fairly light golden brown.  To try and describe the flavor is almost impossible.  The nearest I can come up with is flowery toasted acorns.  It was delicious.  One thing to watch out for and that is to drink it in small cups, because as it cools it loses some of its interest and the flavor gets very muted.  Not that that's bad, I just prefer more depth.  Next time I am going to go for multiple brews and give those leaves some room!

I have finished The China Tea Book by Luo Jialin, which I reviewed a few days ago.  The second half was on the aesthetics of tea, setting the mood, which tea pots and cups to use, the role of floral arrangements and calligraphic art.  It was fascinating.  I may apply some of his thoughts, at least as far as tablescapes.  I can't do much about walls and furniture.  Again, there were many beautiful pictures.  One of the best things about the book is that it seems to create a calm oasis in me.

China Tea Book, China Tea

Of all the things I do, I love reading the most.  I love to learn new things, love stories about different cultures and people, really love mysteries, and learning about tea.

My latest book is absolutely stunning visually.  Luo Jialin  in his The China Tea Book, has truly wonderufl photos of tea gardens, tea rooms, mountains, forest, rivers and a few people.  There is not a great deal of history or the mechanics of tea manufacture and there are only a few teas discussed in detail.  I am not sure if these are personal favorites or one of the many lists of 10 Best Teas of China.  It doesn't matter.  He discusses briefly not only how they are made, but what spiritual significnce each has, as well as how and when to drink them, according to time of day and time of year.  Somehow, it is a very peaceful book that takes me away to a calm and gentle world.

The second half of the book delves more deeply into the spiritual and aesthetic senses of tea.  I haven't read that far yet, but I'll get back to you.

My only quibble is that fairly often a paragraph is repeated twice in succession.  I think the editors need to sharpen their skills a bit.  I am finding that many books have just huge errors in them, as less careful editing is done, often mechanically. 

Today's tea comes from China, specifically Yunnan.  It comes to me from a tea swap and is Yunnan Imperial from the Wabi-Sabi shop in Taos, New Mexico.  The dry leaves have no particular scent, just fresh tea (Not to be sneezed at).  There is some gold dust in the packet and golden tips on the leaves, which are relatively small.  I brew it my standard 3.5 minutes for teas new to me.

It brews up into a lovely smelling golden brown brew.  There is a hint of wine barrel and one of floral to the aroma.  It is brisk and full bodied, with some spice and some floral, but no chocolate.  Drat, I do like cocoa in my Yunnan.  Nevertheless, it is a decent cup of tea.

This is in the very tiny village of Dickshied, Germany looking across a valley to Hilgenroth.  In the Great Palatine Migration of 1710-12, some of my grandparents left these villages to sail down the Rhine to the "promised land" of the British Colonies in America.  They soon broke with the Brits, who treated them like slaves, and moved from the Hudson River Valley to the frontier of Schoharie Valley (New York State) where they could own their own land and prosper.

Have A Book With Your Tea

Have you noticed that when the weather warms above freezing, the birds start singing?  I've been keeping track this winter and it seems to be true.  When it's quite cold, about all we hear are the chickadees, the hawks and the downy and hairy woodpeckers.  The temperature goes up and the sparrows, pileated woodpeckers, the titmice and a host of others start chirping and singing and banging away at their trees.  The crows we seem to always have with us.

I came across a book on tea that I think would be excellent for beginners or casual drinkers who would like to know more about tea.  It's called 19 Lessons on Tea  by 27Press.  The sub-title is become an expert on buying, brewing and drinking the best of tea.

I have read this short book and I must say, it really does a pretty good job.  You are not going to become an expert by its end, but you will know a lot more and probably have a lot more confidence.  It covers how different teas are made, the various grades of tea, tea rituals, teapots, tea utensils, pairing tea with food, where to buy tea and find tea tastings.  There is a bit of history, mostly in short footnotes.  To find more, they refer you to their website.

There is a bit of repitition, but not too much.  Many books on tea have so much about history that unless you are really interested, you either skip it or get bored and don't bother getting to the other stuff.  Likewise with how tea is grown and processed.  There's enough here so you know a bit more than the average bear, but not so much that your head is swimming from an overload.  In other words, it's manageable.  The chapters are short, so you can just do a few minutes at a time, or read the whole thing in about an hour.

This is a book you should enjoy with a brisk cup of tea, to make sure you are awake and aware.  I would reccommend a godd hearty English Breakfast.  I just happen to have some by Bigelow.  My tea swap partners often send lots of tea bags and who am I to pass them up?  This one came in a nice expandable bag and had a good fresh tea aroma.  I brewed it for 2.5 minutes, which is long, but I am in the mood for strong!
My, it smells good with lots of lemon and stone fruit components.  It has a nice flavor, too, with elements of Keeman and Assam in a good balance.  I am sure to be awake and aware by the time I finish it.

A Book of Tea For Tea

I was at our local health food store and picked up one of their free publications, Delicious Living.  On page 13 there are 4 ice tea recipes.  Below are the 2 that rang my chimes.


Peach Mint Green Tea
Crush  or wring a bunch of mint - about 2 oz.in a heat proof bowl
Brew 2 cups of green tea - they used tea bags - steep 3 minutes.
Pour tea  over mint and steep 5-8 minutes
Strain, pressing on mint to get all the goodies.
Add 1 cup peach nectar and chill.

Mango Darjeeling Tea
Make 4 cups of Darjeeling Tea using 2 Tablespoons of tea, steeped 2-4 minutes.
Strain
Add 2 cups mango nectar and chill

I warn you, both peach and mango nectars are very sweet.  If you would like it less sweet, you could puree fresh ripe peaches and mangoes and add to taste, which is what I will do.

The Sage Group, a Seattle think tank, says we are underestimating tea sales in the US.  They believe we spend over $27 billion a year on tea, importing about 234 million pounds of this wonderful stuff.  Kind of hard to wrap your head around that, isn't it?  Puts my tea cupboard in perspective, but somehow I doubt that Himself will agree.

I was packing up for a trip to the library and realized the bag I was using is one I have had for over 40 years.  That has certainly saved a lot of trees and plastics.  I confess I don't always remember my bags, but I try.  And I recycle boxes I get to send forward for presents and teas swaps.  My family got in on this early as there was a very disreputable box that got traded around for Christmas and birthday presents for years until not even twenty layers of tape could hold it together.

I just finished reading a really good book about tea - The Gunpowder Gardens by Jason Goodwin.  It was written in 1990 and describes his travels through China and India.  He weaves tea drinking, history, production, planting into one very fascinating and personal tale.  It is an easy read and a great way to acquire knowledge of tea without it being painful.  I highly recommend it.  I got it either through Amazon or Alibris for not too much money.

One of the many home churches of my German ancestors. I loved the play of the wood balconies against the walls.  This one is in Obernhoff, in the Rhine area known ad the Pfalz or Palatinate.

Moving Towards Normal

Hooray and Hooray and Hooray!  I had my 2 week post-op visit with my doctor and I can now be upright for 30 minutes of every hour!  Long enough to taste tea while actually drinking it from a cup.  I can also drive, but I have to be sensible.  I will try around our neighborhood before I go anywhere.  During the day, when all the kids are in school.  I even have some vision back, a bit odd around the edges, but to have it at all is wonderful.

I got to take a brief walk today and it smelled wonderful - that lovely toasty smell of dry leaves and earth.  I even saw some tiny blue wild asters.

I just finished my book Tea and Chinese Culture.  Ling Wang, the author covers a huge amount of ground. Of necessity, it is a mere skimming, but he has tried to get as much flavor in his book as possible.  Tea was/is used for so many things - respect, honor, spirituality, bride prices,  sealing of weddings, gifts, as well as everyday drinking.  Even in the everyday, tea was appreciated in a way it seldom is in this country.  This was a good introductery book.   It made me feel sad, however, as  we seem to have "thrown out the baby with the bath water" in our modern hurry and rush and pressured lives.  I am hoping to continue my study of China, it really fascinates me, especially as it relates to tea.  I am also resolving to take more time to appreciate tea, its accompaniments and other things in my life.

Tea Books

Reading is one of the things I can do mostly upside down, so I have been reading or rereading more carefully, my collection of tea books.  One I can recommend is the 1982(!) The Tea Lover's Treasury by James Norwood Pratt. It is often witty and funny and full of good information.  One tidbit is in the brief tale of the clipper ships - those incredibly fast sailing ships of the tea trade - one ship carried 25,000 square feet of sail - about 10 tennis courts.  He also gives space to not only the Boston Tea Party of revolutionary fame, but the ones in New York, Philadelphia, Greenich, NJ, Annapolis, Charleston and Edonton, NC.  You can get a copy from http://www.alibris.com/ for not too much.

The second book I have reservations about.  The author is Sara Perry and it is The New Tea Book.  Being the wife of a sometime-editor, I recognize the white space surrounding the print that merely enlarges the book, as well as its cost.  I personally think she is often inaccurate or uses too little information in her descriptions of tea and tea processing.  However, many of her recipes are quite good.

All for today,my six minutes are way up, even counting having lunch and medicating my eye at the same time - such a multi-tasker

Oh Canada!

This is Hilgenroth, Germany which I mentioned on Tuesday.

I have given up trying to match my tea to the weather. One day it is hot, the next, cold and mornings are definitely toe tinglers. Our trees are fast approaching peak coloration in some spots, with others kind of la-de-dahing around. It is my favorite time of the year. But so is spring and winter. Summer is tolerated as a necessity.

I put in a large order of one ounce samples to Culinary Teas and they came today, along with some nice samples of other things. So, of course, I have to dive right in. I chose Canadian Breakfast, as I had not heard of that blend before. We'll get to it soon, but first I wanted to tell you a bit about Culinary Teas. They have an amazing selection of what I might call British teas, some of which I think are the best of their type, like Lady Londonderry or today's trial. They sell one ounce sample of all their teas, so for not a huge outlay, you can try scads of teas. I love companies that sell in small lots, because if you get 4oz of something you hate, that is very expensive mulch.

On to Canada. I have done some traveling around in Canada and I highly recommend it. It is beautiful and the people are very nice. Which can also be said about this tea. The small dry leaves are chopped and give off an intriguing scent of wheat, asparagus and a touch of woodsiness. This aroma continues as it brews for about 3.5 minutes with 212 degrees water. It brews up to a really dark reddish mahogany, which is quite beautiful. In the cup, more of the woodsy smell comes out, which spills over into the taste. This is a smooth tea, with a good hit of malt, that woodsiness with some floral overtones and maybe a hint of roasted corn. It is delicious., a tea I'd really reach for in the morning or anytime on a cold raw day. It would definitely hold its own with a hearty breakfast or with some scones or desserts. I wouldn't brew it for more than 3.5-4 minutes, as I think it would get tannic.

I just finished a fun, small book - Steeped in the World of Tea. There is no editor listed nor any one author, as it was written by many people. It includes poetry, short reminiscences about tea, a few more factual essays and some bits about brewing tea. It is short and quite interesting, as the authors come from all over the world. It is the sort of book you can read an essay at a time, put it down and take it up again, without losing track of the flow of things.

Tea by Lydia Gautier

Isn't that a cool old doorway?

Today was a really bad day for reasons not related to tea. Therefore I am not going to review any teas but I will review a book.

The book is Tea: Aromas and Flavors Around the World by Lydia Gautier. Ms. Gautier is an agricultural engineer who has done extensive work with viticulture and tea culture. The book is of the large coffee table type, with lots of very beautiful pictures. While it is beautiful, the book more than adequately covers a brief history of tea around the world, tea culture in many nations, some chemical facts etc. She compares it to wine, both in culture and drinking, as well as in cooking. There are a few very good recipes and perhaps, best of all a list of 50 "grand cru" teas with hints for brewing and serving and suggestions for pairing them with foods. In wine "grand cru" refers to the very best wineries or wines, so one can assume that is also the meaning for the teas she lists. The book has a very European slant to it, perhaps because Ms. Gautier is French. It is definately part of its charm.

I got this book as a present so I can't advise you to run out and plunk down $40 for it, but it is certainly worth getting out of the library and reading. It is an excellent book that covers a very wide range of tea information succinctly and well.

Actually, as I write this I am drinking Fujian Black from Adagio Teas. I made it in a new pot and it is too weak but it is good and it is working the usual comforting magic of a good tea. It has that clean mellow smell of Fujian/Yunnan teas, but I can't say more as I goofed on the brewing.

Golden Pearls and Green Camels

These bells are from the Meiringen Lutheran church in Switzerland,where my grandmother was baptized. Meiringen is famous for the Reichenbach Falls where Sherlock Holmes met his "death" and for creating meringues, those lovely confections of air, egg white and sugar. In the town, they are often served with ice cream and raspberry sauce.

I was reading Jane Pettigrew's Tea Companion - the first edition that came out in 2004. It is a wonderful book, sparely full of great information about a wide range of teas, how to make tea, a brief history of tea, etc. Something I really noticed was that PuErh tea was given only a partial sentence. Five years later, it is a very hot topic. Such a short time for it to have achieved such eminence, in the western world. The New Tea Companion, put out the next year [2005], with Bruce Richardsoon of Elmwood Inn Teas had a great deal more to say about PuErh, but certainly not up to the standards of most conoisseurs. This covers a few of the same teas, but is much broader in scope, covering more teas and more countries. Someday I am going to pusue PuErh, but not yet. I have enough with just thinking about Greens, Oolongs and Whites.

First, there was morning tea - Golden Pearls from Teas Etc. $19.95/3oz. Really a beautiful tea from Yunnan, China - rolled multi-hued golden balls that smell of toast, a good
Chinese restaurant, a citrus edge. The balls unfurl quickly into a deep rich liquor still with the toasty, Chinese smell and that unique malty Yunnan tang with a hint of smokiness. There is also a vegetal smell, something like summer squash cooking on the grill. It has a mellow Yunnan taste, but there isn't the spice you get with a true Golden Yunnan, it is more both laid back and somehow hearty. There is a nice lingering taste in the back of my mouth that I can't really describe. An excellent morning tea for special times - because it is pretty expensive. As it cools, the flavor seems to come out even more and it's even fuller than before.

Afternoon tea was a green gunpowder - Camel brand, imported from China - I think it was one of my Asian Market buys. I compared its looks to some Twinings Gunpowder, as well as the smell. No comparison. The Twinings had few actual rolled balls and smelt rather flat - I may have had it too long. Anyway, the Camel brand looked and smelled the way a gunpowder should - tightly curled small balls giving off a nice fresh green scent. I brewed 3 teaspoons in 2 cups of 170 degree water for 90 seconds, stirred it around and poured it out. It is surprisingly brownish with atinge of yellow and nice bubbles around the edges. It has a pleasant, almost jasmine, floral scent with a good full feel in your mouth and a warm vegetal flavor, almost toasty but not quite with a little lingering bit of floral. A very nice, probably quite inexpensive green tea. I made it in a small tetsubin pot, to hold the heat - it's my green tea pot.

In search of a Prince

I have always loved Prince of Wales tea. I think it may have been the first "real" tea I had a name for - by Twining's, of course and in the looseleaf can! For a long while it was impossible to get so I started searching for it among other purveyors. What a sad journey! Almost all of them put so much black currant in their tea that they invariably smelled like a male cat had sprayed it. And they didn't taste very good, either. Somehow, Twining's managed to make what I thought of as the good blend.

However, I am continuing the search and may have found another good blend of the Prince. I purchased a sample of Prince of Wales from The Tea Table. When I opened it it didn't smell too bad, almost a balance, still too heavy a scent of black currant, but not bad. For some reason it has yellow flower petals in it. As it brewed it didn't smell bad either, but the proof is in the taste, right? It actually may contend with Twinings, as all the different teas and flavorings come together to make a balanced whole! And it doesn't taste like cat spray, either - not that I've sampled any.

Neither of these Princes is an exquisite tea, rather they are pleasant and fill a sentimental, if you will, tea slot, so they are nice to find and to return to when a cup of comfort is neeed.

The lady in the picture is there because the Prince was such a lady's man - Edward that is, Victoria's son. She lives in the garden at the summer palace in Vienna. He probably would have found her charming.

I just finished reading an excellent book on tea - The True History of Tea by Victor H Mair and Erling Hoh. It covers everything, probably far more than most people want to know, from beginnings in China, India, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey, Kenya and almost everywhere else. It is very thorough and actually covers very recent things about tea. I found it a bit over heavy on names and dates I will never remember, but if the budget only allows for one history book, this is a good one. I found that reading a chapter at a time allowed me to absorb it all better and I thik I am going to re-read it so I get more from it. I got my copy from Amazon.

Speaking of booksellers, http://www.alibris.com/ has a wonderful selection of used tea books and they aren't all about how to have tea parties. They have old and new selections and you can make up a wish list. Their prices are quite good, I think.

I really envy so many under 30's who are developing a tea palate now. As we age, our tongue begins to lose the ability to discriminate tastes. I wish I had started a long time ago. Oh well, there it is, I'll do what I can and taste as much as I can of the new stuff soming out!