Yes, Taiwan Does Make Black Tea

Nice rocks! And sunshine! Oh my!

Another cold, grim day, and tomorrow we're supposed to have 3-5 " of ... you guessed it - snow! Early Spring is often the triumph of hope over experience. But I saw more lambs today and each day seems to bring more birds. The mourning doves are courting. Rather, the male mourning doves are courting, but the ladies would rather eat.

I have my tea to keep me warm. Today I am trying a somewhat unusual one. It is from Life in Teacup. Taiwan is most known for its exquisite Oolongs, but this is Sun Moon Lake Black Tea from Nantou County. It is MOA certified organic. The dry tea is very large, twisted dead black leaves with a super scent - the aroma of good timothy hay in the hay mow, along with a strong overlay of honey. As it brews there is the smell of corn silage and roasted winter squash. This may not sound good to you, but it is music to my nose. I expected a very dark liquor and was totally surprised to find it very light. I brewed it for 3.5 minutes with boiling water and used the 2 pot method. This is where you brew the tea totally loose in one pot and decant it into another of the same size that you have warmed.

I don't think I used either enough tea or brewed it long enough as it was very light tasting as well. However, it does taste of roast winter squash and honey with some earthy notes. It is a very unusual and tasty tea and I am going to fool with it until I get it strong enough.

The World Tea Expo is coming to Las Vegas June 24-26 at the convention Center. If you register before April 22, you can get a 20% discount off educational seminars. There are over 200 new products showcased and many educational seminars, tea tastings and the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the "tea greats" Check it out at http://www.worldteaexpo.com/ . I sure do wish I could go.

An Austrian church and village. I like how their roof colors are all
coordinated,


More Spring signs! Farmers are getting out their planting machinery and a whole flock of robins arrived yesterday - kind of offsets the snow we has last night. But only kind of, as today is bone-chilling raw.



Howsomever - isn't that a great word?! Today I am having some Japanese Cherry Sencha Green Tea from the Bamboo Tea House http://www.bambooteahouse.com/ in California. My tea-swap friend, Rene kindly sent it to me. Right away I could tell this is a different flavored tea. It smelled like real cherries and not cherry candy. A tart sweetness is how I would describe it. I brewed it in my nice little green-tea-only Yixing pot for about 2 minutes at about 180 degrees.



The liquor is a very pretty pale golden green and gives off a muted scent of cherry and green tea. Oh, I like the flavor of this. The tea comes through as a nice springy greenness and the cherry does away with what I think of as the fishiness that some senchas have. The tea has a full mouth feel and the cherry lingers on your tongue. A very pleasant experience. I think this would probably make a lovely ice tea, with just a touch of lemon to cut the sweetness for me.



I know some of you are really into Royal memorabilia and if so, you can go to http://bit.ly/eF9sLq to see an article about an English woman who has a huge collection. In keeping with that, the official Will and Kate wedding site is http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/ Neither is really my thing, but we all have different interests. In spite of that I probably will watch at least some of it. A wedding is a wedding, right?



On a different note, The American Tea Room is donating 10% of its on-line sales until March 23 to Japanese relief. Also, if you order $25 worth of tea, they will send you a 2 ounce sampler of their Nirvana Tea, which looked pretty tasty. Their address is www.americantearoom.com

The Official Beginning of Spring-

Tomorrow is the official first day of Spring. Can't come soon enough as far as I am concerned. Here, however, it is really mud season. With our heavy clay soil that means you try very hard to keep to pavement or gravel if you can find any, lest you be up to you hips in mud. Our fur persons are coming in with very dirty paws and tummies, except for Sarah, La Principessa, who wouldn't dream of sullying those pristine white appendages.

Sunday, First Day of Spring! And very welcome it is, too. I am greeting it with an herbal tisane from Tea Forte - Raspberry Nectar. It definitely smells like fresh raspberries and as it brews, it is that beautiful red of crushed berries. It tastes like fresh berries, but also has that somewhat ubiquitous taste of hibiscus. There are also rosehips, apple, blackberry leaves, orange peel and flavors in addition to the raspberries. It is both sweet and tart and very tasty. However, I would have liked it better if it had had less hibiscus and some of the other stuff. As it is, it skirts on the edge of being like every other herbal in the berry/hibiscus/rosehip lineup. A bit of sweetener does wonders for it.

I am in the process of, once again, cleaning out the tea cupboard and trying to get rid of the ones I don't especially care for before I have to store them under my bed or something. Some are just old and will make nice mulch, some I will give away. The ones I like, I will keep. So you all may be offered some teas a bit down the road.

Tea Community Offers Aid to Japan

I feel so sad for the people of Japan, living through that earthquake and now having the chance of life-killing radiation hanging over them. So many countries around the Pacific rim have had awful earthquakes and tsunamis in the past few years, ever since the big tsunami, caused by a severe underground quake, back in December about 5 years ago. Such devastation.

I feel kind of small saying it, but it doesn't affect the Japanese tea fields, which are a long way south, unless the radiation cloud blows that way. That is very unlikely and indeed, a very small thing compared to the horror those folk are living through each day. If you would like to find out about relief efforts from the tea community, please go to www.operationsakura.org or www.obututea.com/donate . Sakura refers to the cherries, which are to bloom in about 2 weeks.

The Leaf at www.the-leaf.org is an online magazine - an ezine, if you're fussy. It has just published the 8th issue, with some interesting things about Chinese tea and tea life.


I just learned that a local B&B in Candor, NY has won awards for its afternoon tea.That is only about 30 minutes from here,so I had best take a little trek and see how it is!

I have no tea tastings to offer today, I've only had old favorites I've reviewed before. However, there are more signs of Spring! Almost all the snow is gone from our front yard and the Alps by the garage are reduced to mere foothills. The dawn chorus of bird song has returned - first time today! Flies and bugs are out. Also the mice, as Ernie was so generous to share with us by eating it in the middle of the living room. Some signs aren't so great.

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.