April 2008

April 23, 2008

Goomtee Tea Estate processing room, Darjeeling, India

April 17, 2008

Fancy bagged green tea + recent Upton Tea order

Finally, I finished the 100g tin of Young Hyson Ceylon Green. I write "finally" because I was not impressed with this tea for reasons I wrote of here. I am still a faithful green tea drinker thanks to the KTDA Co-op Kenya Whole Leaf Green (from Upton) and a cup of Tamayokucha green from Two Leaves and a Bud. The tea, after three minutes, was grassy and full.

Formosa Oolong, 7 minutes (3 minute over-steep

My Upton Tea order arrived on Monday: Formosa oolong Standard Grade, Formosa Fancy Oolong Imperial, Formosa Amber Oolong Select, Organic Gunpowder, and Tie-Guan-Yin Oolong 2nd Grade. I am drinking the latter as I write this post; it was favorite sample from a previous Upton Tea order. I selected the Formosa Oolong Standard Grade (pictured above and below) because it's described as an "everyday oolong." Oolong is purported "to reduce fat around body organs" (The Way of Tea, Master Lam Kam Chuen). This oolong made me nostalgic for my childhood; it smells like a tea my mother used to make, known as "sersi tea" in Jamaica.

April 15, 2008

Camellia sinensis is a tree

Camellia sinensis pruned to grow as a shrub.
Source: UCLA Economic Botany

The tea plant, Camellia sinensis, is a small shrub or tree. I always considered the plant a shrub, but it is featured in a fabulously photographed tree book, Trees of the World. The accompanying text includes an excerpt from a letter between friends in AD 730.

I am sending you some leaves of tea that come from a tree beloging to the Monastery of Ou I Mountain. Take a blue urn of Ni Hung and fill it with water which has been melted from snow gathered at sunrise upon the western slops of SouChan Mountain. Place the urn over a fire of maple twigs that have just been collected from among very old moss and leave it there until the water begins to laugh. Then pour it into a cup of Huen Tscha in which you have placed some leaves of this tea. Cover the cup with a bit of white silk woven at Houa Chan and wait until your room is filled with a perfume like the garden of Fouen Lo. Lift the cup to your lips, then close your eyes. You will be in Paradise.

"Lift the cup to your lips, inhale the scent of the steeping leaves, then close your eyes."