Saturday Morning Tea

May18

Good morning, dear tea friends! As you can see, my morning tea is not a first flush Darjeeling this week (are some of you saying “oh, thank goodness!” haha), in fact, it’s not a Darjeeling at all. Gracing my cup on this bright, blue sky morning is a rich, dark black tea from New Vithanakande in Sri Lanka (Ceylon).

This tea leaf is an FBOPF Ex Spl leaf style, designated for its long, wiry, twisted leaf and unique for a Ceylon tea. You know the tea that comes in teabags from the grocery store, the kind that we might have drunk when we were sick as kids? Well, that leaf style is called “fannings”, a very finely-particled leaf that fits into those bags easily and steeps very quickly. Astoundingly, this leaf has that same designation which is what the last “F” stands for. It’s because this skinny leaf can fit through the smallest sieves during the leaf sorting process. Amazing, huh?

This tea is grown in the Ratnapura district, located in southern Sri Lanka. I’ve read that this district is the home of gem mining as well as a crossroads where hill country and plains come together. This tea is processed at a factory supporting 6,000 small landholders and their families. You can read more about it here. So, this tea is named after the place that processes the tea not the tea garden.

What a gorgeous color!

I steeped the leaf for 4 minutes in boiling point (212F) water.

The aroma of the dry leaf is that classic smell that everyone thinks of as the “tea smell”. For me, it brings back comforting memories of my Mom making me tea when I was a child.

The flavor is rich and full-bodied, like an Assam, but with that classic brightness tang of a Ceylon. The tang fills my mouth and lingers on even after I take a sip. There is a thickness to the tea liquor that reminds me of dark chocolate. This tea would definitely stand up well to milk and sweetener.

As I drink the last few sips from my teacup, I look forward to an afternoon spent in my garden, planting marigold, cosmos, dahlia and daisies. Tomorrow I’m going to go see the new Star Trek movie in IMAX, an event I’ve been excitedly awaiting for months. Have a wonderful week and enjoy your tea!

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~Marcel Proust

Saturday Morning Tea

May11

Good morning, dear tea friends! I know that I’ve been sharing a lot of first flush tea selections with you lately but I couldn’t resist just one more. This is a special lot, the leaves plucked at sunrise for optimum flavor retention, called Victoria’s Peak Sunrise First Flush Clonal Darjeeling.

The leaf is quite large, with a goodly number of downy tips. I steeped it for 4 minutes in 190 F water. Why the lower water temperature, you might ask? The leaf was harvested quite early in the season and with all of the new “greeny” growth, I decided to cool the water for steeping. Since I cooled the water and also knowing that this tea was quite smooth and light, I increased the steeping time. I’m going to try 5 minutes next time and see what happens. I have so much fun experimenting!

Here’s some information about Victoria”s Peak from the grower.

“This is a division within the Steinthal Tea Estate, named after Queen Victoria. Located next to Victoria’s Falls and Victoria Park as a memoir of one of the Queens who visited Darjeeling. It is a picturesque area – on the north side we can see the Himalayan mountains on the east of this are the Botanical Gardens..and just above is the Darjeeling town. A very small quantity of tea is produced every year from this division, which are manufactured at the adjacent Steinthal factory.”

It sounds like a beautiful area.

The light golden tea liquor had a pronounced vegetal aroma when I first removed the infuser from my glass teapot. This vegetal quality dissipated rather quickly to reveal a sweet floral fragrance, which I found quite appealing.

The flavor is silky smooth and light, very fresh, with pronounced floral notes and a hint of sweetness that reminds me of a ripe pear. Yum!

The month of May is blessing us with warmer weather so I was able to throw open all of my windows and breathe in the fresh scent of flowers from my garden. As I gaze out my window now, I watch windswept gray clouds racing across the sky heralding a bit of stormy weather headed our way. The faint rumble of thunder rolls across the darkening sky, confirming my thoughts.

Well, I guess I won’t be gardening this afternoon. Time to brew up another pot of this lovely tea and sit with my latest beading project, a freeform cuff that just keeps on growing. I’ll be happy to share it with you once it’s all finished.

As always, thanks for stopping by and visiting. Until next week…

Happy Mother’s Day!

“When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?”

~Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Saturday Morning Tea

May4

Good morning, dear tea friends! This morning I’m enjoying another tea that was harvested before Qingming (Chingming) day, an Oolong called Fenghuang Don Cong, from Fujian province in China. Having a long and auspicious history, this tea was once given in tribute to Chinese Emperors.

Its leaves are enormous, each about an inch and a half long and well twisted. The dry leaf is dark, however, as you can see from the above photo, they lighten up to a beautiful olive green as they’re steeping.

I steeped the leaf for 4 minutes in 190 F water and used about 3 teaspoons per cup. The leaf is so big that it doesn’t even fit in my teaspoon so I used my fingers and estimated. One of these days I’ll have to get myself a tea scale. Do any of you have one? If so, do you like it? Sure would make measuring huge tea leaves like this so much easier!

I love the russet edging on this leaf. That must happen as the leaf is allowed to oxidize. I’m not sure exactly how much percentage-wise this leaf is oxidized. The tea liquor is similar in color to that of a lighter first flush Darjeeling.

The fragrant aroma smells of peaches and flowers. The flavor is smooth and light with notes of peaches and apricots and a pronounced honey sweetness. It feels silky on my tongue.

It’s a gorgeous spring day outside, the deep blue sky reflected in my teabowl. My garden is abloom with phlox, daffodils, tulips, pansies and white bleeding heart. We haven’t had much rain lately so I’m going to spend the afternoon spreading a thick layer of brown mulch in all of the beds.

As always, thanks for stopping by and sharing a cuppa with me!

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”

~Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Saturday Morning Tea

Apr27

Good morning, dear tea friends! This week I’m moving away from Indian teas and have steeped up a China green tea in my glass teapot. A China tea whose leaves were still on the bush, unfolding and reaching towards the sunlight a mere few months ago.

I introduce you to Pre-Chingming Pi Lo Chun.

The name Pi Lo Chun translates to “green snail spring”, so named because the leaf is rolled into tight spiral shapes resembling snail shells. I have read that they roll the leaf this way to retain its freshness.

As I’ve shared with you before, Pre-Chingming teas are harvested before the festival of Qingming (Chingming), usually celebrated on the 15th day from the Spring Equinox. Any teas harvested before that date are referred to as Pre-Chingming teas. In other words, harvested in very early spring.

Just as this tightly rolled leaf has unfurled and opened up to reveal its beauty, spring is a time of opening up, of blossoming, when everything comes back to life. I feel infused with new energy at this rebirth time of year. How about you?

This tea tastes like a fresh spring day.

The words that come to mind as I gently sip from my tea bowl are:

delicate. pale. fresh. new.

The pale spring green tea liquor gives off a fresh vegetal fragrance. The flavor is also fresh and vegetal with a natural sweetness that softly greets my mouth.

This is the perfect cuppa to celebrate the spring. What tea are you enjoying in your cup today?

“Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring?”

~Neltje Blanchan

Albuquerque Sky

Apr23

In the fall of 2010, I traveled to Albuquerque, NM to visit my son and his family a week after my precious grandson, Landon, was born. Landie had surgery when he was only one day old so it was a challenging time for our family but it was also a celebratory time as his healing was going very well. He came home from the NICU the day after I arrived there. I spent a wonderful week getting to know my courageous little grandson and also having loads of fun with my beautiful granddaughter, Ella, then 2 years old. Her exuberance and excitement infused my life with a breath of fresh air. It still does!

One evening, my son and I went out to pick up dinner at a traditional New Mexican style restaurant. I wish I could remember the name of the place because the food was excellent. Anyway, as we turned west onto a main thoroughfare, I looked up and I distinctly remember that my jaw literally fell open as I beheld the sunset. The whole immensity of the western sky was ablaze in brushstrokes of fiery orange, shimmering gold and twilight purple. We have great sunsets here in New England but with our hilly terrain and lots of trees, you see a much smaller portion of the sky. Here in the flat desert landscape of New Mexico, the sky was a huge expanse, saturated with color.

That experience inspired me to create this necklace, which I have named “Albuquerque Sky”. I made the polymer clay focal with my favorite mokume gane layering, this particular one being Barbara McGuire’s Shimmering Gold technique using gold leaf, translucent clay and alcohol inks. Even the name is perfect. Yummy.

Starting with the sunset image that had been emblazoned in my imagination on that fall day, I chose my seed bead color palette with the aid of Beverly Ash Gilbert’s “Eye for Color” color wheels. They’re a wonderful artist tool for creating “bead soup”, as Beverly calls it. I’ve created bead soup before and wrote about it here and here.

I was also inspired by her netting technique for beading necklaces. For my freeform beaded pieces, I usually use a one-bead peyote stitch and sometimes use multiple beads in one stitch or to create “bridges” within my work. Beverly’s technique uses 3 beads in one stitch, which I found worked up much faster. That said, this necklace took many hours to complete. I don’t mind. I love the process and find it meditative and soothing.

I bead embroidered around the focal and then improvised a netted frame around it. Instead of fashioning a clasp from beads or wire as I usually do, I sewed on 2 dressmaker’s snaps, which are hidden when the necklace is closed. Another inspiration from Beverly, thank you!

This necklace is the manifestation of a treasured memory, one I will always hold dear in my heart. As always, thanks for stopping by my little corner and allowing me to share my work with you!

“Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.” ~Oscar Wilde

Saturday Morning Tea

Apr20

Good morning, dear tea friends! I’m back this week to share another cup of tea but with a heavy heart that grieves for all those affected by the unspeakable violence that took place in our beloved city and state this week. I pray for healing and for justice and to Martin, Lingzu, Krystle and Sean – you will not be forgotten.

This morning’s tea is a 2013 first flush Darjeeling from the Glenburn Estate. Three weeks ago, I reviewed another first flush from last year’s harvest at the Glenburn Estate. This 2013 tea is lot number DJ-17, assigned by the tea estate.

I found the leaf on this tea quite interesting in that it was a combination of various colors – russet, olive, spring green, dark brown – and sizes – whole intact leaf, tips and huge broken pieces.

I steeped the leaves for 4 minutes, pushing the brewing time from my normal 3 minutes for a Darjeeling tea.

The dark golden tea liquor has a light floral aroma. The flavor is smooth (even at 4 minutes!) and sweet with pronounced floral notes and a hint of that tropical banana note I find in a lot of first flushes. The finish has a citrus tang to it that lingers in my mouth. In my next steeping, I might even push the time on this light-bodied black tea a little more to see what happens.

As the tea cooled in my teacup, I found the flavor lightened up somewhat. I was surprised at how smooth the liquor is even when cooled.

As I slowly sip my tea and gaze out the window, I notice peeks of brilliant blue sky here and there amidst the dark gray clouds.

“Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.” ~Meister Eckhart

Saturday Morning Tea

Apr13

Good morning, dear tea friends! As promised last week, here is my original Tumsong Estate first flush Darjeeling tea post from May 2011.

The skies may be gray outside my window but I am inside enjoying sunshine in my teacup – a first flush Darjeeling from the Tumsong estate.

I have read that the Tumsong tea garden was first planted in 1867 around a temple devoted to the Hindu goddess Tamsa Devi. Devi is the Sanskrit word for goddess.

When I opened the tea packet, an aroma of fresh flowers and sugar cookies greeted my senses.

I steeped the bright olive tea leaves for 3 minutes in boiling point (212F) water.

From the Tumsong tea estate:

“Tumsong’s teas are known to be among the best in the Darjeeling area and command high prices at auctions. Perhaps the first credit for this should go to the goddess, on whose land the garden grows. The goddess Tamsa presides over this serene and surreal landscape and fills the atmosphere with harmony. In the area, Tumsong is often referred to as the garden of happy hearts.”

The leaves may be intensely green but the liquor they produce is a golden yellow, creating pearl bubbles of light in my glass teapot.

I have also read that the entire tea garden faces some of the highest ranges in the Himalayan mountains and receives a constant, cool breeze sweeping across the tea bushes. This breeze causes the plants to grow gradually, allowing them to slowly develop their flavor.

And this tea is positively bursting with flavor! Notes of nut (almond), tropical fruit and citrus pungency sweep across my palate as I slowly savor each sip from my teacup.

All I can say is – yum, and let me go make another pot right now!

I’m headed out to my garden this afternoon to do some more planting – 2 peonies with flowers of raspberry sorbet, tipped in yellow, a lavender for my herb garden, some olive/eggplant-colored coleus for a shady spot under a tree, and some cheerful daisies for the morning sun side of the house.

Have a wonderful weekend, dear friends!

“How to be happy when you are miserable. Plant Japanese poppies with cornflowers and mignonette, and bed out the petunias among the sweet-peas so they shall scent each other. See the sweet-peas coming up.

Drink very good tea out of a thin Worcester cup of a colour between apricot and pink…” ~ Rumer Godden