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

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

Saturday Morning Tea

Apr6

Good morning, dear tea friends! I hope you all had a wonderful, tea-filled week. I have another experiment in my cup this morning, with a 2-year-old first flush Darjeeling from the Tumsong Estate. I’ve decided to do the opposite of my last experiment and try the tea first before going back and looking at my first post about it. So, here goes…

Taking into account its age, I used a little bit more leaf and steeped for 4 minutes in boiling point (212F) water. The olive-colored leaves are mostly broken up but I was able to find an intact baby leaf here and there.

Like this lovely specimen.

Isn’t that marvelous? Whenever I see a whole leaf like that, it conjures up images of tea bushes growing under a wide, blue sky on the other side of the world, with women in brightly colored garments weaving in a delicate dance amongst the rows, plucking the newly grown leaf.

The tea liquor is a brilliant golden sunshine-y color with an orange tinge reminding me of fresh papaya. The flavor is tangy, with a rounded pungency that wakes up my taste buds. A whisper of almond and refreshing citrus greets those awakened taste buds with each sip.

I love the color of this tea so much that I brought out my glass teamug so I could enjoy it while I sipped.

My conclusion is that like the other older first flush teas I’ve tried, this tea has stood up well and can be quite a wonderful cup if you give it some tweaks to how it might have been originally steeped when it was a newborn.

Stay tuned for next week when I rerun my post from two years ago. I’m really enjoying this first flush journey and hope you are, too!

“When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let it go.”

~Carol Burnett

Saturday Morning Tea

Mar30

Good morning, dear tea friends! I’m back this week with a revisit to our 2012 harvest Glenburn Estate first flush Darjeeling. Last week, I reran my post from last April, when I reviewed it shortly after its arrival.

This tea is a very early harvest from the first flush season. The leaf is quite green with silvery white tips threaded throughout the green leaf. That said, this tea has been processed as a black tea.

Last year, I steeped the leaf for 3 minutes in just under boiling point water (200F). This year I steeped the leaf for 4 minutes in boiling point water (212F).

As I lifted the infuser from my glass teapot, I inhaled a delicate floral aroma from the pale gold tea liquor, as last year.

Last year, I photographed a pile of the wet tea leaves. This year, I wanted to see what a leaf pile consists of so I lifted out some individual pieces. I see tiny buds (baby leaf) mixed with broken pieces of whole leaf. Look at the serrations on the edge of that leaf to the right.

The tea liquor color is lighter than the first flush tea I reviewed 2 weeks ago, from the Thurbo Estate. I’m not sure why but it could be because this tea was harvested quite early in the season. The tea estates assign “DJ” numbers to the tea lots. This tea’s “DJ” number is 4 whereas the Thurbo lot is 45. Perhaps the Thurbo was harvested a couple of weeks later in the season?

At 4 minutes, the tea is quite smooth and very flavorful with pronounced floral notes, just like last year. I even remarked in last year’s post that it would be interesting to push the steeping time as the tea was quite smooth. I think I’m going to try 5 minutes on my next steep. I’ll let you know next week how it tasted.

So, my experiment was a success in that it showed how amazingly well this tea has held up a year later. Sometimes I talk to customers who tend to shy away from the teas from older harvests. I say – try a sample. You will probably be most pleasantly surprised!

I’ve just heard this week that we have three 2013 first flush Darjeelings arriving within the next several weeks. Oh, happy day! I will post a review as soon as they arrive.

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”

~Rainer Marie Rilke