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

Oct21

ZhangDry103109

Good morning, dear tea friends! I’m in New Jersey right now visiting relatives so I share a post from 3 years ago. It was Halloween and I was enjoying a cup of a very floral Oolong tea. Enjoy and I’ll see you next week!

The bronzed leaves are rattling across my backyard deck like dried bones as they welcome this last day of October, All Hallowed Eve. Pouring rain and wind this past week have swept clean most of the leaves from their trees to create an autumn carpet laid across the lawns and streets. As I drove home last night, glowing jack-o-lanterns brought memories of carving pumpkins, and I inhaled the woodsy smell of fallen leaves as I got out of my car and made my way up the path home. I love this autumn time of year, perfect for cozying up with a hot cup of tea.

Zhangpkg103109

As promised last week, this morning’s tea is very special. Called Zhang Ping Shui Hsian (or Xian), its leaves are finely plucked, hand processed and compressed into small bricks. Each “brick” is then exquisitely packaged into a shiny red, black and gold vacuum sealed packet for freshness.

ZhangDryBits103109

This Chinese Oolong is grown in Fujian province and lightly oxidized to create a greener Oolong tea, similar to a Jade or Tung Ting. I gently broke some leaves off of the brick for steeping.

ZhangSteep103109

Because the leaves are not as oxidized as a darker Oolong or a black tea, I decided to steep at a green tea temperature and time, 180 degrees F for 3 minutes.

ZhangSteep2103109

As the leaves steeped in my glass teapot, they swirled and floated downward, reminding me of the dance of the leaves outside.

ZhangSteep3103109

It might be fall outside but it was like a springtime garden in my kitchen. A sweet lilac fragrance drifted up from my teapot as I removed the infuser basket. Mmmmm…

ZhangWet103109

The tea liquor is a pale gold brown with very distinctive floral aroma and flavor notes. A sweetness fills my mouth and gently lingers after each sip.

ZhangTeabowl103109

I am sipping my tea from a gorgeous coppery red teabowl, generously lent to me by a colleague/friend at work. Thanks Rebecca. She purchased it at Target. I’ll have to go check out the teaware at Tar-zjay.

ZhangTeabowl2103109

The bronze leaves compliment the darker glazing on the bowl. After the Color Workshop I attended last weekend, I notice color everywhere! And, after looking through my tea leaf pictures, I’m not surprised that I chose green and orange as the color palette for my collage in the workshop. My life is steeped in tea leaves…

Happy Halloween, everyone!

“Never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker.”

~Linus from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Saturday Morning Tea

Sep22

Happy first day of fall, dear tea friends! The gray blanket sky has broken up into wisps of cotton fluff revealing a deep blue sky and the promise of a warm day. This morning I’m enjoying a cup of China Oolong tea. Harvested this past spring, it’s called Pre-Chingming Da Hong Pao. Da Hong Pao translates to “Big Red Robe” and I’ve written about it before here.

Are you wondering what big red robes have to do with this tea? Well, there’s a legend that the mother of an emperor fell ill and was cured by a certain tea. The emperor sent big red robes to clothe and honor the bushes from which the tea originated, in the Wuyi mountains of Fujian province. The legend goes on to say that three of the four bushes still survive today and are highly venerated.

As you can see, the leaves of this tea are huge and mainly intact. I steeped them for 4 minutes in 190F water. Because of their immense size, I used 3 teaspoons of tea leaves in my glass teapot.

Right away, I could smell the orchid fragrance as the tea leaves steeped. As I poured my first cup, I also detected honey and a slight vegetal fragrance as well.

The golden-colored tea liquor is smooth and buttery with notes of orchid, peach and honey. Ambrosia! It is suggested to do multiple steepings with this tea as the flavor develops even further with subsequent steepings. Wow, I think this tea is bursting with flavor on the first steep.

This is a lovely tea.

Today will be spent signing up for a hosting plan for my new website, downloading WordPress and starting to learn how to design it. I’m excited and nervous at the same time as I venture into this unknown territory. I know that I eventually want to sell some of my jewelry online. The question is: where do I sell it? On my own website? On Etsy and provide a link on my website to the Etsy shop? I do know that I want to do this but also know that I want to take the route that is less maintenance work so I can fit it in with my full-time job. If anyone has any experience/feedback about this, I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for visiting and enjoy your week and your tea!

“All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.” ~Walt Disney

Saturday Morning Tea

Dec3

This morning’s tea is a decadent treat.

At approximately $2.25 per cup, it is also an expensive treat! It’s name is quite fitting. Meet Extra Fancy Oolong from Taiwan (Formosa). Extra Fancy indeed.

It is described as a “style of Oolong often referred to as ‘Champagne Oolong’, and exemplifies the art of fine tea manufacture”. We can see how carefully this tea was processed by the full leaf sets still intact.

This tea has been entirely hand processed. From the careful picking of the first two leaves and bud on the tea plant to the drying and shaking of the leaf every hour to bruise and encourage oxidation to the pan roasting that halts the oxidation, the Tea Master who created this tea has synchronized all of these steps perfectly as an art form.

Because Oolong tea is not fully oxidized as is black tea, I steeped the leaves in cooler than boiling point water – about 190 degrees F for 5 minutes.

The deep sherry-colored tea liquor smells like ambrosia, giving off an aroma of fresh peaches. I can’t wait to take my first sip which fills my mouth with notes of ripe fruit, rich and syrupy. Oh, what a treat!

I know it’s a tradition to have a glass of champagne at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Why not enjoy a cup of “champagne” tea instead?

What a wonderful way to welcome in a brand new year!

Until next time, dear tea friends…

To listen to the songs of birds, I skipped the evening meditation,
enjoyed a patch of grass by the edge of an ancient mountain stream.
Pleasure recollected depends on a beautiful phrase;
the appreciative mind meets with a close friend.
Spring water cries out in a rocky valley;
pine trees echo when wind is coming.
I drank a cup of tea and watched the flowing and stillness.
Quietly and naturally I seemed to forget the return of time.

Cho-ui
1786-1866

Saturday Morning Tea

Jul30

This morning I’m enjoying another tea from the Jun Chiyabari estate in Nepal. Called Himalayan Oolong, it reminds me very much of a tea I reviewed about a year ago in this post.

The leaves look very much like an Oolong tea, large and rolled, yet there are some differences in the taste, creating a tea, in my opinion, whose flavor notes are a melding of Oolong and Darjeeling. As I said in a previous post, their Himalayan Oolongs are created with a secret process resulting in a black tea with the characteristics of a Silvertip Oolong tea. True Silvertip Oolong teas come from Taiwan (Formosa).

The dry leaf gave off a sweet cookie aroma as I spooned the leaves into my glass teapot. Since they’re so huge, I used 2 teaspoons per cup. I steeped the leaves for 4 minutes at a water temperature of approximately 185 degrees F. Based on my experience several weeks ago, I’m trying a longer steeping time initially. After steeping, I detected a light floral aroma in the wet leaf, a faint whisper of a green Oolong’s (like Spring Dragon) floral characteristic.

As you can see, the tea liquor is a lighter amber color than the Himalayan Oolong I reviewed last year. It’s also lighter-bodied in the cup. The flavor is rich and fruity and quite smooth. I might try steeping for 5 minutes at the lower temp and see what happens.

Isn’t it fun to experiment with your tea and see what happens? Some wonderful surprises and some….well…I guess that didn’t work. But then you know and you go on from there.

Some people like to stick with a tea and try different steeping times until the flavor suits them and others don’t want to be bothered with the “fuss”. One’s not right and one’s not wrong. They’re just different ways of approaching something. I think you can tell which way I am. Which way are you?

“It is the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.” ~Rebecca West