Good morning, dear tea friends. My heart is feeling very heavy this morning. Before I talk about tea, I’d like to take a moment to send thoughts and prayers out for the family and friends of the victims of yesterday’s horrific tragedy in CT. And thoughts and prayers that we as a nation can work together to prevent this horror from happening again. Thank you for listening and virtually joining in to hold my hand and offer your own thoughts and prayers.

This morning’s tea is called Tai Mu Long Zhu, a green tea from Fujian province in China. The tea is harvested in the spring and then the leaves are processed and carefully rolled into small “pearls”. Most of the “pearl” tea I’ve seen is usually scented with jasmine flowers. This tea has no scenting.

I steeped the pearls for about 3 minutes in 180F water. This tea tastes very smooth so you can probably experiment with a longer steep time, if you wish.

I have to say that the wet leaf amazed me. I didn’t expect it to be so large! The “pearls” unfurled gently during steeping to reveal loose spirals of long tea leaf.

As I meditated on the beauty of this tea leaf, I thought of how we can unfurl and open our hearts to face this tragedy together and, using this open heart energy, admit and accept that something is gravely broken in our country and needs to be healed.

The light straw-colored tea liquor has a sweet aroma, lightly vegetal and fruity. The flavor has a very light vegetal flavor with nuances of melon and a sweetness that lingers.

This is a great tea for those who do not enjoy the vegetal flavor of green tea. Well, time to go fill up my tea bowl again.

It is a morning to just sit quietly with a cup of tea…