Saturday Morning Tea

Jul20

Good morning, dear tea friends! We’ve been experiencing a heatwave all this week in New England, with temps in the mid 90s. Even with the AC on full blast, I’m feeling very drained and foggy. The good news is that a cool front is sweeping in tonight with a line of thunderstorms that will bring relief from the oppressive heat. As I was out walking the other day, I was thinking how blessed I am to live in a place with changing weather. Ok, on to tea…

My morning cuppa is a lightly oxidized Oolong from Thailand called Ruan Zhi Thai Oolong.

Tea cultivation and production in the high mountains of Thailand was started and established in the 1980s by Chinese immigrants. What began as small economic activity has grown to a strong community of independent tea gardens.

This tea is plucked from Taiwanese bushes that were brought over for Oolong tea production and the whole leaves are carefully rolled in the tradition of Taiwanese tea crafting.

The tea came in a beautiful stylized packet with colorful images of flowers and birds. Does anyone know what kind of bird that is?

As you can see from the photo of the dry leaf, the leaf is tightly rolled into large spiral-shaped pellets. After a 3 minute steeping in 190F water, the pellets unfurled to reveal finely plucked, well intact enormous leaf sets.

I’m not sure about the percentage of oxidation for this tea but I would guess around the same level as a Jade or Spring Dragon Formosa (Taiwan) Oolong, in the teens, as it is created in that style.

The pale jade tea liquor has a light floral fragrance with a very rich, buttery flavor. Notes of orchid gently dance across my tongue and linger into the finish. This tea is light yet richly flavored all at the same time. It would taste excellent iced, especially on a hot, steamy day like today.

I’ve decided to sip my tea hot so I can show off my new teabowl. A lovely shade of seagreen with washes of reddish brown on the rim, it’s covered in light speckles that glitter in the sunlight falling on the inside of the bowl.

To beat the heat today, I’m going to catch a movie this afternoon in an air-conditioned theater. How about you? Tomorrow will be a much nicer day to spend outside, a perfect day to have a picnic with my grandkids.

As always, thanks for visiting and have a wonderful week!

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”

~Alan Alda

Saturday Morning Tea

Jul13

Good morning, dear tea friends! It’s wonderful to be back here with you enjoying a cup of tea again. My first 2nd flush Darjeeling tea review from the 2013 season, this selection is from the Puttabong Estate.

Also known as the Tukvar Estate, it was first planted in 1852 and is nestled in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains near Kanchendzonga peak. With altitudes ranging from 1,500 to 6,500 feet above sea level, it is one of the highest elevation tea gardens in Darjeeling district, in northeastern India. Its tea plants consist mainly of clonal bushes and China jat, meaning tea bushes with origins from China.

Look how dark the tea leaf and steeping liquor is when compared to a first flush Darjeeling, whose color has been compared to apple juice. This tea was harvested in later spring as compared to the first flush early spring harvest. What a difference a few months can make!

The dark chocolate color of the leaf contains no green bits as a first flush does.

This tea has an interesting leaf designation called Kakra. I’ve read that this word translates to “dehydrated leaf”. Free of pesticides, the tea leaf is allowed to be attacked by a green fly, which looks similar to an aphid. The fly bites the leaf and starts sucking on its juices. This causes the leaf to start to oxidize on the plant. Only the leaves that have been exposed to the green fly, identified by their yellowish color, are plucked. So, in essence, the leaf undergoes a double oxidation – on the plant and then during its regular processing. Isn’t that cool?

I steeped the leaves for 3 minutes in boiling point (212F) water. The glowing dark-amber tea liquor has a rich aroma of fruits and chestnuts, reminiscent of a darker Oolong tea. This brings up an interesting point as I’ve read that the tea leaf that goes on to become Oriental Beauty Oolong from Taiwan has also been exposed to the ministrations of the green fly.

I find the flavor, whose richness literally bursts in my mouth, also reminiscent of an Oolong tea in its nutty, almost woody quality. I also detected faint notes of fruit in the smooth cup.

We’ve been getting rain almost everyday here in New England this past week and the gardens are bursting with rich color, just like the rich flavor of this tea. In my garden, I have coneflower, hydrangea, roses, tall phlox, astilbe and even some chrysanthemum starting to bloom. I hope that you’re enjoying the season wherever you may be with lots of cups/glasses of tea to keep you company. Have a wonderful week!

“Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

~Max Ehrmann

Saturday Morning Tea

Jun22

Good morning, dear tea friends! Now that summer has officially arrived, the temperature has started to creep up again into the 80s and it’s time for a refreshing glass of iced tea. I think that Ceylon black teas taste fabulous iced so this morning’s tea is just that, from the Aislaby Estate in southeastern Uva province, Sri Lanka.

I have read that Uva province is the second least populated of Sri Lanka’s provinces, with only 1.1 million people. They have two main agricultural crops there: tea, grown in the hills, and sugar, grown on the plains. This particular tea estate has been owned by a British planting family that emigrated to Sri Lanka in the 1880s and has owned the estate since the 1920s.

The leaf is graded as pekoe (pronounced pe, as in pet, and koe, rhymes with toe), the definition being “a grade of black tea consisting of the leaves around the buds.” As I took photographs of both the dry and wet leaf, its chunkiness reminded me of a CTC grade, with its granular appearance.

To steep my tea leaves for iced tea, I used double the amount I normally would as for hot tea preparation, so 2 rounded teaspoons in my little glass teapot. I steeped for 3 minutes in boiling point (212F) water.

As the tea steeped to a beautiful deep amber color, a pronounced minty aroma wafted up from my teapot.

After steeping, I poured the hot tea into a Pyrex glass filled with ice cubes. The Pyrex brand of glass is a borosilicate glass (mainly silica and boron oxide), a glass resistant to thermal shock. Once the tea had cooled down, I then filled my Mermaid glass (which isn’t boro glass).

The tea tastes rich and full-bodied with an interesting, pronounced wintergreen minty note. Some of my favorite Ceylon teas have this flavor note and I find it especially refreshing in an iced tea. I imagine adding a slice of lemon or some lemon balm leaves to add a citrus note to the mint. Fabulous!

My company is shutting down for our annual vacation June 29-July 7. I’m traveling to Michigan that week to visit with my family. So, there won’t be a new Saturday Morning Tea post for 3 weeks. That said, I’ll be happy to rerun some posts the next two weeks.

Thanks so much for joining me today and I look forward to sharing another cup of tea with you in July!

“Summer afternoon-summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

~Henry James

Saturday Morning Tea

Jun15

Good morning, dear tea friends! The pollen has been quite high in our area this spring, causing all sorts of allergy symptoms with many I know. Besides the upper respiratory symptoms, it’s really been knocking me out energy-wise so this morning I’m feeling the need for some quiet, restful meditation time with a cup of white tea.

In my cup is a white Darjeeling tea called Victoria’s Peak Estate White Tea.

This tea was grown in the Victoria’s Peak section of the Steinthal Estate in Darjeeling, located in northeastern India. Even though it was grown in India, it has been entirely hand processed in the style of a Chinese white tea called Yin Zhen Downy White Pekoe. You can read about that China white tea here.

The leaf is all new growth from the tea plant, the buds, and, since it’s been entirely hand processed, it remains in pristine condition from the day it was plucked. Gorgeous. They remind me of little smiles.

I steeped the leaves for 4 minutes in 180F water.

The tea steeps up to a whisper of color in my glass teapot, like a pale winter wheat. The aroma is delicate with wisps of sweet melon.

The silky smooth flavor has a clean taste with notes of melon and a sweetness like sugar cookie, which becomes more prominent as it cools.

A perfect cuppa to slow down with, to sit with and sip gently. ..

“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Saturday Morning Tea

Jun8

Good morning, dear tea friends! I chose another Pre-Chingming tea for my morning tea – a Yunnan black tea called Dian Hong Yunnan Gold. I have read that “Dian” is the old name used for the Yunnan province and the word “hong” translates to “red” or “red tea”. Black teas from China are often referred to as red teas because of their intense “brassy red” color.

You can see that color starting to come out in the steeping. I steeped the leaves for 5 minutes in 212F (boiling point) water. This is a great tea for multiple steepings if you’d like to try that.

The fine plucking is evident in the intact leaf sets. I opened this bud up to reveal the little baby leaves inside.

The downy hairs are visible, even on the wet leaf. When the tea is dried and packaged, the hairs will dry and turn into dust. So, if you open your tea packet and see a bunch of dust, that is a good thing as it indicates a fine plucking.

There’s that beautiful “brassy red”, which I prefer to call deep amber.

The aroma is sweet and spicy with a whisper of floral perfume and a hint of cocoa.

I find this tea to be on the lighter side for a Yunnan tea and very smooth in the cup. With flavor notes of spice and cocoa, this tea gets sweeter as it cools. I find that the abundance of golden tip lends a delicacy to the mouth feel, like the liquor is lightly dancing across my palate.

We are celebrating a wonderful family event this weekend – my daughter and her boyfriend have just purchased their very first house. Very exciting! I’m looking forward to helping them clean and paint and turn their new house into a wonderful home.

As always, thanks for stopping by and sharing a cuppa with me. I am just finishing a beaded project that has taken me almost 2 months to complete! Stay tuned for pictures soon…

“Home is the nicest word there is.” ~Laura Ingalls Wilder