Category Archives: Black Tea

Saturday Morning Tea

Happy October, tea friends. October in New England is one of my favorite times of year with its glorious blazes of color streaked across nature’s canvas. A feast for the eyes. This month I’m going to explore tea from Japan and I’m starting the month off with quite a unique tea, a new experience for me and quickly a new favorite.

I introduce you to a black tea from Japan called Ikumi.

Yes, you heard me correctly. A Japanese black tea.

Black tea has been cultivated in Japan for approximately 150 years, however, it is rarely exported out of the country. Almost half of Japan’s tea is grown in the Shizuoka prefecture, an area of abundant rainfall and thick fog located on the central eastern coastline. It is also an area prone to devastating earthquakes which hit historically every 100-150 years, the last one occurring in 1854. Interestingly enough, the name Shizuoka means “Tranquil Hills”.

As the tea leaves steeped in boiling point (212 degrees F) water for 4 minutes, a sweet nutmeg aroma wafted up from my glass teapot, portending wonderful flavor notes to come.

The dark amber liquor is delightfully complex with notes of nutmeg and black raspberry one moment and then cocoa and cinnamon the next. Yum!

Look at that dark, rich color.

A cool breeze blows in my window, a welcome relief to the tropical humidity of this past week. With leaves of crimson and gold framed against a brilliant blue sky today, it’s the perfect day for a nature walk.

Enjoy your weekend!

“Life’s ups and downs provide windows of opportunity to determine your values and goals. Think of using all obstacles as stepping stones to build the life you want.” ~Marsha Sinetar, author

Saturday Morning Tea

Jun, “moon”. Chiya, “tea”. Bari, “garden”.

Jun Chiyabari. Moon tea garden.

It conjures up images of an exotic place, filled with lush tea bushes bathed in the dreamy light of a full moon.

Back in 2000, 2 brothers, Bachan and Lochan Gyawali, along with a former schoolmate, manifested their “moon tea garden” dream when they established the Jun Chiyabari tea garden in the hills surrounding the small town of Hile in the eastern Himalayan region of Nepal.

Working with small, local farmers to encourage and support them in keeping ownership of their land for tea cultivation, the team’s primary focus is on quality of leaf not quantity. They pay the farmers top prices for that high quality leaf, with a markup of 50-100%, a direct benefit to this small rural community.

This morning’s tea was grown in this community.

“There is an old saying that ‘tea is made in the garden’ (as opposed to at the factory).  In other words, what is produced in the garden in terms of quality, plucking, etc., will determine the nature of the end product.  We take this very seriously, and from the outset we have put the small farmer at the heart of our project.” ~Bachan Gyawali

In keeping with this philosophy, the Jun Chiyabari team expanded their vision last year with the construction of the Singalila Tea factory nearby in the town of Fikkal, at an altitude of 5,662 feet above sea level. They are constantly educating themselves and their farmers in tea cultivation skills, bio-organic farming including diversity of crops and preservation of forest areas to benefit the environment.

The beautiful amber liquor glows like a jewel in my glass teapot inviting me to pour my first cup.

The cup is quite smooth with sweet, lightly floral notes. I also detect some chestnut notes reminiscent of an Oolong tea. Mmmm…

I look forward to more delicious tea from this visionary team!

Today I’m heading down to E. Bridgewater, MA where my dear friend, Judy, is teaching her Buttons & Bellishments class. I’m looking forward to a fun ART Day!

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

~Helen Keller

Saturday Morning Tea

Yesterday my company moved from our facility in Hopkinton, MA, where we’ve been for the last 9 years, to a new facility in the nearby town of Holliston. So, needless to say, it was a day of fixing up, hooking up, learning a new phone system and settling in to our new space. Not to mention moving all of that tea. Literally, tons of it. The good news is that we’ve been moving things over to the new space, bit by bit, over the past several months but it was still a big undertaking yesterday nonetheless. Whew!

When I first joined my company in 1995, it was a very  small operation and our packing and shipping areas were in close proximity to each other. The phones were nearby so we could stop to answer a call as we packed and boxed the tea orders. Now, each department has its own huge space and we need to take a bit of a walk to visit each other. We have evolved to have a separate Customer Service department as well as a Purchasing department in a large office area. All that said, the spirit of our company has remained the same no matter how much we grow, with the primary goal of providing our customers with the best tea and service we can. And you will always get a live person whenever you call us during our hours!

This morning’s tea is a first flush Darjeeling from the Makaibari estate. A biodynamic estate located in the Darjeeling district of northeast India, it produces some of the finest Darjeelings I’ve tasted. In all of my years of drinking and enjoying Darjeeling teas, I haven’t met a Makaibari that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed.

The leaf is resplendent with a profusion of tips which I find smooths out the crisp pungent flavor of a first flush tea. I steeped the leaves at my usual 3 minutes in boiling point water.

Look at that gorgeous color. Yum.

The fragrant aroma has a faint note of juicy citrus and the crisp flavor fills my mouth with notes of a muscatel grape.

I just had to enjoy this tea in a white teabowl so I could keep gazing upon that amazing color.

The muggy humidity has left us here in New England and we are blessed with a clearer, cooler day today. I’m going to find some time to spend in my studio, getting back to my experimentations with acrylic paint and polymer clay.

What’s in your teacup this weekend?

“Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast.”

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Saturday Morning Tea

Today is the first day of my 9-day vacation and I am savoring the first moments of this day with a cup of dark, rich Ceylon tea from the Ceciliyan estate.

I have read that the Ceciliyan estate is located right on the edge of a tropical rain forest in the southwest Ruhuna district of Sri Lanka. This unique micro climate produces tea leaf yielding a thick caramel-y cup of tea. Its “spider leg” leaf style, designated as FBOPF Ex. Spl., results in a tea that has notes reminding me of a China black tea. I’ve written about another “spider leg” tea here.

Steeping the leaves for 4 minutes in boiling point water produces a deep amber colored liquor. Its syrupy sweet aroma greets me as I lift out the infuser basket.

Interesting. The wet leaf has an aroma of artichoke and fig.

With my first sip, I taste bitter chocolate with hints of a dark, tart berry. Its lively astringency fills my mouth and lingers there.

Either a shorter steeping time, say 3 minutes, or a dash of milk would smooth out the astringency, if you prefer.

As I drink my second cup, I listen to the music from the Pride and Prejudice movie soundtrack and I am whisked away to another time. A time when ladies wore long dresses and sipped tea from tiny, fragile teacups. I love Jane Austen’s stories.

Happy 234th Birthday to this great nation of ours. Enjoy your holiday weekend!

“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” ~last paragraph, Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson

Saturday Morning Tea

This morning’s tea was actually started last night. In honor of my visit to the Rhode Island Polymer Clay guild meeting today, I steeped up some iced decaf chai tea to share with the group. I talked about this flavored spice tea and made the hot tea version here.

First, I started with two 10-cup Chatsford teapots. I love these teapots. They come in 4 different sizes, each with a plastic and very fine mesh infuser basket. This largest size is perfect for steeping tea for a crowd.

Taking into consideration the later addition of ice and possibly milk and also because I wanted the tea to be extra spicy, I used a heaping teaspoon of leaves and spices for every 6 ounces of water. After inserting the basket into the teapot, I spooned the tea into each teapot’s infuser basket and then added cold water. You want to add water up until this line. Any higher and the tea leaves could possibly spill into the teapot through that notch opening and defeat the convenience of the basket. Place the teapots in the fridge and wait til the next morning.

This morning I removed the baskets. Now how simple is that?

I saved an empty gallon water jug and just poured the tea from both teapots into the jug.

I placed the jug into a cooler with a small plastic bucket of ice, a bit of milk in my Kleen Kanteen and agave for sweetener and I’m ready to go!

At the meeting, my dear friend, Judy, will be showing us how to make ATCs using polymer clay, paint, rubber stamps, colored pencils and glitter. You can see her tutorial here. A fun Art Day!

“When indeed shall we learn that we are all related one to the other, that we are all members of one body?” ~Helen Keller