Black Tea « Art and Tea

As the wind and rain whip against my windows this morning, I am thankful and happy to be cozy and warm inside sipping a cup of a new second flush Darjeeling from the Makaibari estate. I watch the tree outside my window which has lost all of its leaves now. It reaches its skeletal branches towards the sky in what appears to be a gesture of praise and gratitude for the water soaking the earth around it.

This tea comes from the biodynamic Fair Trade Makaibari estate in the Darjeeling tea growing district in northeastern India. It has long leaves with the look of an Oolong tea, not a typical Darjeeling leaf which appears smaller. The dry leaf has a fair amount of tip giving it a variegated look. I place my nose inside my cup and I am transported to a fragrant orchard as I inhale the lush ripe aroma of a peach. The liquor is a beautiful honey color with the taste of ripe fruits and muscatel. I usually find a muscatel flavor note to be pungent but the taste is buttery smooth. What a treat for a gloomy November day!

A misty, rainy fall morning and I open with a quote from one of the oldest books on tea, the Ch’a-Ching (The Classic of Tea) by Lu Yu

“There are a thousand different appearances of tea leaves. Some have creases like the leathern boot of a Tartar horseman, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like the mist rising out a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like fine earth newly swept by rain.”

This morning I am sipping a China black tea called Yunnan Rare Grade. As I talked about in my post on Pu-ehr teas, the tea plants in Yunnan province are actually trees with a bigger, broader leaf. This tea has a lot of golden tips as you can see in the dry leaf photo. Some of the leaf is starting to uncurl when wet but most are still curled up from the rolling process.

A dark, sweet aroma wafts from my cup. I take a sip and my mouth is filled with a spicy earthiness, reminding me of the rich smell of a newly fallen leaf. The Chinese call this a red tea and you can see why. If you enjoy red wine, dark chocolate or even a thick, dark beer, you will like the taste of a Yunnan black tea.

Go Sox!