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

Saturday Morning Tea

Jun1

Good morning, dear tea friends! I did something a little different with my morning tea today. You’ll see very soon…

I’ve chosen a spring green tea from China this morning, called Pre-Chingming Jun Shan Yin Zhen. As you can see, it was harvested in the spring before Qingming day. Its name translates to Jun Mountain Silver Needle. Described as “produced at Jun Mountain in the Dongting Lake region of Hunan, this tea is made from traditional Camellia sinensis cultivars.”

I steeped the beautiful, hand processed leaf in my little glass teapot for 3 minutes in 180F water. I used double the amount of leaves that I normally would, about 4-5 teaspoons per cup. You’ll see why soon…

I am in love with this leaf.

It has been processed entirely by hand and gently dried/roasted in baskets over a charcoal fire.

The tea liquor is a delicate pale green with a fresh, vegetal aroma reminiscent of baby corn.

And here is why I used double the amount of leaf! While I do love my hot tea, I just wanted something cool and refreshing in this 90+ degree heatwave we’re having. I filled a Pyrex measuring cup with ice and poured in my green tea, then poured into my Mermaid glass.

The flavor is light and cool with whispers of sweet corn and flowers. Very refreshing!

It’s too hot to putter around in my garden today so I’ll head out to someplace air conditioned that serves ice cream. Mmmm…

As always, thanks for stopping by and sharing a cup/glass of tea with me. Have a great week!

“My love for ice cream emerged at an early age – and has never left!”

~Ginger Rogers

Saturday Morning Tea

Apr27

Good morning, dear tea friends! This week I’m moving away from Indian teas and have steeped up a China green tea in my glass teapot. A China tea whose leaves were still on the bush, unfolding and reaching towards the sunlight a mere few months ago.

I introduce you to Pre-Chingming Pi Lo Chun.

The name Pi Lo Chun translates to “green snail spring”, so named because the leaf is rolled into tight spiral shapes resembling snail shells. I have read that they roll the leaf this way to retain its freshness.

As I’ve shared with you before, Pre-Chingming teas are harvested before the festival of Qingming (Chingming), usually celebrated on the 15th day from the Spring Equinox. Any teas harvested before that date are referred to as Pre-Chingming teas. In other words, harvested in very early spring.

Just as this tightly rolled leaf has unfurled and opened up to reveal its beauty, spring is a time of opening up, of blossoming, when everything comes back to life. I feel infused with new energy at this rebirth time of year. How about you?

This tea tastes like a fresh spring day.

The words that come to mind as I gently sip from my tea bowl are:

delicate. pale. fresh. new.

The pale spring green tea liquor gives off a fresh vegetal fragrance. The flavor is also fresh and vegetal with a natural sweetness that softly greets my mouth.

This is the perfect cuppa to celebrate the spring. What tea are you enjoying in your cup today?

“Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring?”

~Neltje Blanchan

Saturday Morning Tea

Mar2

Good morning, dear tea friends! Welcome to the month of spring! Here in New England, we have become weary of the cold and snow and are looking for the signs that spring is on its way. A cheery robin’s song, some pale green shoots poking up through the sodden earth, watery sunshine melting the piles of snow.

This morning’s tea, called Fujian Green Needle, is a beautifully handcrafted green tea from China. The leaf is a fine plucking of the upper two leaves and bud, processed in an artful way so that the two leaves envelop the inner downy bud. The leaves look like tiny peapods to me.

I steeped the leaf for 3 minutes in 180 degree F water. Most of the leaves floated on the top of the water but some hung down vertically from the water’s surface. They looked like little sea creatures.

After steeping, the leaves stayed tight in their outer leaf so I opened one up to look inside. A perfect little leaf came out of the outside leaf, like a nested doll. There is a bud inside of that leaf but I decided to go no further because as gentle as I was, I still tore the outer leaf a bit.

The tea liquor is oh so pale – a light straw color with a faint spring green tinge. The aroma is fresh and sweetly vegetal with a hint of flowers. The flavor is delicate and sweet with a whisper of flowers and vanilla cookie.

This is not the tea for you if you’re looking for a robust green tea, however, if you enjoy the delicate subtlety of a white tea, you will love the experience of this gentle cup.

I’m making progress on my beaded necklace, whose color palette is reminding me of a visit to New Mexico a couple of years ago to meet my brand new grandson, Landon. Hopefully, I can share my creation with you soon and share that story.

Have a wonderful week and enjoy your tea!

“Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.”

~Mahatma Ghandi

Saturday Morning Tea

Jan26

Good morning, dear tea friends! I hope that you had a great week and stayed warm if you’re experiencing a bitterly cold winter as we are here in New England. Oh my. Each day has started with these numbers – 3, 8, 10…brrrr! I need some serious warmup here! So, with that in mind, I chose a dark, rich China black tea to grace my teabowl this morning. Meet Organic Black Monkey, with its fuzzy golden tips threading through long, twisted, dark leaves.

I steeped the leaves for 5 minutes in boiling point (212F) water. As I lifted the infuser from my glass teapot, a strong aroma of sweet pipe tobacco greeted my senses. With the name “Monkey”, I thought this tea might be more like a Golden Monkey, with those rich, cocoa notes, however, I found this tea to be more like a Bohea in aroma and flavor.

The long, twisted leaf reminds me of a dark Oolong tea, one that has been oxidized at 40-50%, in fact, there are some of those toasty, woody nuances in the flavor as well.

The dark-russet tea liquor is thick and bittersweet, like a very dark chocolate, leaving the suggestion of cocoa in my mouth. The tobacco notes that I found so pronounced at first mellowed out as the tea cooled. Aside from that cocoa bitterness, the tea is quite smooth, leading me to think that this tea would be fun to “monkey” around with the steeping times.

This tea did a great job of warming my bones, a perfect cuppa for a frigid, mid-winter’s day.

I started playing around with my polymer clay stash last weekend and want to continue that this weekend. I had purchased a DVD from polymer clay artist, Barbara McGuire, on her version of mokume gane, involving gold leaf, alcohol inks and poking the clay with geometric shapes. I’ve been imagining ways to combine the beautiful, watercolor effect of this technique with either free-form beading or bead embroidery. Stay tuned to see what manifests!

As always, I so enjoy our time together, sharing a cup of tea. Thanks for stopping by!

“I dream a lot. I do more painting when I’m not painting. It’s in the subconscious.” ~Andrew Wyeth