Category Archives: Tea

Saturday Morning Tea

Oh my, where did the morning go to?

I started out the day by indulging in a sleep in, getting 3 hours extra sleep than normal. Very decadent, I know. It’s the perfect day for it though – gray and dreary with heavy rain and wind. A day you want to stay under the covers a little longer.

I felt like something lighter this morning so I brewed a pot of Pai Mu Tan, an organic white tea from China. The least processed of all the teas, you can still see the downy white hairs on the leaf. Also known as Bai Mu Tan tea which literally translates to “white peony”.

I have read that the plucking rules for this tea are very strict. It is only allowed to be picked between mid-March and mid-April and only when it is dry out. No rain, no dew, no frost on the ground.

The epitome of spring in a cup of tea.

As you can see, it is a fine plucking, meaning the top two leaves and the bud. The tender leaves remind me of what is starting to peek out of the soil here in New England. Soon the crocuses will begin the blooming parade of color.

I steeped the leaves for 3 minutes in 180 degree F water. The pale gold liquor is delicate and sweet with a bloom of fruity notes in the flavor.

I am often surprised when people say that white tea has no flavor. Yes, the taste is delicate but I find it full of complexity and flavor. The expectations are not the same as those for a black or Oolong tea.

Amazing how they all come from the same plant though. It’s like people. All of us are born with the same parts, we breathe, we eat, we have blood flowing through our bodies. What happens after that, our experiences and how we respond to them contributes to what makes us different.

I love the color of this teabowl. The white tea is so pale that it shows the beautiful green color of my bowl.

What tea is in your cup this weekend?

“Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.” ~John Muir

Saturday Morning Tea

I must admit that I chose this morning’s tea just for the name alone – Water Fairy Oolong, also known as Shui Xian. Grown in the Fujian province of China, the huge, dark chocolate brown leaves are hand-rolled to resemble a frog’s leg.

Of course, there’s a story about how this tea got its ethereal name. I love tea stories so gather round, my friends, teacups in hand…

About 900 years ago, a Song dynasty emperor was traveling with his entourage to southern China to inspect a tea garden. It was a hot summer’s day and everyone soon became very thirsty. They searched high and low for water but could find none. One of the scouts spotted a bush with bright green leaves and his extreme thirst led him to place one of the brightly colored leaves in his mouth. The leaf was very juicy and he found that it quenched his thirst as he chewed it. Soon, everyone was chewing the leaves of this magical plant. Of course, it was the tea plant that produced Shui Xian tea. So, the emperor named the tea “Water Fairy” for its magical thirst quenching powers.

The leaves do look thirst quenching, don’t they?

I steeped them for 4 minutes in 190 degree F water. Even though the leaves look very dark, they are still not oxidized as much as a black tea is so it’s best to use a water temp below boiling point.

This tea is well known for its “narcissus” fragrance. The light amber liquor is silky smooth on my tongue with a lingering honey sweetness felt in the back of my mouth for a long time after sipping. Notes of chestnut and delicate peach round out the flavor.

Today is a day to relax at home and work on some art projects – making a polymer button for my finished Winter Woods vest and starting my winter palette free-form bracelet.

What tea are you enjoying today?

Whatever special nests we make – leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stones – we all dwell in a house of one room – the world with the firmament for its roof – and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track. ~John Muir

Saturday Morning Tea on Sunday

The weather couldn’t have been better at this time of the year – sunny and near 50 degrees! – for the move yesterday. They’re all moved in and now the unpacking and settling into a new home begins. There’s a lot of moving energy around me these days, including a company move coming up this summer.

I am sipping a cup of green Ceylon tea this morning, from the Idalgashinna estate, located in the Uva province in southeastern Sri Lanka.

Tea growing on the island of Sri Lanka was started in the late 1800s by a Scottish gentleman named James Taylor. Up until that time, coffee was the number one crop on the island until a rust fungus killed the majority of coffee plants. Starting with a basic tea cultivation knowledge learned in Northern India and 19 acres of land, he soon turned a small business into a very successful one, selling his tea for the first time at the London auction by 1873.

As you can see, this particular green tea has quite a large leaf. After steeping for 3 minutes in 180 degree F water, some of the twisted full leaf releases that shape and some stay tight. As I poured my first cup, a distinct vegetal aroma rose from my glass teapot.

A teapot full of sunshine.

The liquor is light and more delicate than other green teas, with a floral note reminiscent of a “green” Oolong. Its brightness, characteristic of Ceylon high grown teas, is revealed as the tea cools.

With deep blue skies and fast moving fluffy clouds, today is the perfect day for a hike into the late winter woods. I like to go every Sunday afternoon for my weekly dose of nature.

As I started down the woodsy path last week, I sensed a gradual awakening that tells me that we are almost at spring’s glorious door.

The fields are snowbound no longer;
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky–
So many white clouds–and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest,
He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers;
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls.
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears….
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.

~Very Early Spring by Katherine Mansfield

Saturday Morning Tea

This is a weekend to celebrate love and the beginning of a new year. The Year of the Tiger. When I think of tigers, I think of power, strength and wildness. Also, beauty and ferocity, a melding of light and dark. Tiger has much to teach us about these attributes.

This morning’s tea, a Chinese Jasmine, is a melding of 2 different types of plants, the camellia sinensis (tea) and a fragrant flower that opens only at night.

Jasmine flowers are plucked in the dew of the morning and gathered together for scenting green tea. As tea leaves are highly susceptible to absorbing scents, the marriage of these components in carefully controlled conditions produces a wonderfully fragrant tea.

I steeped the leaves for 3 minutes in 180 degree F water. The soft floral aroma greeted me as I lifted the lid of my glass teapot.

Glowing like a warm sunset, the tea liquor imparts a delicate, sweet flavor with an overlay of floral notes on the green tea’s vegetal character. A bright finish lingers on my tongue.

As I sip my tea, I catch images of sitting in a summer garden, drinking tea from fragile cups shaped like tiny eggs, the fragrance of blooming flowers all around.

As you can probably tell, I am so ready for spring’s arrival and its gentle fuzz of color as inner growth manifests once again in the outer world.

I have been thinking a lot lately about opening my heart and what that means to me. It conjures words like breathe, awareness, connection, listening, forgiveness, acceptance.

How do you open your heart?

Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

~William Shakespeare

Saturday Morning Tea

Our week was blessed with bright sunshine and deep blue skies even though temps have been hovering at the freezing mark during the day, dropping into the teens at night. I’ve warmed myself every night by wrapping in a big granny square blanket with a steaming teapot close by. The tv show LOST returned this week and, yes, I admit it, I am drawn to that show for some reason. Perhaps it’s their determination to survive that I admire.

This past week I replied to an e-mail from a customer disappointed in the tea I chose for my morning tea today. They thought it would be a green tea and, even though it is processed as a green tea first, I explained how it is far from it in flavor.

I introduce you to Ho-ji Cha tea, a roasted green tea.

Ho-ji Cha tea is traditionally grown and produced in Japan. Using what’s called Bancha (meaning common tea) green tea, the green tea leaves are roasted in porcelain pots over a charcoal fire. Roasting the tea leaves turns them a rich russet color and creates a completely different kind of tea from its original green state. This particular tea has been grown in China.

As you can see, the steeped leaves are chocolate brown with some twig mixed in. Straight twig tea is called Ku-ki Cha and is also very popular in Japan.

In my research, I have discovered that this type of tea was first created in Kyoto, Japan in the 1920s by a merchant but I have not been able to find out why. Perhaps he wanted to “spice” up the taste of the common grade of green tea. I have also read that the roasting process lowers the caffeine content of the leaf. I don’t understand that since all tea leaves are heated up to halt the oxidation process. Personally, I think this tea is lower in caffeine because it is common to have twigs from the tea plant mixed in. There isn’t any caffeine in the twigs.

I steeped my Ho-ji Cha tea for 3 minutes in 180 degree F water. As it brewed, its warm, toasty aroma filled my senses.

The flavor of the glowing, dark-amber liquor is woodsy, toasty, nutty and smooth with a whisper of sweet caramel in the finish.

The roasted flavor lingers in my mouth for a long time.

The winter sky is shrouded in a thick, gray blanket. Aside from the gentle water sound of my fountain and the classical music playing, my morning world is silent. I sip my tea and savor the quiet moments.

Weekends are for getting back in touch with myself.

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself

and know that everything in this life has a purpose.”

~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross