Blast from the Past – Here to Stay

At last, it’s been found for me, my first tea love!

Actually, it’s more like her younger and more ferocious cousin.  Loud bark, but very gentle once you take the time to understand her.

First, some background.  By way of circumstance and opportunity, the bulk of my tea learning has taken place in Taiwan.  It’s there that I was able to learn more about Dong Ding Oolong (my other favorite) and Muzha Tieguanyin.  Tieguanyin originally comes from Fujian and the best-known production area for it is Anxi.  The skills to make a traditional charcoal roasted oolong with moderate oxidation levels have deteriorated rapidly as preferences have changed to favor fresher, lighter tastes.  For years, I have searched for a round, complex and strong Anxi Tieguanyin with the beautiful mouth-feel and lingering, sweet finish (called guanyin yun), but have failed to find both the right product and the right teacher.  So it was in Taiwan that I was able to study the Muzha variant, itself as worthy as its Anxi counterpart; but they’re not the same.  Like two buckets of Haagen-Dazs ice cream, I will surely love both, but one will be particularly special (and that would be caramel cone – fantastic!). 

What are the differences between the two variants of Tieguanyin?  Actually, there are multitudes of variants and other lesser-known production areas.  The tea now comes in a vast range from super green (one would think it a green tea) to a deep amber, bitter, espresso-roast (I call that “oopsie” tea – too much fire).  I find that both types of tea with similar levels of oxidation and roasting will exhibit a clear fruit bouquet that is oftentimes accompanied (in the finish) by a subtle floral note.  What type of fruit?  When I think of a good Anxi Tieguanyin, I am reminded of ripe fruit, like a mushy apricot.  For Muzha, I cannot quite pinpoint what fruit the taste reminds me of, for the smell and the taste are not quite as in sync as for Anxi.  The floral aspect has hints of osmanthus, and if pushed to pick one fruit, I would say the taste (taste only, not smell) makes me think of an unsweetened jackfruit.

After two years of listening to me go off about how much I love Anxi tea, my friend – a tea retailer and lover of Fujian oolongs also – was able to source a limited quantity of the tea I’ve been looking for.  It is the best he could find after several seasons of searching, and unfortunately, by the time you read this post, it will probably have sold out.

I know, the chintzy looking can on the left looks like it could have been found in a Chinatown grocery store. It is, however, 1/2 the size and double the cost of it’s older pal to the right.

Both of these teas are charcoal-fired Anxi Tieguanyin, aged 12 years (left) and 15-20 years (right).  The older of the teas has been periodically re-fired, so it doesn’t have the tartness or mustiness of a tea of its age.  There is some serious firepower in this tea though and the roast is alive and strong.  It is robust and delicious, but will be better to drink after a few months in that pewter jar. 

The tea on the left is younger and the base isn’t as robust, but it is also an exceptional tea.  It has never been fired again, so it’s got a mustiness to it.  However, the brew is soft and the mouth-feel is delicate.  It exhibits light fruit notes in the scent, and assertive fruit flavors in the finish.  Another 10 years or so and this tea will be quite a winner.

These teas represent a part of the history of tea, a time when producers roasted small batches of tea for days on end without the aid of machinery.  The charcoal flame’s temperature was calibrated by hand, and one roast – out of a total of 3 or 4 – could take a day or two to complete in a small and hot room.  I’m not merely romanticizing this tea when I say that there is more passion and skill in it; this is the type of stuff that old tea makers horde for themselves in the nooks and crannies of their stores.  Nowadays, it takes too much work to make this type of tea and there is not enough demand, either.  Drinking a good, roasted Anxi Tieguanyin is a completely satisfying experience.  It layers the beauty of its organic notes behind its fiery roast and gives you the pleasure of a substantive, round and satisfying mouth-feel.  The finish is dually flavored and dry, leaving you wanting to quench your thirst with another unending cup.  This tea is not shy when brewed in a pot, but it will imprint upon an understanding tea drinker quite a memorable experience. 

Not all teas are created equal; this one harkens back to my earliest tea experiences.  It just feels like one of those days to kick back and have another cup.  Drink good tea and enrich your life.

Oolong Tea Eggs Recipe

I love tea eggs and soy sauce eggs.  You used to be able to get them at every 7-11 in Hong Kong, but they’ve become less popular and are not as easy to find.  Fortunately, they are still everywhere in Taiwan.

Most of the recipes for tea eggs use star anise and cheap but strong black tea.  The resulting flavor is bold and flavorful, but lacking the balanced taste profile that is found in a good oolong tea egg (uncommon and harder to find).

In the recipes section of a book I just obtained called 果然是好茶(Good Tea Indeed), I found a recipe for Tieguanyin oolong eggs.  Translated, the ingredients are:

- 4 eggs

- ~1.5 ounces of oxidized Tieguanyin (sorry, most of the mainland TGY, delicious as it may be, won’t be strong enough to impart taste to the eggs)

- 2 teaspoons of salt

- 1 teaspoon of granulated white sugar

1.  Heat a little more than 2 cups of water to near boiling and infuse the tea for 3 minutes.  After the tea has been infused, remove the leaves and add the sugar and salt.  Mix and let sit (preferably covered with a dish to retain the heat).

2.  Put the eggs into a pot with cold water and heat to boiling.  After the water boils, leave the eggs in the pot for 3 to 5 minutes and then turn the stove off.  The eggs should now be about 50%+ cooked.

3.  Put the eggs into a bowl of cold water (this will help to reduce the strong sulfur smell and the ugly green color around the yolk).  Remove or crack the shells and place the eggs into the previously prepared tea/sugar/salt solution.  Place in the refrigerator for at least 2 days and then enjoy.

 

I haven’t tried this recipe before, but it looks tasty.  I would probably use much less tea (I hate to waste so much good tea, an ounce would last many, many sessions) and when I’ve made tea eggs using black tea, I put the eggs into the black tea and salt solution and boiled them for a few hours before placing everything into the refrigerator overnight to soak some more.  However, even moderate-oxidized oolong is much less assertive in taste than black tea, so I can understand that it would take longer to impart flavor.

Enjoy!

Lucky to have Good Tap Water

Of the multitude of bottled waters, water filtration systems, charcoal/river rock additives etc, which ones really help tea bring out its flavor?  This, along with water temperature and brewing times, is one of the major discussion topics for tea lovers.

I’ve used several different sources of water for tea and I’ve tried adding in river rocks and bamboo (both made the water softer but also mutes the taste of the teas ever so slightly).  Well water and spring water are both great, but if left in a warm and sunny place in a transparent bottle, both had some sort of algae growth that changed the taste.  Leaving a big bottle of the water in a cool and dark place prevented nasty effects, but the water went flat if left for more than a week.

Of the many different bottled waters, I like the ones that have mineral content.  I try to avoid using too much bottled water because of the waste produced and the fact that up here, we have excellent sources for our tap water.  However, Evian, Volvic, Fiji and one of the NumerO waters work nicely.

So why isn’t there more talk about using the tap water of cities with good sources of water?  Ours comes from rain and the mountains.  I think the problem with tap is not the water itself, but the pipes they travel through. Seattle is not a particularly young city (unless you compare us to what is now Cairo, in which case we’re a baby), and many of the houses here still have old pipes (galvanized steel, prone to rust).  I was having tea with a friend that lives in Redmond, a younger, more recently-developed city that is best known as the home of Microsoft, and his tap water tasted fine, better than my filtered tap water.

I wonder why they haven’t started bottling and selling a filtered version of our tap water like so many other cities have?

Say NO to Bananas

When you’re drinking some fine teas, that is.

I had already been sitting there for 3 hours with them and since I was running late, I had missed breakfast, too. 

I try not to eat too much when I taste teas.  Many foods will change one’s taste perceptions, but I was too hungry and I didn’t have time to run into the 7-11 for some biscuits before our meeting.

Mrs. Hoho (she chuckles at me fondly with a “hoho,” sometimes a “hohoho”) was packing tea.  She and Mr. Hoho (a misnomer, since I usually only get one “ho” from him) are usually pretty busy, so it’s not uncommon for them to miss meals.  I had been eyeing two bananas sticking out from a bag that looked like their daughter’s lunch sack, fighting the urge to take food from a child.

No…strength…left...MUST…eat…NOW…

“Mrs. Hoho, I haven’t eaten all morning.  Can I have a banana?”

She walked over to me and put a hand on the table as she looked around to find the banana that I was eyeing.  “Oh, let’s go eat some noodles and buns, that banana is not for you to eat.  If you do, you won’t be able to taste tea anymore.”

Oh. 

“Bananas dull your tastes.  Some tea sellers used to offer bananas to their customers so that they wouldn’t be able to taste the bitterness and astringency of the tea.”  Mr. Hoho said that smaller finger bananas have a richer and denser taste than the average yellow bananas we see in our grocery stores.  Bananas, in retrospect, do tend to coat our mouths with a thick “film,” their mushy flesh filling in the many hiding spots in our mouths. 

We shared a several buns from a nearby shop and returned to drink more tea.  At the end of our day, they gave me a banana to eat and asked me to taste tea again.  It became hard to accurately taste the subtle flavors of tea.  Acidic fruits, like berries, kiwis and grapefruits, will definitely affect the experience of tea tasting (usually negatively), but bananas help bad teas taste less bad.

Don’t Turn Down an Invitation for Tea

A tea friend reminded me of Lu Yu’s advice to never turn down an invitation for tea.  I have turned him down twice because of scheduling difficulties, but his advice is good and I find myself being more aware of trying to accept invitations for tea.

______________________________________________

“I recommend that you don’t mention the year of your teas.  To experts, it doesn’t mean much.” 

She was quite busy that day, dually filling an order on the phone and preparing a pot of hot water for me.  I had been excited to meet this tea expert after having read a bit about her over the years.  Whenever I visit a new tea friend, I try to bring something special with me that I hope we will enjoy having together.  The reason is not to show-off what I have in my collection, but because it is an uncommon occurrence to find kindred tea spirits that would understand both the brew and my intentions.  I can share a special brew with any tea lover and we may enjoy its beauty together, but a long-time old-tea drinker will be able to connect with the brew in a more immediate and deep way.  Through that, we too may be able to relate and connect and when we do, there is so much excitement and discussion.  Rapture from a cup of tea.

A special tea, usually an older one for me, is a gift and a gesture of respect. 

She continued: “I have many teas here that are as old and older than yours.  Let’s have one of mine today, ok?  You can save yours to drink with your friends.”

I smirked to myself inside of my head, thinking that her statement was akin to a parent saying to a child, “Aww, that’s nice sweetie.  Now why don’t you run along and play?”  I am certain, though, that this tea expert did not mean to be rude.  She probably comes across many know-it-alls bringing low-quality tributes.  We shared one of her brews, she taught me some more about her oolongs, and by the end of our time together, we did not linger in the realm of tea zen.  40 mins was my allotted time and as if on cue, the tea price list appeared and I walked out with a bag of tea that I was sold on.

______________________________________________

I was having tea at Floating Leaves some while back and a newer customer came in with a tea to share.  It was a 1 year old Muzha Tieguanyin.  The customer admitted that he didn’t know much about the tea, except that it tasted very good to him and he was looking for something similar.  Being that he was a self-admitted tea newbie, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the tea was indeed very good.  No wonder, he had bought it from Wistaria.  Don’t discount the newbies, many of them are lucky to have excellent tastes when they start.  Some of the rest of us have had to – or continue to – work a bit more to get there.

______________________________________________

I was in the Bay Area this past week and wanted to visit a tea friend that I owe much to.  She was one of my first tea teachers.  I brought with me some of my prized teas that I rarely share, but alas, last-minute business emergencies caused her to miss our meeting.  I brought my old pu’er to our designated spot and shared it with some new tea friends.  We had a great time, but I lamented the fact that my friend was not there to share the occasion with us.  I asked the tea server if he would be so kind as to save a cup of the tea for her to enjoy at another time.  Following the last of my requests, he simply stated that my friend, a long-time tea lover and tea businessperson, has had many teas in her life and had certainly had one as old as mine.  Unsure of when she would visit again, a cup of saved tea would be left to sit indefinitely.  In short – my tea would not be missed.  A tea that has sat for 40 years can surely survive a week in the fridge, I thought, but I was not going to have my way.  There was to be no affinity between the brew and its intended drinker that day.

It is not every day that one has the opportunity to try such a well-aged and rare tea, one that also carried with it my gratitude and respect.  Many people have tried 40 or 50 year old pu’ers, but there is a big difference between a 50 year old label cake and other pu’ers, for example.  Age is only a part of the story.  I regret that I could not share a special brew with my friend, to whom I owe many more pots of rare brews.  Perhaps Lu Yu’s saying will remind us to meet for tea again in the future.

Drink good tea and enrich your life.

Doing it up, Tang Dynasty Style

I was at the Flagstaff Museum of Teaware in Hong Kong over a year ago, so these pictures and this article are long overdue.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that my pictures are of low quality, partly because of the yellowish-light used in the displays, but mostly because of user skill-lessness.  Photography is generally prohibited in the museum.  It was just my luck, though, that a group of art students from the University of Hong Kong were there that day to work on a project.  I had walked in with that group and the museum guide asked if I was from the University of Hong Kong.  Since I was technically a student there (on exchange) many years ago, I said yes I went there.  She waved me through and let me use my camera as well.  Sweet!  But she reminded me not to dawdle and to avoid using my flash, which is why my pictures ended up somewhat blurry and dark.  Ok ok, those “effects” probably have more to do with, again, the user.  Moving on….

The following series depicts the major steps for preparing powdered tea, per Lu Yu’s methods, during the Tang Dynasty.  Water, probably stream or mountain water, is heated in a charcoal burning stove.  The pictures are shown below, in order, with my paraphrased explanations for each step.

 

Step 1:  Boil the water until you see bubbles the size of "fish eyes.”  Yes, I realize that different fish have different eye sizes and shapes, but I’m guessing that Lu Yu meant common Chinese river fish.  No idea what type of fish those would be.  This is called the “first boiling.”

Step 2:  Season the tea with a pinch of salt.  I know, it looks like the preparer is putting in about 1/4 cup of salt.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the Chinese placard to reference what is meant by “a pinch.”  No worries, I can confirm next year.

Step 3:  Take out a ladle of the boiling water for later use.  Where to put it?  In a bowl of course.

Step 4:  Stir the boiling water with bamboo chopsticks.  This step is pretty straightforward; I have no sarcastic comment here.

Step 5:  Add the powdered tea into the boiling water.  Simple?  Maybe not.  There has been some gentle debate about whether the powder should be stirred as its added to the water or if it should be allowed to sit for a bit, be absorbed into the water, and then stirred.  I *think* Lu Yu said to stir as the tea is added. 

Step 6:  Reduce the boiling.  That ladle of water you took out earlier?  It has cooled a lot; add it back in and watch the bubbling ease up.

     

Step 7:  Serve the tea in a bowl.  Yes, I also wondered why the powdered GREEN tea that was added to the water turned BLACK in the picture.  As far as I know, salt does not interact with tea in such a manner.  That bowl of tea looks like it has pu’er in it.