Background I’ve recently been thinking about the value that I place on tea. This crossed my mind because part of our tasting experience is subjective, and it is interesting to me how marketing claims and personal biases can influence our perception of the end result in our cups. With this being said skilled tasters are … [Read more…]
Background In a couple of recent posts I’ve shared my thoughts on different wulong teas, because I haven’t spent much time discussing them on the blog. This has inspired me to sample a wider variety of wulong teas in order to continue learning about the feelings and flavors of different styles. Just at the time … [Read more…]
Background Two weeks ago I realized that I had not written any blog posts about Wulong Tea (烏龍茶, or wulong cha in Chinese). For that reason I drank a lightly oxidized Taiwanese wulong tea, and discussed some of the production methods and flavors typical of that style of tea. Today I wanted to talk about … [Read more…]
Background Today I drank a sheng pu’er tea that was produced in 2013 by the Nan Qiao tea factory. Nan Qiao is a small / medium sized tea factory based in the Menghai region of Yunnan province’s Xishuangbanna prefecture. They usually specialize in wet piling (wo dui 渥堆 in Chinese) tea, and producing ripe pu’er. … [Read more…]
Background Today I realized that I have not yet written a blog post about Wulong Tea (烏龍茶, or wulong cha in Chinese). For this reason I felt inspired to drink a spring harvest wulong tea from Taiwan, and write this blog post. Green teas are as close to no oxidation as one can get while … [Read more…]
Overview Today’s blog post is a followup to an earlier post of mine in which I brewed a tea 30 times in order to see whether or not I believed if a tea company’s claims about a 5 gram sample of Wild Tong Mu Jin Jun Mei that could be brewed 30 times had any truth. I … [Read more…]
Today I met with an old friend who was returning home briefly after a period of work and travel abroad. After sharing tea and conversation from the late morning through the mid afternoon, I felt inspired to write a short piece on drinking tea slowly. Life is busy, and it is natural to be pulled … [Read more…]
Background Today I woke up to very cold temperatures and a substantial amount of rain. This is quite a change from the hot 85 degree days of the past week or two. For this reason my plans to exercise outside with friends were cut short, and instead I stayed in and brewed some tasty tea … [Read more…]
Background Today I drank an interesting kind of red tea called purple red tea. Standard red tea is made from tea leaves that are picked, fully oxidized, shaped, dried, then packaged. Purple red tea is processed in the same way, but the source material is composed of purple tea leaves rather than regular tea leaves. … [Read more…]
Background Today was a sunny, hot, and humid day. For this reason I chose to drink a tea called Huang Shan Mao Feng green tea (Huang Shan Mao Feng Lu Cha 黄山毛峰绿茶 in Chinese). Huang Shan is the mountain range near where the tea is grown in Anhui Province (An Hui Sheng 安徽省 in Chinese). … [Read more…]