When we were wandering around Pinglin (坪林區) in Taiwan looking for exciting Bao Zhong to taste, we only found a couple of places that piqued our interest.
The first was a small family shop right next to the bus stop and was where we spent most of our time.…
Tea Tables and Trays
When brewing tea for yourself or others, protecting your teaware by providing a stable brewing service is an absolute must. Many people have a nice small table they brew on but some people prefer to use tables specifically designed for brewing tea. They also serve as a place to catch excess water/tea from spill/spray or even just a rinse.
Similar to Yixing or Porcelain, these tables are functional art. Many hours/weeks/months can go into creating a single table. Sometimes they are humble with a simple shape and few, if any carvings, just a solid piece of wood with a nice finish, Some are fantasically detailed carvings with birds, dragons, buddha’s, fish etc. One of my favorites, from a teashop in Dali Old Town, has a built-in strainer holder that filters through the base into a bucket for draining!
Most novice to mid-livel tea enthusiasts and most western teashops that carry Chinese teaware will have the kind of tray or brewstation with a removable plastic tray for when it gets full. These are nice for small volume home brewing. Are you really going to fill up a tray with more liquid than you are likely to drink in a single tea session? When making tea in a teahouse or any other situation where you are serving lots of people, this can create a problem. This style is really not meant for bulk brewing, you will have to empty the tray too often.
In Chinese teashops, the most common type of table was a root carving table. They cut a tree in half to make a flat surface and use the roots and branches as the legs. They dip them in a finish, usually polyurethane, to protect the surface from the obvious water damage that would otherwise deteriorate their work. This type always has a small drain closest to the brewer that has a metal strainer, often with the tea character on it, to filter the leaves and prevent clogging in the tube. Using a tea brush, you push excess water from the brewstation into the drain which leads to a bucket on the floor near the brewer.
In addition to providing a safe and beautiful place to brew tea, it also serves as a display for your favorite teapots, gaiwans and teapets! most of the shops we went in had all their active teaware on the brewstation and reserved the rest of the shelf and display space for tea and wares for sale.
I have a few pieces of wood I am trying to convert into my own tea table. I am no woodworker so they maybe be functional but certainly no works of art like these professionally made tables.
A little review of 2012 M. Xu Bai Hao oolong #tea
Today’s tea was a gift from a tea factory I visited in Shao Xing (绍兴), Zhejiang province, somewhat near Hangzhou. We had traveled to the factory to learn more about the production of Zhu Cha (珠茶), more commonly known in the West as Gunpowder green tea.…
Working with Tea
As an employee of a teahouse, I have an interesting perspective on tea that other bloggers and tea enthusiasts may not: I prepare and taste teas that I don’t often drink outside of work. These aren’t necessarily bad teas, just ones I don’t enjoy or don’t keep in stock at home.
I am humbled by the amount of tea experts available to us on the internet, I have my expertise in puer, oolong and yixing at my job but I am still a jack of all trades in tea knowledge, I lack the depth that Stephane Erler would be able to provide about a particular oolong. On Tea chat there are some people who only post in the Japanese green boards and others who just stick to the puer.
Even though I may not drink Sencha as often as I drink Long Jing, I know how to brew it well, how to recognize it amongst Gyokuro or Tamaryokucha, I know what it should smell and look like. Working with these teas daily provides a glimpse into a system for knowing a tea will taste good or if it was overbrewed. This is especially handy when aren’t tasting the tea yourself before serving it to a customer.
Sometimes I will bring a tea to a table, start pouring and the aroma fills the air, I know this tea will taste fantastic. My suspicions are confirmed, The Ali Shan I made is a perfect vibrant blue/green color in the cup. I am jealous of the customer at this moment. Other times I pour the tea out and I can see the liquor is too dark :( hopefully the tea will be saved in subsequent infusions.
I wonder if someone with an untrained palate can enjoy these subtleties or if an overbrewed tea would taste “normal” to them. While I was thinking about a comparison in the food world I thought about pizza. There’s good pizza and bad pizza and there’s a lot of middle ground. Tea is very much the same way, The vast majority of consumers in this country gravitate towards this middle ground. Think about this though, what if the only pizza you ever tasted was burnt. Would you accept the burnt flavor as normal? I think some people drink tea that’s too strong and bitter because they’ve only ever had it that way. They might add milk or honey to cut down on the bite and this leads to a habit of always adding these things to the tea even before tasting it. For Pizza this would be like going to a restaurant that has a bunch of specialty pies and adding hot sauce too it. If such a pie needed hot sauce don’t you think the chef would’ve added it? I’m not sure if these people like Tea (pizza) or they actually just really like honey (hot sauce).
As I work with tea I learn more and more everyday about each tea and how it changes daily. I see trends of orders based on the weather or season and I see regulars who either stick to one or two teas and others who let us chose. The customers who meet us with the respect of the tea and the traditional serving methods we strive for are enough to keep any teamaster happy!
2013 Yunnan Mao Feng
A fantastic fresh Chinese green tea from Stone Leaf. My fiancée describes it as “like pesto”, and she’s right. There’s the salty, the sweet, the nutty, and the green…
The Names of Tea
Ever since I started studying tea, I’ve been fascinated with the words I encounter. Naturally, many…
A gift from the kind owners of Dobra Tea, this Hawaiian oolong is really a fascinating mystery. I haven’t felt adventurous enough until today to give it a try. Until a few months ago I didn’t even know that there was tea grown in Hawaii, and now I’ve…
I have to confess that I started this tea session with the plan to use my jade gaiwan. The last time I used it was just after its purchase in Dali (大理) with some average shou puer. It didn’t work particularly well. I had the thought that maybe it would… view post
Early Spring Teas
There are few things in the tea world more satisfying than the fresh harvest of tea in a new year.
Our friend John has a teahouse in nearby Middlebury, VT who often gets fresh tea before anyone else. I have posted about his delicious teas before, please read about them too!
My birthday was on the 10th so we ventured down to taste his latest offerings. We started with a Yunnan White which tasted similar to a Yunnan mao feng with a bit more dry bread-y quality to it while still remaining light and sweet. This tea definitely has the terroir taste of Yunnan, the aroma alone gives it away.
We then moved on to an early spring golden bud Dian Hong, also very much a Yunnan terroir that contributed to my nostalgia for my trip to China almost one year ago. The interesting thing about this tea was the beer-like aroma and flavor it had. It surprised us all that we tasted hops or maybe barley in subtle waves through each infusion.
Usually we bring a few teas to share so it’s more than a buying trip for us, it’s all about tea-folk sharing delicious leaves with each other. I brought a sample of the 2002 Mengma and my favorite tea from last year’s trip, the 2005 Yiwu.
After we tasted those, we bought some teas to take home. I bought some of the Yunnan White (Spring silver tips), A 2010 Nannuoshan sheng bing (his Stoneleaf label!), some Taiwanese Bi Luo Chun (harvested March 4th!) and some Spring 2012 Gui Fei I’ll write about in a moment. Because John loves when we come distract him on his “office” day by surprise, he also gifted us a few samples of some personal favorites.
The spring 2012 Gui Fei is fantastic. Dark evergreen leaves with some slightly red edges and a warm aroma of brown sugar are treat to the senses. Each of the 10+ infusions was consistent, sweet and also delicate compilation of flavors. I finally put a tea in one of my new hand-painted jars, this Gui Fei will hopefully flourish in it’s new home!
After spending the day drinking tea with friends I came home to a nice dinner and some Laphroaig 10 year single malt Scotch! A wonderful birthday indeed!
