A Tea Addict's Journal

Well well, new tea. My girlfriend, aka tea buyer, sent me some goods from Beijing. The company that makes this tea is called Xuefeng, which literally means snowy-peaks. I’ve had their tea before, some time, somewhere, although I can’t remember where. I remembered it to be pretty decent.

The tea in question is a tieguanyin, from none other than the Fujian province. The label in the bottom says 2005, November 8th, so it’s probably an autumn picked tea — a late one too. Here’s a pic of the box and the dried stuff.

These days, everything is packed into these little packs.

Before water

Those of you who know Chinese will notice that the box says “Taiwanese style” in the bottom right, which is rather odd. The back of the box just says “tieguanyin”, which isn’t very interesting to see. I have no idea what “Taiwanese style” is supposed to mean, since there’s nothing discernably Taiwanese about this tea. Maybe it sells better that way, but why would anyone want to imitate the god-awful Taiwanese tieguanyin?

Anyway. The tea itself, as you can see in the picture, is quite green. However, it’s not rolled very tightly and not terribly round, which is a mark of how Fujianese make their oolongs (Taiwan teas tend to be more ball-like). There are also some stalks that are attached to the leaves — this is usually more common in autumn picked teas, whereas spring pick, in my own expereince anyway, tend to be more leaves and less stalk. That probably varies though and isn’t a good indicator.

This is the final product — first brew after the wash. The tea is fairly nice, with a full body and a very strong aftertaste that is a mark of decent tieguanyin. The fragrance is not high, as is typical, but I detect a hint of sourness. I’m not sure if it’s my brewing or if it’s the tea, but I’ve tried it twice now, and it’s there both times. Maybe I’m messing it up somehow, but it is also possible that somehow they’ve made it a little sour. It could be because of the time they picked the tea. Still, it’s very nice and got a good aftertaste, which is more than I can say about most tieguanyin you can buy.

The leaves are very thick and strong, and have a nice red border when unfurled. I’m looking forward to visiting this teashop (I think I found them in Shanghai once) when I get to Beijing for spring break.

Well, after my long bus ride in the early morning, I had no energy in the afternoon to go tea-exploring, even though I really wanted to…

So I ended up back at Cha-an with a friend I haven’t met in 6 years after dinner. It was crowded on a Thursday night. I had a tieguanyin served kung-fu style, with an obviously Taiwanese set but very authentic, down to the faux yixing pot that’s made of Taiwanese clay(I think it’s faux yixing pot, I’m not a great expert on pots). The original amount of tea they wanted to give me only filled about 1/8 of the teapot, which was not nearly enough. I asked for a double, and the people there had trouble comprehending my request.

They couldn’t figure out what it was that I wanted — did I want more tea leaves ,and a bigger pot? “No, I would simply like more tea leaves, I’ll pay for it”. Would you like a new pot? “No, just more leaves”. But wouldn’t that make the tea too strong? “That’s the idea”

Anyway, the tieguanyin is actually a real Chinese one, with a very nice afterglow that sticks. Fragrance is not high, but real tieguanyin’s smell is never terribly impressive — it excels in taste. The water was ever so slighly not hot enough. They give it to you in a thermost. It’s ok when they first give it to you, but seems to cool a little too quickly because when they give it to you it’s already not boiling hot. The first brew was weak, but it does yield more brews that way. With two servings of leaves it only brewed about one cup every round. Good enough for one.

My friend had a baihao yinzheng, which looked decent enough, although since I’m sick, I didn’t ask to try.

One thing — they only take cash. Remember that. Next time, I’m going to do the kung-fu teas again.

I hate it when some company usurps some cause to try to make money out of it.

This is barely tea related, but it is water related, so I suppose it fits.

In my never-ending quest to drink waters that I have never tried, I saw this water selling in Starbucks called Ethos. Now, before you accuse me, I went to Starbucks because 1) it was the only thing open at 6am. 2) It has internet connection. 3) I was really tired after a bus ride that started at 12:30am. 4) I needed caffeine to keep me going. 5) It was the only place I could find that allowed me to avoid McDonald’s tea.

Anyway, Ethos water. So, they donate 5 cents per bottle to helping provide clean water for kids in the world. Great. The goal is to donate $10 million. Great. That means you have to sell, let’s see, 200 million bottles of water? So if, say, all Taiwanese bought a bottle of this water for 10 days, we’ll get that $10 million, which also means that they’d have made money way beyond those $10 on those 200 million bottles they sold (at $2 a bottle at Starbucks!!).

I went to their website — no actual information about their water. Seems like nobody cares. They just tell you how serious the water crisis is, and how you have to buy their water to help save the frigging kids in Africa who are dying thanks to dirty water. Well, if I really want to help those kids, I’ll just donate my $2 per bottle to the kids directly, instead of buying your overpriced, insipid water (it’s very unremarkable, like Poland Springs) where you donate 5 cents a bottle. If you’re really that generous, tell me you’re a non-profit and you earn $30,000 a year for your CEO salary, you ex-McKinsey consultant, MBA co-founders.

Many days without an update — the fever took a lot out of me, and I’m still trying desperately to catch up with work and all that. Finally, my work week is over, and I am going to go to NYC tomorrow to get my visa for my upcoming China trip. Since I am planning on meeting an old friend from college in NYC tomorrow for tea, I am trying to figure out where to go that might be interesting. In the past, I have been to T-Salon and Cha-An (they don’t seem to have their own website). T-Salon is a bit of a ripoff, and last time I went I encountered the “you are young so you must know nothing about tea” treatment from their proprietor, which is unfortunate but fairly common. Cha-An, on the other hand, is a nice spot and I would recommend anyone to go, although they are mostly Japanese green tea and is not very cheap. It is a very nice place to hit though after a nice Japanese meal in the area. Across the street is a soba joint.

So, I am looking for a new place to visit. There’s the Wild Lily Tearoom that looks like a Taiwan operated place, or at least most of their teas seem to be Taiwanese in origin. There’s this place called Franchia, which seems rather expensive and Korean tea oriented, which might be interesting. There are a number of tea places in New York, and it is hard to decide where to go. Cha-an probably still has one of the better selections/quality though, since Franchia seems overpriced. Oh well, we’ll see.

I came down with a fever today. 38 Celcius, yuck. The fever hasn’t broke yet, and so I’m sitting in my bed typing this. Obviously, nothing elaborate for tea today, but my caffeine headache was getting a little unbearable, so I decided to drink some dragonwell in a cup. Yes, the “dump the leaves into a cup and pour water” method. It works when you’re in a pinch.

Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow 🙁

The nice thing about crappy teas is that you can experiment with them with impunity. You can play with your brewing technique (or just brew them without too much concentration) and you can play with the amount of tea you put in. You can also play with the water you use.

Today I brewed some more of that Athelier tea I got, and I tried putting in a little more tea leaves and also used a different water. The result was not particularly good. The tea came out a bit sour. I think all teas are inherently sour (unless it’s really good), and the key is to figure out the point where it turns sour — and not to go beyond that. It’s hard to figuring it out, and underbrewing is safer, although sometimes you’re not getting hte maximum effect from the tea that way. Today I added in too much leaves, but compensating by brewing it a little faster helped and avoided the sourness from the 3rd brew onwards.

Speaking of water though — this is the only other ingredient in the making of tea, aside from the leaves themselves. Generally speaking, I use filtered water that went through my Pur filter (I think it tastes better than Brita). Sometimes, I add in mineral water. The kind of mineral water I use differ depending on the tea. My experience thus far is that a heavier tea requires a heavier water, while a lighter tea (like green or white tea) should be supplemented with a light water. There is, however, no real concensus on this point and I have seen people do all sorts of things with their water. I am by no means an expert on this and am still trying to figure it out.

That water makes a big difference though is definitely true. I have tried brewing a dragonwell with regular filtered tap water, and a water called Iceland Spring which has a low mineral content. On its own, the water tastes sweet and crisp — a hallmark of waters that are light on minerals. Iceland waters tend to be that way (I’ve tried three different ones, and this one’s the most readily available around here). When I tried it with the dragonwell, the one with tap water tastes ok, but the one with the mineral water had a crispness and fragrance that was simply superior. I was drinking that every day, and I thought to myself “wow, why on Earth didn’t I use bottled water earlier???”

For the teas that are heavier in taste, I think using a heavier water adds body to the tea that is brewed. Vittel or Volvic works well, whereas Evian is a little too much. You can try out different kinds of water and see what you like best.

I got into the habit of trying new kinds of water everywhere I go. When I am in Hong Kong, for example, and I want a bottle of water to drink, I try to buy a new one that I’ve never tried before if I see one. Sometimes they are rather expensive, but trying different kinds of water really alerts you to the differences in taste of the water themselves, and gives you a good sense of how they are like. The best way to achieve this is simply to buy a few different brands of bottled water, and do a blind (or not so blind) taste test. The differences should be very obvious if you slosh the water around your mouth rather than simply gulping it down. The test should be, I think, done in room temperature. Too cold, and the tastes are masked. Too hot, and it’s hard to drink a lot of the water to really get a feel for its body and taste.

The reason I don’t use bottled water for all brewing is because it’s rather expensive to do, and for teas that are not that great, the difference is not really worth the price. For the better teas, however, I do tend to use bottled water. Varying it for a tea that you have been drinking also alerts you to the contribution that a water can make to the tea.

One thing though — NEVER USE DISTILLED WATER. It really destroys the taste of the tea, as natural water is never meant to be without minerals. There’s a reason people liked to use spring water for brewing teas, and there are famous springs in China that are good for that. No, distilled water is a bad thing and should be avoided.

Despite all my complaints about take-out tea, it’s really not that bad here in this corner of the US of A. When I have to make a choice about where to buy take-out tea, I can think of at least 3-4 different places where I can get a semi-reasonable cup of loose-leaf (no teabags!) tea that tastes actually acceptable. We have Tealuxe, which I suppose was the original tea-only store, we have stuff at Peet’s, we have Toscanini serving up teas from Mem Tea, and there’s this place called Dado Tea, opened by some Koreans.

Tealuxe has gone down in quality over the years — at least over the years I’ve been visiting/living in Boston. I remember when I first discovered this shop, they had probably more than a hundred different kinds of tea that were actually all rather decent. Some were better than others, but all were pretty acceptable. They also had some very interesting varieties that are hard to find elsewhere in the States, and certainly unavailable as a take out. Bilochun comes to mind, but that was only one of many. Their tieguanyin was also much, much better than the one that exists now (or maybe I just got a lot more picky…??). Either way, over the years you can tell they began cutting some corners by cutting down the varieties of tea that they sold as well as some of the quality in the tea leaves they carried, due in no small part to their overzealous expansion after their initial success. I even remember them having a mirage like store that existed near Columbia U in NYC and a store in Copley, 5 minutes from their Newbury shop. So much for that.

I’ve already commented on Peet’s before — solid choices, decent selection, predictable, somewhat boring, but at least realiable. It’s a nice change of pace from the other stores, and good to have around as another variety. The impossible-to-ignore whiff of coffee beans in the store makes sitting there and drinking their stuff a bit unbearable, but otherwise, it does what it’s supposed to do.

Toscanini’s, which is really an ice-cream joint, serves tea from Mem Tea. Mem Tea is really a trading company that buys and sells tea, and their head office is, I believe, in Somerville. I’ve met their owner once at a Dudley House tea tasting thing (which was geared towards people with zero prior knowledge). The owner used to buy and sell coffee, but I guess he saw the light. Anyway, Mem Tea is a blessing, because what they do is they provide decent loose leaf teas to a variety of stores around Harvard Sq and beyond. The grad student cafe, Gato Rojo, for example, also serves tea from Mem Tea. What they do is they enable smaller operations that would otherwise sell you Twinings (or worse, Lipton) teabags to sell you real loose leaf tea instead. That is credit enough. Thanks to them, and thanks to Toscanini carrying a rather respectable selection of their teas, I have been able to vary the kinds of take-out stuff I drink more often than I would have otherwise. That, and they are closer to Lamont.

Lastly, there’s Dado. Dado used to be just a store on Mass Ave. between Harvard and Central Square. It’s really in no-man’s land, but I suppose rent is cheap there and it was still close enough for the type of clients they are after, which is your somewhat affluent NE well-educated liberal, to walk over and enjoy their selection. The teas they have are, first of all, rather expensive. For a take-out cup to cost me anything more than $3.00, it better be good, but alas, good it usually is not.

I’ve tried a few different kinds of teas there, and I don’t go very often, but from what I remember, their teas are really not all that great. Their Puerh, for example, is a raw Puerh, which is a good thing, except it’s a raw Puerh with less than 10 years of age, which makes it a really bad thing. It’s not ready for drinking yet.

Worst of all though, Dado usually serves your take-out tea with FAR TOO LITTLE TEA LEAVES. This is the first sin of take-out tea — a teatender who does not give you enough leaves. It makes for an insipid, tasteless, and overpriced cup of warm water. There’s absolutely nothing worse than a cup that is simply too big for the amount of tea you’re going to give me. Maybe I should go again and see if they improved, for I have not gone for a long time. I will report back on that.

They also serve tea within their establishment and let you use Korean tea ware to brew tea. However, Koreans are not exactly a tea-drinking people anymore. I suppose that’s material for another day.

So, even though I complain all the time, I should at least count my blessings. When I was at Oberlin, the only option was Stash teabags sold through a coffee joint. This is, at the very least, tea leaves that are in a recognizable form.

Today I drank another kind of Puerh today. The Sunsing Puerh ran out, and having no other types of Puerh open for consumption, this clearly was not a state of affairs that can be long tolerated. As such, I opened a bag of Puerh that I got over the summer in Hong Kong from a teashop called Jabbok. It is loose leaf Puerh, aged, and brews a medium brown brew that has strong medicinal flavour. It’s not the best loose leaf Puerh around, but I remember it being fairly cheap. The tea itself is not really made of high quality leaves, but I think it has been kept well and thus tastes pretty good anyway. I have lots of it, and it will probably suffice as a supply for the next little while…

Good things happen when you wait. It was 3:30pm, I had a meeting to go to at 4pm, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. Tea began calling me. I was in the Square. I was tempted — very tempted — to go and buy something and drink it down. Then, I thought “maybe we’ll end and nobody will want to go for dinner and I can go home and drink tea”. Lo and behold, that’s what happened!

Ok, I sound a little sad.

This is what I made today — another day of the Upton tieguanyin. I decided I should take more pics, so to give it some comaprison, although this is taken after dark, so I had to use the flash and the colour is a bit off. However, I think you can tell that the leaves are a bit greener than the stuff I brewed yesterday. Aged oolong of all kinds tend to become a dark green, and this is clearly not. Although today I think I messed up the brew and it’s not tasting quite so good.

I had another go at the aged Taiwan qingxiang oolong today. I am quite sure it’s aged, because it has a character that your regular Taiwan oolong does not. However, it does leave you hanging a little — while the tea is good, it’s somewhat unsatisfying. There’s no punch to the tea. It doesn’t knock you out with a “wow”. I suppose that’s partly the result of it being aged — it does mellow out a bit, since it’s not like Puerh. Then again, it has some nice undertones not usually found in Taiwan oolongs…

The tea leaves are somewhat darker than your typical qingxiang oolong, which is often quite green. If you just look at the dry leaves though there is really no way to tell what on Earth it may be specifically, other than some generic oolong of some sort.