Contrary to popular belief, I’m actually drinking some wine here. Tonight I went to the local wine store to pick up a bottle (because none of my brother in law’s collection is stuff he wants us to open right now — most being 10 years old or more). I picked a bottle out at random — some Chateau du Cartillon, Haut-Medoc, 2002, that tasted quite decent. It was pretty smooth, but aside from that, I realize I don’t know how to describe a wine’s taste.
However, since I haven’t been consuming alcohol much these days, my tolerance is really low. That’s one good thing about tea — you don’t need to train yourself for tolerance, although I suppose drinking lots of tea in one day, a la Maliandao, requires some practice.
During my trip here so far I have also had a bit of coffee…. of the espresso variety (since you can rarely find dripcoffee here). Coffee’s one great problem, for a tea drinker like me, is that it is bitter to the end. There’s no huigan, the bitterness doesn’t turn to sweetness like it does in tea. The flavours I find largely unpleasant — heavy roasting plus the bitterness makes for a bad drink. I do not understand those who enjoy a cup of coffee. They obviously haven’t tried good tea 🙂
3 responses so far ↓
Phyllo // November 13, 2006 at 8:17 pm |
Good to hear! You know I was just kidding the other day. 🙂 “Drink what you like, like what you drink.” has always been an adopted motto of mine. I like an occasionally cup of coffee…those from Sumatra being my personal favorite, but I’m certainly not a coffee enthusiast. It’s a drink to have in order to survive the drive back home after a dinner out laden with lots of wine. Hey, I live in LA…public transportation sucks and Taxi is not a viable option either.
MarshalN // November 13, 2006 at 9:08 pm |
It’s just amazing to see for me how low my alcohol tolerance is after not drinking for so long.
Phyllo // November 15, 2006 at 2:18 am |
I’m not sure why, but I can’t leave any comment under your Nov. 14 post. I just wanted to ask the significance of doing 30s, 60s, 30s brewing. How does this method reveal the quality of a tea? Or is it just an attempt to standardize brewing method so that people in Sanzui are comparing their teas “apple-to-apple”, so to speak?