A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘travel’

News from Beijing

August 26, 2010 · 1 Comment

Behind the Great Firewall of China, there’s not much you can do, blogging wise, unless you happen to use Sina.net as your platform or you find a proxy.  So now, jet lagged and hovering somewhere (time wise) in the middle of the Pacific, I am writing this of my two day trip to Beijing, a week after the fact.

All my friends in Beijing seem to be better off now than they were last time I was there in 2007, which is heartening.  I don’t mean that only in terms of material wealth or some such, but also in terms of their tea philosophy, if I may use such a term.  Everyone seems to have found their own preferences and tastes, and are pursuing them actively with more involvement on the production end of things.  People who used to be mere merchants are now makers, or at least closer to a maker now than they were a few years ago.  It’s always nice to talk to folks who are passionate about what they’re doing.

Which brings me to the tea that I’ve had — too much tea in the span of a few days to really discuss in detail, but a few things jumped out as interesting.  One of my friends is now a part owner of a teahouse, and he also goes to Fujian every year to source stuff on his own farm for his shop.  Among the things he’s doing is making white tea.  It’s not just any ordinary white tea though — he roasts them ever so slightly, and then ages them.  Here’s a comparison of a 2006 yinzhen vs a 2010 one.  You can figure out which is which.

The aging gives the tea a bit more sweetness and mellows out the flavours, although it also means the tea loses some of the fragrance, as is normally the case with aged teas.  Four years is not a long time, and I’d imagine the tea can change a little more.  White teas are always ageable, but it’s nice to see that he’s producing them specifically for the purpose of aging (thus the roasting).

I also tried some puerh while there.  Beijing stored puerh really isn’t ideal, but if done carefully with a lot of water containers boosting the humidity of the storage unit, it is possible to produce nice, round tasting tea that doesn’t have that typical dryness one might associate with overly-dry storage conditions.  I think that’s actually quite important, as dry tea makes for bad tasting tea.  My friend L is now storing tea in bags, all within a big cooler (think camping) and slightly moistened.  He found a guy in Kunming who goes up to the mountains all the time and spends a lot of time thinking about how to make good tea, and the results show — soft, supple tea that tastes good.  I wonder how they’ll age in a decade, but so far it’s promising.

On the other hand, I visited Maliandao again and it seems like things have normalized a little there.  While two more tea malls have opened up since I was there, for the most part business seems to be down.  Granted, I was there on a rainy day, which most definitely put a damper on traffic, but I think a lot of stores aren’t doing as much business as they used to.  Xiaomei’s store is still there, but now the clientele is mostly of a wholesale nature, with very little retail sales going on.  As I predicted long ago, everyone who wanted to build a tea collection has one already, so there’s very little impetus to buy more.  I certainly felt that way — walking around the shops, I had very little interest in trying or buying tea.  I’m sure there are hidden gems here and there, but I don’t have the time to go through them one by one and try them all out.

The best part of the trip was simply seeing everyone again, and having tea with them.  Tea is ultimately a social drink — while it can be great alone, it’s better with friends.  Too bad that part of tea drinking is often what’s missing in the Western experience.

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Korean and New Zealand teas

August 14, 2010 · 5 Comments

I just went to the Hong Kong International Tea Fair yesterday.  It’s been a few years since I’ve been to a tea expo, and this one was a bit different from when I went to the one in Shanghai during the height of the puerh boom.  Partly perhaps also because it’s Hong Kong, the kind of tea merchants who were here were much more international, and also quite diverse in their offerings.  Most of the sellers were, of course, from China, but very often from provinces that are lesser known, such as Guizhou or Hunan.  The selection of green tea was very diverse, whereas the more popular things, such as various types of oolong from Fujian, were fewer.  As for puerh, there were a smattering of makers there from the big factories, such as Menghai or Haiwan, but even Xiaguan was not there.  There were some producers from Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka, and other places as well.

I think much of this was a product of the fact that many of the better known companies or types of tea simply don’t need the exposure at a tea fair, so they’re better off not coming and paying the expo fees instead of actually showing up.  For the lesser known, this is a great way to get some exposure that they otherwise won’t have.

I saw a few things that I know relatively little about.  The first is a company called Zealong, which makes oolong in New Zealand in the Taiwanese style.  The taste of the tea is very clean and crisp, and reminds me of decent Taiwanese high mountain oolong.  The company, according to their reps, was started by someone from Taiwan, and now has a few different teas.  It was interesting, although not terribly cheap.  I can imagine some place like New Zealand growing some interesting teas though.

I also met two Korean tea makers, and bought some of their products.  Korean tea tends to be green tea of various types, but one of them also made a white tea that had higher levels of oxidation, much akin to something like a baimudan with some age.  I bought some for personal consumption.  More on those later.

Another stop in Beijing before heading home on this trip.  Seeing some old tea friends from up north should be pretty interesting.  Stay tuned.

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Teas from different places

August 12, 2010 · 2 Comments

Haven’t really been able to post anything recently, but I took a few pictures of different places where I had some tea…

No, I didn’t add sugar.

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Drinking tea with no leaves

July 27, 2009 · 9 Comments

I’ve voiced this before, but it happened again over the past weekend, and it really mystifies me.

Why do teahouses in the United States serve tea without giving you the leaves?

What I mean is, when you go to one of these establishments, you order your tea (in this case, Keemun).  They take your order, and give you a pot with a cup.  It’s an English style pot.  Nothing’s wrong with that, except that there are no leaves in there — just pre-infused tea.  I know this is probably not going to bother most people, and in fact, may even be great for most of the casual visitors to such establishments, but it annoys me, especially because these places often also promote themselves as serious teahouses.

Without seeing the leaves, I have no way of really controlling how the tea is brewed.  Most of the time, the tea comes out weak, slightly understeeped, and most important of all, there is no chance for redemption — you cannot resteep the tea, you cannot add more hot water, and you have no way to look at the wet leaves, because they don’t give it to you.  Perhaps I can ask for it, and perhaps they will entertain me, but I don’t think this should be necessary.  The ability to resteep leaves multiple times is, in my opinion, a fundamental distinction between tea and coffee, and the nuances and changes that a tea undergoes from infusion to infusion is a great part of the enjoyment of any particular brew.  Taking the leaves away deprives me of all that.

I can think of some reasons why a store may decide to do such things, for example

1) Shorten visits — if you can reinfuse tea, you are more likely to sit there for longer.  Bad for business, obviously

2) Likewise, the possibility of reinfusing tea means you are less likely to order another pot, which of course means less money

3) Some people are clueless as to how to make tea, so doing it for them removes the possibility that they will screw it up, think it’s bad, and never come back again

While 3 is a legitimate concern (and I suppose 1 and 2 are too, for different reasons), I find it hard to swallow.  A serious tea place, IMHO, should probably at least offer the choice of leaves or no leaves.  A universal no leaves policy leaves something to be desired.  Or at least, for me, that’s a rather disappointing thing to see in shops and teahouses.  Maybe I’m being too much of a purist, but I still think that if I am buying tea to drink, I am buying the leaves, not the infused product — especially if I’m getting charged $4 for it.

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Back at home…

July 23, 2009 · 3 Comments

Finally, after about two weeks, I’m back at home, drinking tea properly for the first time.

A few things I noticed on the trip

1) Tap water in places like Utah and Arizona are very high in mineral content.  When I boil them, oftentimes there are precipitation.  I have no idea what’s in the water, but since a lot of them come from aquifers, I guess this is no surprise.

2) Driving many hours in the car with the bag of aged oolong in my backpack under the scorching summer sun means that the tea suffered some heat damage — I can tell that by the end of the two weeks, the tea has at least changed somewhat.  Detailed testing to follow to see if this is just placebo or if the change was real.

3) As long as you have tea that can easily be made in a paper cup and a proper way to heat water, you can enjoy some pretty decent tea without anything else.  The most problematic issue all along is to secure hot water — it’s really hard to find it on the road, especially hot water that isn’t contaminated by coffee taste.

4) The Grand Canyon is very big

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Bad tea, good tea

June 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment

I just came back from a short trip to Salem, MA, where a good friend got married.  When you mention Salem, most people think witches, but in reality, witches was just a small part of the city, and the place’s claim to fame for much of its history was a center for the old China trade, where they imported porcelain of all types, and of course, tea.  Salem is now home to the Peabody Essex Museum, which houses many artifacts from this once thriving trade route (if you’re nearby, you should visit), and where the wedding took place.

So it is with a little irony that it was last night, in this town, that I had perhaps the worst tea I have ever encountered.  It’s in a bag form, of course

Sorry for the poor quality — taken with the phone.  When you’re at somebody’s wedding, you can’t really say “no, please just give me a pot of hot water, as I brought my own tea”.  You take what you’re given.  I needed something to wash down the rather decent but rich wedding cake, so, heck, I’ll survive a tea bag.

Or so I thought.

The “Orange Pekoe & Pekoe Cut Black Tea” produced a “tea” that was rather acidic, more lemon juice like than tea, and utterly devoid of real tea flavour.  Of course, it’s prepared by a coffee company — probably just a ploy to get people to stop drinking tea and instead, turn to the dark side of coffee.  It was a very nice wedding, and the food was excellent.  My wife said the coffee was all right as well.  If only caterers can do better tea — it really ought not to be so hard, even when you’re trying to feed 150 people.

At least I should be pleased that it is a “Natural source of Antioxidants”.  Now if only I drink this every day, I’ll live to a hundred years.

This morning we braved the horrific New England mid-June weather of rain and wind and went to downtown Salem to look at some things, hoping in vain that I might find some old China trade antique.  The weather, however, was not cooperative, and we gave up quite quickly.  This was not before we found a place called Jaho Coffee Roasters & Tea Merchants though.  There were only a few customers, as I think the weather has deterred all but the bravest to go anywhere, but you can tell this is a place serious about its coffee.  They also have a lot of tea canisters lined up along the wall, but as anybody who’s been to Teavana knows, that’s no guarantee of quality.

Turns out their tea selection, while certainly not like, say The Tea Gallery, was not terrible either.  I ordered an Ali Shan oolong while my wife went for the more exotic coffees they have.  I like to order oolongs at teashops I’ve never been to — it’s usually a pretty good indication of what their selection is like.  If the oolong is awful, the place can’t be that good.  If the oolong is decent, it’s probably all right.  If the oolong is great, well, it’s promising.  Everybody can do good black tea, and green tea is really too much of a hit or miss.  Oolong is dependable… and less likely to be toxic waste.

The Ali Shan is what I expected it to be, light to medium fired, sweet, no hint of grass, which is good.  The only problem I have is with the teaware

The same cup set as that other place I went to a few months ago.  I’m sorry, but this kind of cup, while convenient for drinks service, really isn’t so good for tea drinkers.  The problem is you simply cannot tell how well brewed your tea is, and there is absolutely no indication of the colour of the tea.  I find that to be a very disconcerting thing, drinking a tea when I have no idea what colour the liquor is.  One of the pleasures of tea is its varying colours, from a light shade of green when brewing a cup of longjing to a deep, dark cooked puerh, the range of the visual pleasure of seeing that colour is an experience in and of itself.  Using a black cup completely obscures that aspect of tea.  Why?

I suppose the tea timer I was given with the pot is a bit of a remedy, to try to tell the drinker how long he or she might want to steep the tea, but it’s still a poor substitute.  I don’t think a coffee drinker would want to drink out of a cup that gives no indication of the colour of the brew, so why would a place that seems very serious about their coffee do that to tea?

Other than that though, no real complaints.  My wife described the coffee there as mingblowingly good.  I have no clue about coffee, so I won’t try to pass judgment.  But I think if you’re in serious need of some tea when you’re in Salem, you can probably do a lot worse than going to Jaho.

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Tea in Woodstock, VT

June 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Driving through Vermont today, stopping in a nice little town called Woodstock, and finding a shop called Tea and Coffee House there.  It’s nothing that’s going to impress a real tea addict, but it’s really nice to find a shop that tries to provide nice loose leaf tea in a pretty out of the way town.  Granted, it’s in the more tree-hugging part of the country with heavy ski tourists in the winter, but still, being able to buy a cup of shuixian (and not too horrid shuixian) from a shop instead of having to bring everything yourself (which I did anyway) was a nice change.  If only all towns in the US can say the same.  I do think though that over time, the incidence of shops that can provide something more than just basic “English Teatime” Bigelow teabags is going up, and that, I must say, is a really good thing.

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The road warrior

April 9, 2009 · 5 Comments

Tea Nerd is having a nice little series on teaware combinations that are very useful for those who don’t really know what they want yet. For those of us who are experienced drinkers, I have one for you.

The Road Warrior

It’s quite simple. You need a water heating device, you need a pot, and you need a cup. A cup can be had anywhere. A pot is harder, although gaiwan may do (gaiwan’s disadvantage is that they tend to be easier to break than pots). Water heating device is really only feasible when you’re traveling by car, as I am right now. If you are flying, good luck.

The basic requirements is that the cup needs to be big enough to hold the tea from the pot so that it all pours out. More importantly, however, is that both the pot and the water heating device need to pour well — well enough so they don’t drip. If they drip, you’re in trouble, because you’ll get water everywhere and you will be very unhappy.

Also, the tea in question should be chosen carefully. I almost always bring aged oolong on the road. They are easy to brew, and hard to mess up. Longer brew times do not kill the tea. If you bring things like young puerh, green, or black on the road, I would suggest forgetting the whole pot/gaiwan thing, and just go with tea in a mug. It’s much easier to do and harder to mess up.

Although, really, I shouldn’t be spending time in a hotel room on a sunny afternoon here in coastal Maine. I should be going to look at the beautiful ocean instead. So maybe it’s not such a good idea at the end of the day to have tea around the room, but it really beats teabags.

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Whistling kettle

March 8, 2009 · 4 Comments

I went to a tea store yesterday called Whistling Kettle, located in the little town of Ballston Spa. This is your typical small town tea store, I think, doing mostly tourist business as well as supplying the rich local folks. The place boasts of “over 90 teas” and the place actually is rather decently decorated. I didn’t go in expecting much, but I must say I was disappointed.

The place is more catered to food and tea, rather than just tea for tea’s sake. That’s fine — after all, they have to stay in business, and tea alone in upstate New York isn’t going to cut it. I flipped through the tea menu and plucked for the Borengajuli Assam. I like Assam in general, so I figured why not?

Well, it was a disaster. First of all, I cannot stand places that do not give you the leaves. If you claim to be serious about tea, with staffers all wearing t-shirts that say “Campaign for Real Tea” and all, then you should at the very least make tea the right way for people who are serious about tea. The teapots are fine, but where is my tea? I only have liquid. For all I know, this was brewed five hours ago and reheated in the microwave.

But I know it’s not, because it has another problem. As many of you will know, if you brewed tea using a bag or basket to hold the leaves, and then take the bag/basket out, what you get is more concentrated tea in the bottom and more watery tea up top in the pot. That’s why, for example, when you brew gongfu style, you need to distribute the tea evenly either through a fairness cup or by pouring alternately into the different cups. These teapots they gave me, however, are dark, dark blue, and there was no way that I could see how the tea is distributed in there. Unsuspectingly, I poured out my first cup. It was rather on the light side, and the Assam tasted like a regular Ceylon, which is always a bad sign. Ok. Then, the second cup comes out, and all of a sudden I have this much darker cup — then I knew there was a problem with the tea not being very well mixed, so to speak. Hmmm. The tea, however, was devoid of real fragrance and was rather rough on the tongue. The third (and last) cup was worse – when I emptied it my entire mouth felt rough. Even bad young puerh are not as harsh. I have no idea what this is, but high quality, estate produced Assam? I think not. Unless, of course, the tea has been sitting around for ages with nobody buying it. Michael of Tea Gallery told me before to buy cheap tea when I go to regular shops, because the expensive stuff sit on the shelves for ages with no customers. Maybe it applied here. However, my wife had a similarly bad experience, so it’s not as if I was the only victim.

I hate to give real, physical shops bad reviews, because they are doing a service to the tea community by bringing the drnk to others, but when it’s bad… it’s bad. I was not impressed by the Whistling Kettle. Sorry.

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Dobra tearoom

February 9, 2009 · 16 Comments

I’m in Madison, Wisconsin, and while I walked around town today, I came across a tea room. It’s called Dobra Tea. I never let a tea room go by without at least taking a peek, and since they looked pretty ok from the outside, I decided to check it out.

I ended up spending a little time there. Even though I was in a bit of a rush, I wanted to try some tea, as they looked rather well managed, with at least a few heads screwed on straight. That can’t always be said about other tea places in this country. When I asked if they do take out tea, their answer was “only loose leaf that you can bring home and brew yourself”. Great, that means no carry out cups…. I like places that don’t compromise too much.

So I plucked myself down for a gaiwan of shuixian.

The gaiwan they used was a little too large for shuixian for one person, but then, I should’ve specified for a smaller gaiwan. The use of the little heating thing for water is rather interesting. Underneath is a tea light, which, admittedly, gives off some heat, but I suspect it’s not really enough to keep the water very hot for very long. If you stick around for a while and take some time between brews, your water can cool substantially. I think that happened to the people sitting next to me, who were three people sharing one pot (in a largish yixing). Their water container was much larger than mine, and I think a little tea light really isn’t going to do much other than having a placebo effect of keeping the water warm.

It is also interesting becuase I flipped over the kettle to take a look inside. It is obvious that they are either using water of a very high mineral content, or, perhaps, that people let the water burn for a long time without using it. I am guessing the latter, because there is obvious scale buildup in the kettles, and there was mineral particles floating in the water itself. I am not personally opposed to it, although I wonder if they have actively thought about this issue or not and how it might or might not affect the teas they make. It’s fine if you’re making black or puerh or even shuixian, but I think this water isn’t so good for, say, green tea. Too heavy.

These things aside though, they are really minor complaints. A place that uses gaiwan to serve tea? That’s an achievement in itself. The shuixian wasn’t all that bad either — it’s not a top notch tea, but it’s serviceable, and had enough aftertaste to keep things interesting.

I did a little research after coming back to figure out who they are. Turns out they are a Czech company that franchises out. No smoking in the States, but they do water pipes in the Czech Republic. (Website here). Anybody know anything more about these guys? I know I have readers from the Czech Republic.

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