Tea Writings

My obsession with soy milk green tea lattes started early this summer. On Sundays when my S.O. was off at jujitsu and errands and such, if I didn’t have to go somewhere else myself, I would often go to our local, independently owned coffee shop to get some writing done.

The shop is called Simon’s, and as I understand it has become one of the respected coffee shrines in the area for those who worship the trade of the barista. (The baristas have been in competitions and such.) They also have a light menu of soups and muffins, and of course they offer tea of various excellent kinds, served in the pot.

Of course, when it’s hot outside, a hot pot of tea might not be what I’m looking for. But I still want my hit of tea. And all too often iced tea, if not done right, is a waste of good tea anyway. So one afternoon I was staring at their chalkboard menu and it dawned on me, oh, green tea latte. That sounds kind of good.

But with summer come my seasonal allergies, and milk or dairy products pumps up my mucous production. So I asked. Can the green tea latte be made… with soy milk? Of course! replied the cheerful barista. And… can it be iced! Surely!

And a new obsession was born.
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It’s one of life’s inherent paradoxes–isn’t it?–that we associate sipping a cup of tea with slowing down and taking a moment to relax, and yet the tea trade is one of the most labor intensive of all industries. I have now had the pleasure of reading Sarah Rose’s For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History and so can say that this has been true for over a century.

The tea industry would never again be the same in the wake of the massive global changes brought about by British Empire-building. The shift of the English taste from green to black tea and the fate of India and the East India Company (the world’s first multinational corporation) hinged on the clandestine expeditions of botanist Robert Fortune. He traveled into remote areas of China where no white man had ever gone in order to unlock the secrets of Chinese tea production, so that the British colonies in India could seed massive plantations to break the Chinese monopoly.

The book and the historical tale it recounts is fascinating, but I only had the leisure to read it thanks to an unexpected afternoon free while visiting the city of New Orleans. Read the rest of this entry →

So, it’s my birthday today, and I thought maybe I should buy a book for myself. So I went websurfing, because at least two of the books that have caught my eye lately are about tea.

I recently heard writer Sarah Rose on NPR about her recent book For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History. The book sounds fascinating, and could be another brick in the wall I am building that encompasses the intertwined histories of my grandparents’ nations of origin: China and the UK. (I’m Chinese-filipino/Irish/Welsh. Have I mentioned how much I loved Hong Kong? But I digress.)

For All The Tea In China tells the story of how a man named Robert Fortune (no, I am not making that up), botanist and adventurer, stole the secret of tea cultivation from a Chinese plantation, including seeds, samples, and the methods of horticulture, so that British-owned plantations in India could be started. (This also partly explains why the Yunnan Gold Rings tea I am drinking right at this very moment tastes a lot like Assam Gold Rain.)

Anyway, I do rail against Amazon’s arrogance and hegemony in the digital book industry, but couldn’t help but notice that the book is on sale for 55% off. WOW. That’s as cheap as a wholesaler gets it. In other words, I could order several copies of it, and resell them, and make what a bookstore would make on doing so. This is a $26 hardcover, and they are selling it for $11.69. And it looks like a really good book. I might have to buy it. (No, I’m not actually going to re-sell it. I’ve lost enough money in the book business already, thank you.)

If you decide to buy it too, click this link to buy it and I’ll get a kickback from the Amazon hegemony: For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History

The other book I am interested in is Roy Fong’s Great Teas of China. Interestingly, Amazon doesn’t actually sell the book, just lists it, and the Imperial Tea Court is the seller. So I went over to the Imperial Tea Court website to see it there. Roy Fong, for those not familiar with him, runs the Imperial Tea Court in San Francisco, where he teaches amazing tea tasting classes, runs tea tours of China, and most recently bought a tea farm of his own. And wrote a book recently, hence this.

Turns out there are a bunch of tea books for sale at Imperial Tea Court. Frank Murphy’s The Spirit of Tea caught my eye also.

Ah indecision! In the end I have not yet bought any of these books, because although I have one day a year to treat myself to an indulgent book purchase… I have no day when just reading that book is the rule. Perhaps that’s what I should do for my birthday next year. Set aside at least one day just to read. And sip tea.

I’ve written a lot about things like rose tea (with more to come), and I’m about to write about chocolate tea soon (still tasting), but today I thought I would turn my attention to the recent teas I’ve been brewing that “taste like tea.”

In the American sense, tea is black “orange pekoe”, usually Lipton. I had a horrifying (or perhaps edifying) experience last month. I was helping to run a conference at a fancy hotel, and in our staff room we had continuous catered coffee and tea service. The tea service was not terrific. This hotel, which used to serve a very fancy brand of tea (I can’t remember the name but the tea “bags” came as stand alone pyramids with little leaves at the top), had switched to Tazo for all their flavored teas and, yes, Lipton for their regular black tea & decaf. Yes, it’s the economy.
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Back in the summer of 2009, I visited the Aroma Tea Shop in San Francisco, and Haymen da Luz the proprietor told me at the time he was making a video documentary about his visit to the tea plantations in Fujian. He showed us lots of photos and the trip looked really awesome.

The video is on the website main page and also on the Tie Kwan Yin sales page: http://www.aromateashop.com/store/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=61

Haymen is the only tea guy I know who would admit, in his own tea documentary, that he’s craving a stop at Starbucks. It’s funny and informative. Check it out.

Imperial Tea Court in San Francisco has revamped their website. To celebrate they are offering free UPS ground shipping until March 31st on any order over $25, using coupon code cf3prf0y. Visit http://www.imperialtea.com/ to see. I have bought from Imperial Tea before and have been very happy with what I’ve gotten. If only they sold the ginger black I just used up on their website! I didn’t find it, but I suppose I must go back to San Francisco soon.

Meanwhile, I figured as long as I am passing on the Imperial Tea sale code, I would look up other tea sales on some of my favorite tea sites.

Aroma Tea Shop, also in San Fran, sells through their web site (which is how I found them originally) and their sale page has some very fine teas at HALF PRICE. Check it out at http://www.aromateashop.com/store/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=saleItems.

Have you checked out Teavana’s “clearance” section? Rose garden rooibos is on sale for a mere $2.40. Here: http://www.teavana.com/Tea-Products/Sale-Clearance/
They are also offering discounts on all orders, 10% off any combination that equals a pound (16 ounces), 15% off 2lbs, 20% off 5lbs or more. I got suckered in by this, and ended up placing an order for 8 different 2 ounce samples, which ended up coming to more thatn $50, so I qualified for free shipping, too! Yes, I would love to pay more for tea, less for shipping.

The English Tea Store, which I have ordered from before and pretty much always has some unbelievably good prices to begin with, has a large section of clearance items. They also happen to be a great source online for British chocolate bars and candies not usually sold in the US except in speciality stores. Among the items that caught my eye on this visit, a plum colored ceramic three-cup teapot, normally $8.95, only $4.95. (http://www.englishteastore.com/clearance.html)

If you want their clearance tea in particular, check here: http://www.englishteastore.com/clearance-tea.html I’m currently looking at their Guava Comoros Green Tea Loose Leaf – 4oz, four ounces of which is already less than half price of most things at Teavana at its regular price of $3.99, but is on sale for $2.99 for four ounces. Hmm.

Then we have Boulder Tea. Most of the stuff on their “clearance” page doesn’t look marked down all that much, but they are offering a canister with 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of genmaicha for $15. I haven’t ordered from them before, so can’t vouch for their service. Anyone who does, please let me know. They have some intriguing stuff. (http://www.bouldertea.com/clearance.html)

And how about Camille’s Tea of San Antonio, Texas? There’s a “dollar page.” All teas listed there are 50 grams for a dollar, 100 grams for two dollars. (And maybe it’s just me, but I can’t see something listed in grams without thinking about drugs. But, well, I suppose tea is that.) I haven’t ordered from her before, but with priced like those, I might have to try some! (http://www.camillestea.com/dollarsale.html)

In my seeming never-ending search for a tea I liked as much as the lychee green they brew and sell at the famous tea house in the lake in Shanghai, which I visited in April 2007, when I was in San Francisco last summer I picked up some “lychee blossom” at the Imperial Tea Court (Ferry Bldg. location).

Here’s Imperial Tea Court’s description: A new addition to our flower tea collection, this beauty features a red lychee flower waiting to blossom inside a surrounding flower of green tea. Subtly scented with jasmine and flavored with lychee fruit, this stunning tea will display beautifully in a glass teapot.

It took me a while to get around to brewing this tea because I didn’t have a glass pot and kept not getting around to buying one, and beautiful flowering teas are maximally enjoyed when one can see them. But then I received one for Christmas! The other thing is I usually like to brew a flowering tea when I have a friend over for tea so we can both enjoy the sight, but I’ve been so busy lately I finally decided to just try it for myself.

I’ve had flowering teas before of various kinds and so I decided this time to photograph the process. What follows are the photos of the tea opening:

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As I type this entry, I am sitting in a tea shop that gives the Samovar Tea Lounge a run for the money when it comes to hippest tea-sipping spot. I’m at the T-Salon in Chelsea Market.

First of all, this is Chelsea Market in New York City. In what was an old meatpacking building, there is now an incredibly hip foodie paradise. Similar to the Terminal Market in San Francisco, only bigger with even more shops and restaurants, Chelsea Market has fine cheese, fresh fish, farm-raised meat, and on and on with the gourmet shops and bakeries. This building also houses MLB.com and the Google NYC offices. Morimoto (the Iron Chef) has a restaurant here. Hip.

It’s so hip that the free wifi comes with the following terms of service:

I promise to refrain from any hanky panky
Or anything that would make anyone get cranky.
Anything I do with this connection that is lame,
I absolve Chelsea Market et al of any blame.

You click a button that says “All righty!” to agree.

But back to the T-Salon. Read the rest of this entry →

Invented by a designer named Pablo Matteodo from Argentina, for the Design Boom competition theme “Beyond Silver,” this is the the SHARKY TEA INFUSER:

http://www.designboom.com/contest/view.php?contest_pk=25&item_pk=25799&p=2

Shown here brewing red tea, of course.

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The time has come for me to either restock the Ten Ren black rose tea I’ve just run out of, or to replace it with something else.

Being an adventurous sort (not to mention a tea blogger…) I’m open to trying some other brands, flavors, and formulations of rose, but a quick look over just my favorite sites, much less the plethora of rose teas reviewed at Steepster (up to 532 from just 519 teas yesterday!!), reveals more choice than my currently overtaxed brain can handle.

So I solicit your suggestions, here, on Steepster, on Twitter, Facebook, and wherever else you may cross my path.

Ten Ren Black Rose Tea: So, the tea I am now out of is sold from huge canisters at the Ten Ren shops all around the world. I bought this batch at the shop in Chinatown NYC and had no idea it was going to become one of my “staple” teas — i.e. a tea I brew at least once a week. (I typically brew 2-3 varieties per day, every day.) As I mention in my tasting note on this tea on Steepster, “This is a reliably delicious tea that holds up to at least 4 steepings, still giving beautiful color and excellent flavor, though milder by the 3rd and 4th time through. It doesn’t hit you over the head with the rose too much, doesn’t muck it up with any other flavors.”

The first thing, of course, is that the black tea itself must be of good quality. Crummy tea hidden by a shot of rose oil is not what I’m looking for, obviously, but I am a big believer in the fact that the most expensive tea isn’t necessarily the best. Read the rest of this entry →