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.

I didn’t watch carefully at Simon’s, but from what I can tell, they start with matcha powder (finely ground green tea leaves) and soy milk, and then some combination of using the steamer (hence the word “latte”) and blender, poured over ice, they serve a nice concoction that delivers a very good green tea flavor, naturally sweet because soy milk (like regular milk) has a natural sweetness to it.

I also tried the hot variation and liked it, too.

Then I tried it at a Starbucks. I was simply not expecting it to come out as sweet as a thai iced tea (which is traditionally made with sweetened condensed milk). It was almost too sweet to drink at all. Iced, the soy milk green tea latte at Starbucks is tolerable. Hot, it comes out sickly sweet and syrupy.

I’ve tried ordering it with no sugar, meaning they put no syrup in. I think they sometimes put a shot of the vanilla Torani syrup in. The vanilla flavor blends wonderfully with tea and soy, but gah. Too sweet.

Unfortunately, it appears that the soy milk used by Starbucks is presweetened, as I’ve never been able to get a soy green tea latte at a Starbucks that was not too sweet.

As summer progressed, I found myself wanting the soy green tea latte more and more. I finally gave in and bought some soy milk. This was no trivial thing, as the soy milk section of the Harvest Food Coop is enormous and dizzying. Not only are there multiple manufacturers of soy milk, there are sweetened, unsweetened, low fat, almond, vanilla, “original flavor,” and other variations within each brand name. Not to mention rice milk, almond milk, etc. all on the same shelf.

I ended up going home with two cartons of unsweetened, “original” flavor, one marked as low fat and one not. I knew I had a little can of matcha somewhere that we had used to make green tea ice cream once. I figured if I wanted to add a little vanilla flavor, a drop of vanilla extract would be better than a syrupy, sugary Torani shot.

I got home and discovered the can of matcha had decided to play hide and seek. However I had two packets of powdered green tea I had received as free samples when I bought some tea at the Ten Ren tea store in New York Chinatown. I opened one up, poured it in a tall cup, poured in about 10 ounces of soy milk, a drop of vanilla, and stirred it with a chopstick. The soy milk was room temperature so I added a few ice cubes.

Perfect.

The next day i did the same thing, trying the other carton of soy milk. Turns out whether it was low-fat or fatty, tasted the same. Then I read the side of the cartons. One serving of each was listed as 90 calories, despite the fact one had 3.5 grams of fat and the other only 1.5. And they tasted exactly the same. From now on, I’ll just buy whichever is cheaper at the time. Again the drink came out exactly as I hoped.

But now I was out of green tea powder. I knew it would be a while before I got back to Ten Ren and I didn’t want to wait to mail order, so I went over to Whole Foods and discovered that Rishi sells a matcha powder packet as well. The tiny box was almost $20 for 10 packets. That is $2 each. That seemed a bit steep given that there is barely a fraction of an ounce in each packet. But what the heck. I’ve enjoyed various Rishi teas before.

And on the box it even suggests using the packet as a base for a latte, or even just pouring it into a bottle of water and shaking it up, for an instant green tea drink. Great idea!

The problem, I soon discovered when I got to the bottom of my first attempt, was that the Rishi matcha is actually so finely powdered that it clumps like crazy. Their instructions suggest “dissolving” the powder in hot water first, with a whisk, and then pouring in the soy milk. The result was a lot of bitter clumps in the bottom, no matter how much I whisked. Matcha never really “dissolves”–there’s always some grit left even when you brew it hot, but not normally coherent BLOBS of unadulterated powder. I also tried mixing it without the hot water, just cold like the ones I had made with the Ten Ren tea which had come out perfect. No dice. The last inch or so in the glass was undrinkable because of the bitter powder bombs, and meanwhile I felt I was wasting a lot of very expensive matcha if so much of it was undrinkable.

Matcha is a lot like cocoa powder in terms of how it can be used in recipes. There’s a difference between making hot cocoa and chocolate milk, but ultimately you still have to get it to dissolve somehow.

Yesterday I brought out the heavy artillery, the stick blender. While this piece of machinery did reduce the number of clumps, even it still left blobs of 1-2 mm across.

I would say at this point the Rishi packets are a failure, especially at that price. Meanwhile, I just looked up the Ten Ren website and they sell an 8 ounce bag of green tea powder for a mere $9, and a box containing 20 single serve green tea packets is a mere $3.50. For just 90 cents you can get a sampler of 4 different green tea powder packets.

So, Ten Ren, here I come.

Soy Milk Green Tea Latte Recipe

Ingredients:
8-10 ounces unsweetened soy milk
1-2 teaspoons green tea powder
1-3 drops of vanilla extract

As described above, if your green tea powder is not excessively clumpy, just put it all in a glass and whisk or stir, then put in the ice cubes. If you want to make it hot, I’d just microwave it at that point, unless you have a fancy milk steamer.

If the tea is clumpy, do it in a blender. If you use an immersion blender instead, make sure your glass is twice as tall as the liquid, as it will spin up the sides and spill if not tall enough. A regular blender would probably do fine, as well. If it’s still quite clumpy, pour it through a strainer over ice or the lumps will be bitter and unpleasant.

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. In my rush-rush-rush life often my only break is the pause to allow the water to boil, the leaves to steep, but I ended up with several hours to laze about in bed and savor the book.*

Interestingly enough, the more things change, though, the more they stay the same. Although Britain broke the Chinese monopoly and transformed the way the Western Hemisphere consumed tea, these days, the most highly regarded teas still come from the remote and closely guarded areas of China. One need spend only a few minutes on the website of Roy Fong, the Imperial Tea Court of San Francisco, to realize the scope of it. Just today a package of sample teas for review arrived in the mail from the Canton Tea Company.

Canton Tea Company is, curiously enough, based in the United Kingdom. Even more curious, they seem to be the equivalent of one of those small wine import shops, a “mom & pop” shop run by Jennifer Wood and Edgar Thoemmes. Wood founded the company in 2007 and Thoemmes came along last year, and they are already snagging awards for some of their exclusives. ( I’m drinking the silver needle they sent at this moment and the first impression is very favorable.) I’ll be tasting and writing about their teas soon–for now I imagine that life at Canton Tea Co. must be much like it is in my own small business, which is to say hectic but fueled with passion.

And enriched with tea, and all the culture and history that goes with it.

–

*Thanks to R. for the book!

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.

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.

Normally I always travel with a private tea stash, but somehow in my craze of packing all I had packed were nighttime tisanes like echinacea, ginger, and throat-soothing formulas. I needed some actual TEA one morning, and while hurrying from one task to the next stopped in the staff lounge to try to grab a cup. I plopped two bags of Lipton into my to-go cup, steeped them until it was sufficiently orange, and then ran off.

Twenty minutes later I was pouring it out and scraping my tongue. Not kidding. Apparently my steady diet of decent to high grade tea at home has ruined my ability to drink the cheap stuff.

Fortunately, my tea buddy Midori was at this conference, and she happened to be coming straight from a trip to London, and she had brought me a gift, direct from the Twinings Gift Shop, a sampler box of all their classic teas in bags, including assam, darjeeling, ceylon, nglish breakfast, etc. Talk about a stroke of timing! I would have been in sad, sad shape by the end of the long weekend without it.

Perhaps to banish the sense-memory of the Lipton from my tongue, I found myself brewing not the Earl Grey or Lady Grey in the box, but the assam, darjeeling, and ceylon. Teas that truly taste like tea, and which are very similar to each other on the flavor spectrum. These are my new ‘travel’ tea bags, and when they run out, I’ll probably buy more from the Twinings web site.

It was also bitterly cold here last month, with snow and sleet and windstorms, which also put me in the mood for black tea, which can be made with boiling water and which just seems to hold the heat longer. I ended up ordering samplers from several different companies, thanks to coupons and me being a sucker for good online marketing, and three more teas have hit my radar as a result:

• TeaLuxe Tiger Hill Nilgiri


• Imperial Tea Court Yunnan Golden Rings


• Teavana Assam Gold Rain

I’m drinking the Tealuxe Tiger Hill Nilgiri right at this moment and it is growing on me. It has the essential basic flavor I have come to expect from the Indian subcontinent black teas, but the sweet aftertaste reminds me almost of mint. It has large, dark wiry leaves, and at $1 per ten grams, really affordable. In fact, overall, the Tealuxe teas surprised me with how inexpensive they are, even for some of the higher grades. I bought $25 worth of 10g samples and nearly all were $1 each (the herbal non-teas tending to be $2, interestingly enough!). I would definitely consider brewing this stronger than my usual and adding cream, to serve someone who preferred their tea that style.

Next, a tea flavor I don’t normally associate with Chinese teas, but the Imperial Tea Court’s Yunnan Golden Rings arrived at my doorstep and was the first tea from that order I brewed. Delightfully delicious! A truly luxurious taste of TEA. The fuzzy golden tips have been rolled into rings that are pleasing to the eye, but as they unfurl in the cup the scent makes you think of everything that is soothing and wonderful about a hot cup of tea. The flavor is almost malty in its mellowness.

An interesting note from the Imperial Tea Court about getting this black tea from Yunnan (and really, I’d call it a ‘brown’ tea, myself…): “The recent, phenomenal popularity of Puerh tea has considerably slowed the production of black tea in Yunnan province, as farmers and factories are all rushing to produce Puerhs and black tea production has virtually been forgotten. However, as the Puerh stampede has abated somewhat due to over-production and poor quality, black tea is beginning to make a comeback.” The Yunnan Golden Rings were one of the treasures unearthed in the comeback.

Finally, my favorite tea of the three, and one I had not expected to like nearly as much as I do. This is one I’ll probably buy a half pound of to make sure I don’t run out any time soon–and who knows if it will always be this good? If this were a wine, I’d be buying a case of it. This is the Assam Gold Rain from Teavana. While surfing their website to fill up my shopping cart enough to qualify for free shipping, I ended up tossing this one in to ensure I’d purchased a wide variety. It is an “FTGFOP” tea, meaning “Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe” (and jokingly referred to in tea circles as “Far Too Good For Ordinary People”).

So here we come to it. An actual “orange pekoe.” Sir Thomas Lipton is widely considered responsible for introducing this name for the black teas of India to the western market, though its etymology will forever be in dispute. Even the “orange” part of the name is disputed. What isn’t disputed is the grading system, which runs from OP, to FOP (flowery orange pekoe), GFOP (golden FOP), TGFOP (tippy GFOP), and finally FTGFOP.

Yes, folks, it’s that good. It shares the maltiness of the Golden Rings, but goes another step into that world of sweetness and light that the best Indian teas have, and which bagged Lipton has barely a ghost of, and Twinings manages to capture, but with this every sip is transcendent. The flavor is as smooth as a windless lake, which just mainlines that tea flavor totally devoid of any bitterness straight to the brain. Reviewers rate it as “fruity” on the teavana website, but it’s not fruity in the sense of tasting like an actual fruit other than the “tea fruit.” Truly a tea that tastes like tea, but which conveys the true meaning of “fine” tea. At $30 for 8 ounces, it seems a bargain, though I have to wonder what Sir Thomas Lipton, who was famous for bringing low cost tea to the working classes of Britain, would think of the price.

Links:
Twinings sampler
TeaLuxe Tiger Hill Nilgiri
Imperial Tea Court Yunnan Golden Rings
Teavana Assam Gold Rain

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.

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)

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:

Pot and flowering tea ball ready to go. This is the lychee blossom from Imperial Tea Court in San Francisco. The pot I received as a Christmas gift this past year. Water was at about 195 degrees.

Here we go! After 10 seconds in the water, there’s very little effect.

Now we’re at 60 seconds of steeping. The water is still crystal clear, but the leaves are starting to open.

Another shot at 60 seconds, showing the open leaves from the side. Don’t let the amber light in this shot here fool you, the water is still not colored at all.

Now at 2 minutes. The flower is almost fully opened, but the tea is still not ready to drink. I tasted it as well as judging the non-existent color, and it was pretty much just water.

Now at 3 minutes. The flower is fully opened and there is maybe a really slight coloration in the water if you look REALLY hard. Some flavor but still too mild for most tastes. (And I like my tea really mild and understeeped.)

Side shot at 3 minutes of steeping time.

Now around 5 minutes, the leaves are completely open. The tea’s flavor is still really subtle, though. On the other hand, the flavor is good and not “oversteeped” so the flower can be left in the pot all while being drunk, and enjoyed visually for the entire time.

This is after about 20 minutes. The tea is showing plenty of color now and the flavor was mild and enjoyable. The lychee flavor was slight and the tea flavor sweet and vegetal. A beautiful tea to share with a friend over unhurried conversation.

Yes, in the end, it was quite a delicious tea, with a subtle lychee flavor and mostly the mild artichoke-heart flavor I associate with these green tea “flowers.” It still wasn’t as good as the lychee green I brought back from Shanghai, but I will definitely brew it for a friend if the chance arises!

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. I came here on recommendation of someone on Steepster who works for Harney & Sons, the fine tea importer/blender in upstate New York. The recommendation came in the midst of a discussion of rose teas, since I’m looking to try more. As such, I’m now drinking one that was recommended to me called Victorian Garden, which is rose with vanilla and black tea. It’s quite yummy, and it’s going perfectly with the snack I’m having, which is a vegan raspberry cheesecake.

Normally I would not go near a vegan cheesecake, but all the baked goods here are vegan, and this one was recommended to me by the server. She was not wrong–it’s quite good, and I’d never believe it was made with tofu and not actual fatty cream if you hadn’t told me. The raspberry is not overdone, and it’s bringing out the rose in the tea. I’m not drinking the tea with cream, but the cake is so “creamy” it seems like I am.

They have a dizzying array of teas here, all in color-coded canisters, and I’ll go back and pick out some to buy to bring home and try later. Right now, I’m going to eat and sip and decompress from a busy few days here in the city for a digital book conference. After two solid days of high level marketingspeak and strategic business planning, my brain is full and quite tired. I left the hotel to come here at 5:30 and figured I would chill here for a few hours rather than try to drive out of New York city during rush hour with a depleted brain. I’m on short sleep, too, and can feel my neurotransmitters on empty. Tea and cake is just the thing.

The place is made completely of bamboo. The disposable fork I’m eating with? Made from potato. The stain on the bamboo counters was tea of course, and the paper lanterns and lights were made from recycled tea bags. This place is serious.

Also empty. Besides me, there’s one couple sitting in the far corner. Now there’s one fellow ordering at the counter. That’s it. Ah, and now the couple are getting up to go. I have the place and its late-night jazz & 50s Motown soundtrack to myself.

So I’ll post this, and nibble and sip, and catch you all when I get back to the Boston area.

Edit: A bit later. Not at all crowded, but lively now. Three young geeks are speaking in HTML on one side of me, and two women just came in and sat on the other side. Two other groups of two (not sure if they are “couples” or not…) The woman next to me just told her friend “I’ve been buying teas from Miriam since back when she was in SoHo! That was sixteen years ago. She’s got so much of my money.”

She’s referring to the T Salon’s owner, Miriam Novalle, whose virtues are extolled on the cup insulator. It’s now 7:30, and I’m done with my tea and cheesecake. I’m so full from the cake I may not stop for dinner for a few hours. Time to pick out some teas to take with me and hit the road.

http://teawritings.com/?p=110 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.

Click for full image:

Sadly it’s not for sale anywhere yet as far as I can tell, but it’ll be on my wish list as soon as it is…

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.

I’ve seen one tasting note for the Tealuxe Victorian Rose Tea, and given that I live less than a mile from a Tealuxe location, I might just have to drop in there and see if they have it in store.

I’ve had and enjoyed plenty of green teas with rose elements, but I’m really after a black here. I’m happy to hear suggestions on green and white varieties, too, though, for future consumption. No such thing as too much rose if it’s done well.

Oh, and today I also finished off the last of the black mango tea I extolled the virtues of recently. So that leaves only the Dragon Eyes Black of my top three flavored black teas on my shelf! Can you tell it’s been one of the coldest winters in years? The colder it is, the blacker I want my tea, it seems. (And the hotter I want to make the water, perhaps.)

I’ve been known to sometimes take some of my stash of plain Siberian rosebuds (purchased from Vital T-Leaf) and toss them into the pot with other leaves to “rose up” some other teas, as well.

Ahhh. I’m on the fourth steeping of this last measure from Ten Ren. It’s nearly two in the morning as I type this and so the caffeine has long since been leached from this batch. But it’s still just as delicious as the first steep I did at high noon. There’s almost a honey aftertaste from this one; as the rose flavor has faded, an inherent sweetness still lingers.