Tea, tea, and more tea
15 weeks since last post, apparently. I don't call people often enough, I don't write letters, I don't even post passive mass-messages on LJ. I'm sure this Says Something, but I'm not sure I feel like examining exactly -what- at the moment.
But! I think this time I've actually found the tea I've been looking for, the one that started the whole tea fascination. It's roasted kukicha -- green tea made of tea twigs, roasted sometime during the tea-manufacturing process. Doesn't taste like green tea, really, just tastes... well, tastes almost exactly like the stuff they served at the Chinese restaurant down the street from my parents' house, the one we went to more often than any other restaurant when I was a kid. And way back then, I would dump an entire sugar packet into each of those small Chinese teacups. I can't imagine doing that now; it seems like the most disgusting idea I can think of. But the tea's the same underneath it all, even if I'm not drinking it out of the cups that have been so scratched on the rims that they feel gritty against my lip. And every time I have a cup, I think, "You know what would go great with this? An eggroll!"
A few weeks before Christmas, I bought a guywan at the Fair Lakes Wegmans. (The Sterling store doesn't seem nearly as cool, for some reason. Perhaps because they had to make use of the existing building, whereas the Fair Lakes one was built specifically to be a Wegmans.) It was made (or sold through, at least) Rishi. I didn't know Rishi made/sold teaware, and I'm not that interested in most of their stuff, but it's a really nice little cup, and I paid less than I would've if I'd had to ship it from an online store. So I've been drinking lots of jasmine pearl tea in it. Tried some white tea, but I was getting it from the bottom of the bag and all the smallish pieces of leaves were hard to contain using just the lid of the cup, so it was kindof gross. I'll be more patient next time. (The Sterling Wegmans has the "Lotus" cups -- which are the cup part of the guywan without the lid or saucer. I don't quite understand why, except that they're interesting as cups and guywan(s?) are going to be purchased only by a limited subset of the tea-drinking population.)
I found a couple of promising sources for "real" (raw/green/sheng) pu-erh -- I've bought several batches of the cooked stuff, which is processed to simulate aging, but apparently is Not The Same as the real stuff. I haven't bought any yet: I spent too much on the other three or four pounds I bought last weekend, and haven't tried all the samples of the things I wasn't just reordering, so I feel like it's just a tad unnecessary.
Wegmans also had slotted trays, porcelain gongfu-sized pot/decanter sets (ugly ones, but it's way cool that they were in stock in the first place!), leaf presentation vessels, tasting cups, and tool sets. In short, they tempted me, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what sort of gongfu set I actually want. The more I've thought about it, the more I'm realizing that I don't actually want yixing clay until I pick a type of tea that I'd brew consistently enough to dedicate a pot to just that type of tea. (Yixing pots are unglazed, so the clay gets seasoned, so you must limit cross-contamination of flavors by brewing particular types of teas from particular regions. Or so they say.) So I'm sortof looking for components that all coordinate well enough, and trying to decide whether I want a tray that you drain the water into or a bowl for the overflow/rinse water. It's rumbled around in the back of my mind for ages, but was not pressing. And now... well, it seems closer, more easily attainable. And watching a zillion gongfu tea ceremony videos on You Tube didn't help.
And now that I'm rambling, I have so much to ramble about, not all of which is tea-related... but I have to go sleep.
But! I think this time I've actually found the tea I've been looking for, the one that started the whole tea fascination. It's roasted kukicha -- green tea made of tea twigs, roasted sometime during the tea-manufacturing process. Doesn't taste like green tea, really, just tastes... well, tastes almost exactly like the stuff they served at the Chinese restaurant down the street from my parents' house, the one we went to more often than any other restaurant when I was a kid. And way back then, I would dump an entire sugar packet into each of those small Chinese teacups. I can't imagine doing that now; it seems like the most disgusting idea I can think of. But the tea's the same underneath it all, even if I'm not drinking it out of the cups that have been so scratched on the rims that they feel gritty against my lip. And every time I have a cup, I think, "You know what would go great with this? An eggroll!"
A few weeks before Christmas, I bought a guywan at the Fair Lakes Wegmans. (The Sterling store doesn't seem nearly as cool, for some reason. Perhaps because they had to make use of the existing building, whereas the Fair Lakes one was built specifically to be a Wegmans.) It was made (or sold through, at least) Rishi. I didn't know Rishi made/sold teaware, and I'm not that interested in most of their stuff, but it's a really nice little cup, and I paid less than I would've if I'd had to ship it from an online store. So I've been drinking lots of jasmine pearl tea in it. Tried some white tea, but I was getting it from the bottom of the bag and all the smallish pieces of leaves were hard to contain using just the lid of the cup, so it was kindof gross. I'll be more patient next time. (The Sterling Wegmans has the "Lotus" cups -- which are the cup part of the guywan without the lid or saucer. I don't quite understand why, except that they're interesting as cups and guywan(s?) are going to be purchased only by a limited subset of the tea-drinking population.)
I found a couple of promising sources for "real" (raw/green/sheng) pu-erh -- I've bought several batches of the cooked stuff, which is processed to simulate aging, but apparently is Not The Same as the real stuff. I haven't bought any yet: I spent too much on the other three or four pounds I bought last weekend, and haven't tried all the samples of the things I wasn't just reordering, so I feel like it's just a tad unnecessary.
Wegmans also had slotted trays, porcelain gongfu-sized pot/decanter sets (ugly ones, but it's way cool that they were in stock in the first place!), leaf presentation vessels, tasting cups, and tool sets. In short, they tempted me, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what sort of gongfu set I actually want. The more I've thought about it, the more I'm realizing that I don't actually want yixing clay until I pick a type of tea that I'd brew consistently enough to dedicate a pot to just that type of tea. (Yixing pots are unglazed, so the clay gets seasoned, so you must limit cross-contamination of flavors by brewing particular types of teas from particular regions. Or so they say.) So I'm sortof looking for components that all coordinate well enough, and trying to decide whether I want a tray that you drain the water into or a bowl for the overflow/rinse water. It's rumbled around in the back of my mind for ages, but was not pressing. And now... well, it seems closer, more easily attainable. And watching a zillion gongfu tea ceremony videos on You Tube didn't help.
And now that I'm rambling, I have so much to ramble about, not all of which is tea-related... but I have to go sleep.