The more humble of Tao of Tea’s two Portland teahouses, Original Tao was built in 1997 and is tucked into a small neighborhood in the southeast part of the city. It is small, but well worth a visit. In addition to the extensive tea selection, which includes choices of traditional serving styles, the teahouse [...]
Even though I’m a tea lover, I hadn’t really thought about the implication of weather and natural disasters on my favorite beverage. A month or so back, I got a lovely letter from Silk Road Teas about this year’s trip to buy teas in China, and it expressed some concern about the effect of the [...]
Having never formally studied any Chinese languages I surmised that the word “oolong” was the proper English transliteration of the Mandarin Chinese name for a family of teas and that “wulong” was a word that had come into vogue for use in preposterous and unfounded weight-loss claims in order to promote Chinese oolong teas. While [...]
Several months ago I bought these three beautiful Chinese tea cups at an antique store. They were inaccurately labeled “sake cups” by the seller. They have lovely detailed hand-painted figures and patterns on them with real gold accents and are about 2″ in diameter, perfect size for gongfu tea. I used them a couple of [...]
About three years ago I discovered a lovely China Keemun at the Perennial Tea Room in Seattle: Red Peach Keemun. Keemun is one of my favorite black teas and the one I drink most frequently; it is smooth and tasty (sometimes smoky, sometimes fruity) and has the unusual trait of being delicious both cold and [...]
No one comes into the world drinking tea. (I would hope not, at least.) We all have to be introduced to it. I would hazard a guess that my first experiences with it are rather different from those of other U.S. tea aficionados.
When I was 10 years old, my mother–a newly minted [...]
This is a bit silly, and that’s the only disclaimer I’m going to provide:
I spent the end of last week and the beginning of this week in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a far cry from Seattle on a lot of levels. The people in that part of the United States, at least the ones I was in contact with, are fueled by steak, overcooked previously frozen vegetables and soft-drinks/sodas/cokes (or [...]
