I generally scoff at combinations involving tea and alcohol (or food, for that matter), but I sometimes make exceptions when I’m feeling inventive, and as long as no really high quality tea is harmed in the process. The particular cocktail shown in the photos is shochu with jasmine pearls infused into it. The drink does [...]
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) – writer, mathematician, photographer, Anglican deacon, and perpetrator of glorious logic-puzzles and nonsense – was born on this day in 1832. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the best known of his works, and a book no doubt responsible for fostering a great many fixations on tea, was first published in 1865.
I [...]
I anticipated that Puerh Special Grade, a loose leaf pu’er from TeaSource, would brew into a nice liquor after I smelled the intense sweet aroma of the dry leaf. I was not disappointed. In general, but especially in the initial steep, it was very malty, almost like graham crackers or Ovaltine. It opened up more [...]
A few weeks ago I ventured into a grocery that I had passed by hundreds of times in the past without my curiosity the least bit piqued, having previously assumed that it would not have anything of interest on its shelves. But for whatever reason, on this day I decided I needed to investigate, and [...]
Surrounded by all of the current hype touting green tea as the cure-all tonic for just about every ailment – physical or spiritual – it’s a little difficult to imagine a very different perspective, in a very different era, where green tea could be distrusted and even thought to cause harm to tea drinkers. Sheridan [...]
Teas Etc.’s Plum Blossom Reserve Oolong (Dong Fong Mei Zen), a Bai Hao style oolong from Taiwan, is an exceptional and fabulous tea. It is one of a small number of teas that Teas Etc. has started importing from an award-winning Taiwanese grower.
If you’ve tasted any Bai Hao oolong and are capable of calling to [...]
John Rocco, author and illustrator of the recently-published children’s book Fu Finds The Way, contacted me a few weeks ago, alerting me to the existence of his book. After previewing the book on his website – including watching a trailer for it (When did books start having trailers?) – I really liked the look of [...]
A while ago I reviewed a Formosa Shanlinxi high mountain oolong from auraTeas. Not terribly long after that I received a sample of Rishi Tea’s Shan Lin Xi Gao Shan Cha Oolong, and I was quite interested in finding out how different the teas would be from each other. They are both from the Shan [...]
A number of very generous and respectable tea companies, including Imperial Tea Court, Jaya Teas, Tea Classics/Hancha Tea, Rishi Tea, Eco-Prima Tea, The Meaning of Tea, Den’s Tea, and Teaism, have donated tea, tea-related products and other items to an auction and event to raise funds for the work that HandReach.org is doing with its [...]
The first day of this month, All Saints Day, the first half of the two-day festival El Dia de los Muertos, I saw a much-needed period of un-allocated time laid at my feet, in between all of the running about, executing tasks and organizing, writing and building. I decided that this allowed me sufficient attentiveness [...]
