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This past weekend I took the opportunity to try some tea that I purchased from Michael Coffey of Tea Geek quite some time ago. This tea is, in essence, very large leaves from the bushes of a pu’er varietal simply dried and tied into bundles. As described on the Tea Geek blog:

[This] limited availability product tries to reproduce, as well as the tea-makers knew, how tea was made in Yunnan before the widespread use of compression.  This would go back to when tea was considered a medicine, not a beverage.  It clearly draws on how herbs are collected and dried–the leaves are tied together by their stems in little bundles that were hung up to dry.

I didn’t really try to anticipate what the tea would be like before I brewed it. I assumed that it was going to have its own unique characteristics, and indeed it did. Rather than following instructions for breaking up leaf from stem and brewing in a bowl, I chose to brew the tea in a tall tea glass so that the leaves could remain intact, and so I could see them as they infused. I used boiling water and brewed the tea for about two minutes for the first infusion.

The dry leaves had very little scent, but as soon as they began to steep I could smell the distinctive scent of very young sheng pu’er. The taste was also easily identified as coming from the same plants that produce pu’er cakes, although clearly having undergone considerably less processing than any other tea. If an experienced tea drinker were handed a cup of this tea’s brewed liquor without any information he would be able to identify its origin as Yunnan, China easily and immediately.

The tea remained vibrantly flavorful through three infusions, but had mostly lost its punch by the fourth. It was a little surprising that it had as much flavor and personality as it had. With such a humble appearance and primitive preparation of the leaves it would have been unsurprising for it to yield a mild and uninspiring brew. But instead it conveyed the core essence of the pure tea plant. Rather than a novelty experience of what tea used to be before people learned how to process it into the many types of fabulous teas we value today, it really showed how much information is in the pure leaf already, even with so little craft transforming plant into beverage.

Read the Tea Geek blog post to find out more detail on this very interesting tea.

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In addition to the interviews and photos available on Adagio’s site, a new arm of this project, scheduled to launch this month, is an opportunity for consumers to communicate with the farmers by writing them notes on pre-addressed postcards which are available in Adagio’s retail stores.

The tea selected for this group tasting by ATB members – and currently the featured tea in the Roots Campaign – is a Pi Lo Chun which was grown and produced by Huang Jian Lin in Dongting, Jiangsu, China.

Note that Adagio spells the tea name, “Pi Lo Chun,” the farmer spells it “Pi Luo Chun” and the Pinyin Mandarin spelling is “Bi Luo Chun” (碧螺春). The name translates literally as “green snail spring” and this delicate green tea is universally recognized as one of the historical ten famous teas of China.

Huang Jian Lin has been close to the tea industry his entire life and tea farming has been the only job he has ever worked. His farm near Tongting Lake only produces Pi Lo Chun, so his days are very focused on protecting the tea field from overgrowth of weeds and on the short plucking season in the Spring.

The following brewing instructions are from the interview of Huang Jian Lin:

Pi luo chun is very tender. Do not use boiling water with 100 degrees centigrade. Better use the water with 90 degrees centigrade. Second, use glass cup to brew the tea. Do not use teapot with lid. Because pi luo chun needs more air for brewing. While waiting for the tea to be cool down, you can enjoy the beautiful green soup with pleasant aroma from the glass cup.

I used a couple of different methods to brew this tea, determined by previous encounters with Bi Luo Chun and experimenting with what I like. The first was in a glass gaiwan with cooled water and four steeps for about 30 seconds each. This is generally how I brew Chinese green teas, and it always brings out the best from the teas. The other method I used was to cool the water in a tall Chinese tea glass and add the tea when it got down to 160° Farenheit. This method achieves results similar to what you would get using a traditional glass tea thermos, and the tea does not get bitter even with such a long steeping time as long as the water is not too hot.

This type of tea is one that can exhibit very different qualities depending on how it is brewed, so my recommendation is to experiment until you find what works for you.

Here are links to the posts from other contributing ATB members:

Black Dragon Tea Bar
LeafJoy
Notes on Tea
The Tea Enthusiasts’s Scrapbook
Tea For Today
Tea Pages
Teaspoons & Petals
That Pour Girl
Walker Tea Review

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The steps and the accoutrements:

1. I almost always use Crystal Geyser spring water for shu pu’er (and other teas). It’s affordable and works just as well or better with tea as some of the more expensive spring waters I’ve tried.
2. When brewing shu pu’er I always use the Kamjove electric water kettle for heating the water to boiling.



3. I generally brew at the tea table with the small, blue-green Yixing teapot that has been dedicated to brewing only shu pu’er teas. It is quite small and works perfectly.



4. I use boiling water and rinse the leaves with a very short initial infusion that also serves to warm the cups and pitcher (fair cup).
5. The first drinkable infusion is about 1 minute long.
6. I almost always use a glass serving pitcher (fair cup) because I like to be able to see the rich oranges and reds of the pu’er tea liquor, especially when there’s light coming through it.



7. The cups vary more than the teapot, but the cups I use most often with pu’er are the unglazed plain Yixing cups. They’re small, thin and very nice to drink from.



8. The number of subsequent infusions varies depending on what a particular tea is able to yield, but it’s generally at least 5, and each one is usually also about a minute, but sometimes longer if the tea seems to need more infusion time.

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In my opinion, such a reputable tea needs to be accompanied by preparation vessels and tools that match up with its elegance, so a few weeks ago I acquired the teapot in the accompanying photographs below for the explicit purpose of using it only for Da Hong Pao. I have a different Yixing Gongfu set that I had been using for all types of WuYi Oolongs, but I decided that Da Hong Pao needed its own teapot, and that it ought to be one that was more regal in appearance.

I looked at several teapots, but this was the one that I really liked the look of much better than any of the others. It was also the one that felt the best in my hand. I was told that Da Hong Pao would need a teapot with a broad surface area, and the shape of this one is ideal.

I seasoned the vessel with a small amount of one of the slightly lower grade Da Hong Pao teas that I had, and a few days later the teapot was performing perfectly on the tea table, brewing really well, and looking quite wonderful, especially when the tea was drying rapidly on its surface as it steeped the tea.

As an aside, I don’t know if it’s the time of day or the change in the atmospheric conditions due to the onset of Spring, or perhaps even the shape of the teapot, but the most recent tea session of Da Hong Pao (a very lovely example from Canton Tea Company) resulted in a very impressive display of steam in and around all of the tea objects. Of course, it would not be out of the question that I simply became fixated on steam for a time and thus paid more than the usual amount of attention to it.

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The thing has a number of excellent qualities, including very thick walls and solid construction. It does have a minor chip on the edge of the lip, but it is not prominently visible, especially when the lid is on, and the vessel should not seal since it’s being used for pu’er anyway, so that’s not an issue.

After I bought it and brought it home I scrubbed it out thoroughly and then aired it out in the fortuitous brief period of sun that we had last weekend. It did not have any odors clinging to the inside part of the clay anyway, which was good. I don’t think that it had ever been used for storing anything with a strong, lingering scent.

I broke up one of the Xiaguan shu pu’er cakes into fairly large chunks and now they are occupying this very nice container. The remarkable thing about this excellent storage container is that I found it in a thrift store and paid less than $10 for it!

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Don’t these teas look delicious? This is Canton Tea Company’s newly arrived Spring Collection. From the press release:

Our first crop of four spring teas has arrived and they are every bit as good as we hoped. Fresh of course, naturally sweet and distinctive, each one goes beyond our expectations.

Mao Jian is made up of soft, curly, tippy leaves, a higher grade and even better than last year. A refreshing, light easy-drinking green.

Xue Ya or Snow Buds are bright, sappy and seriously moreish. Once steeped, unfurl the perfect tips and nibble the soft green buds.

Bai Lin Gong Fu made from the same long curly buds as the Wild White but fully oxidised into this caramel smooth black tea.

Ye Sheng or Wild White is a tea to remember with an unusual provenance – so read on.

New to Canton Tea co for 2011, we are the only people in the UK (or probably anywhere outside China) to have this Wild White. It is a glorious, limited edition tea with a great story.

The tea bushes were found growing wild on an ex-government tea farm in Fujian that had been abandoned many years ago. Our producer recognised the potential in the farm, the naturally healthy tea bushes, the excellent terroir and particularly the yellowy, rocky soil – perfect for giving the tea a delicious mineral note. He bought up the estate and produced this great tea from the first, small harvest of all the tea bushes that had been left wild and untouched, allowed to return to their natural state.

Of course the output is not huge, so this is a rare Wild White tea with a beautiful mix of long silvery buds and young leaves. It is an ideal all-day, summer tea, very soft on the palate with a creamy depth and a satisfying full-bodied, warm fruity note, lifted by the mildest hint of flint (from that excellent ground).

Canton Tea is offering readers a special discount of 50% off of the sampler of the spring collection, which contains all four of the teas. Use code SPRING2011 at checkout.

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That thing on the left is an ebony coaster/tray which gets placed underneath a tasting cup/aroma cup set during a Gongfu Cha session. The thing on the right is way too full of fingerprints!

I have, on more than one occasion, seen one of those coasters in my peripheral vision and thought it was my phone. I have not ever tried to answer or make a call with one, though. I have also never placed small cups of tea on my phone.

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But there are indeed some fabulous and exquisite green teas from China, some of which have been well-known and respected enough to get regularly included in the “Top Ten Chinese Teas” lists, most commonly Bi Luo Chun and Long Jing (Dragon Well). And there are other lesser known but wonderful green teas that we’re lucky enough to encounter here in the United States. Lan Xiang Xian Zhi (Orchid Fairy Twig, 蘭香仙枝), sourced by Life in Teacup, is assuredly one of the nicest I’ve run into lately.

This rarely exported green tea comes from Jiangxi Province, situated near the middle of the southern part of China. It is very lovely, complex and for the most part unlike any other tea I can think of. The tea has a very interesting pre-brewed appearance. The leaves are tiny and very narrow, but mostly straight rather than curly like Bi Luo Chun dry leaf. They’re rich and varied in color and have a nice grassy-sweet scent. The brewed liquor yields a nice grassy, alpine-lake quality, a little like heavily diluted mint or lemon.

I brewed this tea using slightly cooled water, and initially steeped it for about 20 seconds. The brewed liquor had a warm, silky quality to it and a delicious aroma. Its underlying tones and variation from infusion to infusion deemed it exceptionally unusual. It held up to five very satisfying infusions before it began to lose its character.

Interestingly the only two green teas that I can think to compare it to are Gushan Baiyun (Drum Mountain White Cloud) from Fujian Province and Trà Móc Câu (Fish Hook Tea) a green tea from Vietnam. But these other teas are only slight references and pale in comparison. The Gushan Baiyun I have tasted was good, but not nearly as interesting as this Lan Xiang Xian Zhi. The Trà Móc Câu I’ve had was of considerably lower quality and did not have anything close to the special, delicate flavors of the Lan Xiang Xian Zhi, although it did have a vague similarity in the sweet, slightly pleasantly bitter character of the brew.

The tea I tasted was last spring’s harvest and is not currently available for sale on Life In Teacup, but I would recommend trying to get some of this coming spring’s harvest if it becomes available for sale.

Read more about this tea on Life In Teacup’s blog: “Two Great Teas of Jiang Xi Province (1) – Orchid Fairy Twig 蘭香仙枝”.

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*********************

“A musician can have Kung Fu, or the poet who paints pictures with words and makes emperors weep, this too is Kung Fu.”

As mister Jackie Chan said above, kung fu is more than throwing a punch or pouring a cup of tea. Everybody can learn the basic steps of gong fu cha, but how come the results are so different?

The answer to this question is well understood by somebody who practices any skill with diligence. I will focus on two skills today: martial arts and tea.

There are few kung fu movies, especially old movies, which don’t show any tea related item in them. In every movie, a master accepts a student only after he serves him tea from a gaiwan.  I think today, this custom has vanished, but the practice of drinking tea by martial artists has not.

I grew up reading Japanese books like Musashi and Taiko.  Tea is often mentioned in those books. I believe that the Japanese tea ceremony would not be the same without the centuries of war that Japan experienced.  Tea was truly a moment of peace in those struggling times.  I would go on and say that concepts like wabi sabi were created by warriors, and polished by artists.  The concept of finding perfection in imperfection would seem only natural in those conditions, as natural as finding peace in the middle of war.

Those warriors were first of all schooled in the arts of war. Of course, those skills are no longer necessary today, because if you kill a person with a punch you go straight to jail, no matter how skillful you are.  Martial arts have evolved into something else over time.  Rather than being skills used to kill, they become tools of self improvement. One can now train his mind, body and soul by practicing over long periods of time.

In martial arts, a fist hits or does not hit.  There is no “what if”. You learn to accept and work on your own mistakes. No matter the cause of being hit, the only answer to why that fist hit is: because you are not good enough. Skill doesn’t come in a day.  This is exactly how I see gong fu cha, and for me, it’s just a different ‘martial’ tool to practice, and both skills ‘brew’ me as a person.

Most of you who read this blog should already know how many things one should take into consideration when brewing tea.  I think you can agree with me that those skills cannot be obtained by reading books or by a scientific approach.  You cannot expect to obtain a perfect formula for tea brewing.

The only difference between you and a master is decades of practice. This is the only way of learning.

As in martial arts, the body learns, not the mind.  In both skills, practitioners learn to ‘shut down’ their mind.  Mistake by mistake, success by success, the countless hours spent practicing sum up and without knowing, you start to have results, but you realize you are far away.

One should accept his inability when it comes to tea.  For example, I often brew tea for people who have never heard of gong fu cha.  I do want to make sure that I don’t lie to myself, and I brew enjoyable tea.  It’s easy to build your own imaginary world and imagine yourself as a ‘tea or zen master.’ Reality checks are a must.

Martial arts teach you to accept yourself and work on your mistakes. So does tea. Trying to behave as something you are not reflects in your art. You, as a human person, are an indispensable element of gong fu.  Your essence is reflected in what you do.  As I read somewhere, “the cup of tea you brew will reflect all of what you are and will leave an impression on those who drink your tea.”

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