I had gotten quite weary of reading so many flavor and character analogies between wine and tea, and began building up a determination to avoid them myself. It seemed to me that people were often just taking the short cut of borrowing language from the wine industry instead of taking the trouble to develop their [...]
photo by Wally Santana Nearly two weeks ago Typhoon Morakot, which also caused damage on the east coast of China and in the northern Phillipines, produced the worst flooding Taiwan had experienced in a half century. The cost in human suffering is tremendous, not just in the immediate injuries, deaths, loss of loved ones and [...]
Formosa Shanlinxi High Mountain Oolong is the lemoniest oolong I’ve ever tasted. It has a bright, very clean, slightly acidic taste, but it is also quite smooth and silky. As is the case with most lightly oxidized oolongs, the Shanlinxi Oolong does not start off in the first infusion displaying its full potential, but instead [...]
Before any of the tea samples arrived, I spent some time on the auraTeas website and found it quite nicely laid out and easy to navigate. Searching for particular teas by type or by region is a pretty smooth process. There are a few errors in English throughout the site, but they’re not too distracting. [...]
I had not previously had the opportunity to taste any aged oolongs so I was very curious to try auraTeas‘ Formosa Aged Dongding, 2004. I prepared it in the traditional gongfu method, using a yixing pot and serving pitcher. The pre-brewed scent of this tea is wonderful, rich, sweet and complex and it has a [...]
