For a loose tea available in bulk at a grocery store, Rishi Tea’s Jade Oolong is surprisingly good. I have bought it several times, and usually drink it while I am working because I can get it within walking distance of my workplace. This past weekend I prepared some of it gongfu style, which revealed [...]
I must say before I get to the tea-related topic at hand, that I really love the food at Wild Ginger. It is quite a melange of cuisines and styles without feeling incoherent, the menu is always interesting and the food, in my experience, has always been well prepared: fresh, high quality ingredients, savory and [...]
In Pursuit of Tea has an excellent article on drinking tea in the Gongfu style and another good one on tea preparation using a gaiwan. I have not purchased anything from their site for a while, but one of the nicest teas I’ve risked ordering through mail order – a crooked horse oolong – was [...]
Some of the most serious objects and implements can be translated into gleeful-squeal-inducing cuteness when fake and miniaturized. And what could possibly be more charming and clever than tiny Chinese and Japanese tea ceremony sets? The only thing that would make these better would be if they were reproduced in traditionally accurate materials – clay, [...]
The video below is a really nice example of a formal Chinese tea ceremony. It shows the presentation by the Fujian Normal University to the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Youth Camp delegation in 2006, complete with live musicians and several servers. The film quality is not perfect and there’s not much of interest [...]
Yesterday evening we had some spare time between appointments so we went to Floating Leaves Tea in Ballard – 2213 NW Market St, Suite 100. I had been there once before but had not ever sat down to tea in the shop. After very little deliberation, we decided on the Baojhong Second Place oolong, served [...]
I’m still off the caffeine most of the time, but I was able to sneak in a little treat last weekend during our backpacking trip along Ingall’s Creek on the east side of Blewett Pass. There were 9 of us in the group, and many of them have had the joy of gongfu tea at [...]
Tao of Tea’s description of Royal Phoenix Oolong (Fenghuang Dancong): origin: Guangdong Province, China In some areas of the Phoenix Mountains in Guangdong province, China, there are wild tea plants that remain a source for some of the best oolong teas in the world. Leaves from these old tea trees are prized for the flavor [...]
This is a slightly questionable review because I don’t know the precise name of the green oolong. It was given as a sample at Yuan Sheng Hang (666 South Jackson Street, Seattle) when I bought a set of porcelain tasting cups. I vacillated as to whether it made sense to post a review of it [...]
Last weekend we picked up a really fabulous cake of 2005 Yunnan Pu-ehr from New Century Tea House. We had obtained some pu-ehr tools a few weeks ago, but had no tea to use them on. We did a tasting of the 2005 in the store and were suitably impressed. One cake is quite a [...]
