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 [...]
Adagio Teas’ Roots Campaign, which has been operating for the past two years, was created for the purpose of connecting tea drinkers more directly with information about the producers of the teas they drink. More than a dozen tea growers have been featured so far, providing Adagio’s customers additional insight into the people who comprise [...]
My contribution to this month’s ATB-sponsored Tea Blog Carnival is on the topic of my general methods for brewing shu (cooked) pu’er. The steps and the accoutrements: 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 [...]
Sometimes teas seem to come to me thematically, with several examples from a certain category from different sources all ariving in sequence. One example of this is that over the past couple of months I have had at least six different batches of Da Hong Pao, all from different vendors, which is something of an [...]
Last weekend I had the great fortune to find and acquire this perfect and beautiful ceramic pu’er storage vessel. Of course I have no idea whether the talented clay artist who made this piece intended for it to be used to store tea, but it is undeniable that he or she modeled it after traditional [...]
Confining scope to just the teas of China, it seems to me that tea drinkers in the United States tend not to approach green teas with the same level of seriousness that they afford rare aged pu’er teas or high quality oolongs. But there are indeed some fabulous and exquisite green teas from China, some [...]
The third and final part of my interview with Nigel Melican is now posted on Cha Dao. Excerpted: Cinnabar: The attempts at growing one place’s regionally-specific tea in a different location seem strange to me, because if you’re taking a type of tea varietal and growing it somewhere else, with a totally different climate and [...]
The second part of my interview with Nigel Melican is now available for you to read on Cha Dao. Excerpted: Cinnabar: I guess there are really two focuses of organic farming. I wasn’t even thinking about how it affects the end product, because it seems like that’s not the same conversation. The impact on the [...]
The question posed for this month’s Blog Carnival, sponsored by the Association of Tea Bloggers was: “What is the most uncomfortable place where you prepared tea (work, traveling, in a place without suitable equipment, etc.) and how were you able to overcome the difficulty?” I have had an array of tea-related experiences ranging from exquisite [...]
Sometimes tea comes to me from completely unexpected sources. A couple of months ago I began working on a project with a woman who had spent a considerable amount of time working in China on business development, in coordination with the US State Department. During the course of our initial conversation talk turned – as [...]
