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 [...]
Vietnam has a vibrant cafe culture, centered primarily around the tradition of drinking Cafe Sua (Cà phê sữa) – a style of coffee distinctly Vietnamese. Coffee was not always important to the Vietnamese, of course, as coffee beans are not grown very close to that part of Southeast Asia. Coffee and the concept of the [...]
Bi Luo Chun (literally “Green Snail Spring”) is one of the teas, alongside Long Jing (“Dragon Well,”) that appears almost universally on “Top Ten Chinese Teas” lists. Grown in Jiang Su Province, it is quite a wonderful tea. Teas Etc’s Bi Lo Chun Reserve is an excellent offering of this very famous tea.
From Teas [...]
Shinobi-Cha is quite an unusual method for preparing high-grade Japanese green teas. Instead of using hot water, it uses ice, which has a profound effect on the character extracted from the tea leaves. Technically, the method is quite simple:
place dry tea leaves in a pot
cover the tea with ice cubes
wait
The result is a very enjoyable [...]
Are you feeling writerly on a scale even smaller than one hundred and forty character micro-blogging? Consider entering Ito En’s haiku contest. Ito En is the company that manufactures a lot of the bottled and canned green and oolong tea sold in Japan and the United States. Submissions are due by July 6th, 2009. I’m [...]
A couple of nights ago, as I sat pondering the stark range of contrasts in flavor and character among the three types of shochu I was drinking (rice, barley and buckwheat) in a Japanese izakaya during happy hour, I listened to a brief exchange about tea between the two patrons at the table next to [...]
Mighty Leaf’s Marakesh Mint Green Tea doesn’t taste like the traditional tea that they make in Morrocco. Only a particular brewing technique and fresh mint leaves can accomplish that, but it does taste like something nice and flavorful, especially if it’s cold. And cold, it also tastes like a drink you might relish if you [...]
Closely tying in to the last post, I wanted to provide some details on the Banko-Yaki Houhin teapot that I referred to. I wasn’t really in the market for a teapot in this style when I came across this one several months ago, but I really liked the look of it so I bought [...]
Mellow Monk’s Top Leaf is the first flush (Spring picking) of a type of Japanese green tea processed differently from most, as a type of Sencha called Tamaryokucha. It is a lovely tea and one that exhibits signs of having been processed with care and attention. Mellow Monk buys all of its teas from small [...]
I have an odd relationship with lavender; while I don’t really care for the scent of it at all (and that’s the way it’s most commonly used here in the U.S.), I do enjoy the flavor of it, particularly combined with other flavors. Lavender and tea is a natural pairing in my eyes. When I [...]
