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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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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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 different soil conditions, it’s not going to taste the same. It seems like the more reasonable approach, rather than trying to reproduce a traditional kind of tea in a new place, would be to figure out what works best under the new conditions, and represent the tea as a new type, but perhaps that’s not as marketable.

Nigel Melican: If you look at consumers, they often go for what they know. Someone who knows a Sencha will always, given an unknown tea or the old-fashioned one that they know and love, they’ll choose the one they know and love. But you’re right, that’s what they ought to do, and it’s what I push people in Africa to do, to take the plants that they were growing for CTC tea, and do wonderful things with it.

The fellow in the photo above is certainly a handsome little frog, but you wouldn’t want him darting among the young leaves of your tea plants. He is a Phantasmal Poison Frog (Epipedobates tricolor), one of the poisonest of the poison arrow frogs.

The photograph is from Wikimedia Commons. The reason that this post is accompanied by a photo of a frog will be evident if you read the last part of the interview.

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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 land is quantifiable and obvious, but the land doesn’t know the difference between a molecule of nitrogen, whether it’s certified organic or not, right?

Nigel Melican: No the land won’t, but — and this is why there’s the argument — people say that organic meat tastes better than inorganic meat, and often it does, because the guy who grows organic takes better care of his animals, is a better animal husband, and that shows up, and it’s the same with plants.

C: And that’s clearly the case with tea. If you’re using practices that end up contaminating the end product with dangerous toxic chemicals, the end product is going to taste bad, so that’s not going to fly.

NM: Ultimately you’re right, but if you had — God forbid — tea contaminated with mercury you wouldn’t taste it, and similarly, many of the ways that you fertilize don’t have an effect on taste. Where you do have an effect with organic on tea is that you’re putting on less nitrogen. Nitrogen leads to fast growth, and fast growth tends to be more about kilograms than it is about quality … so slow growth, as in the spring flush. Everyone says, go for the spring flush. That’s because it’s growing slowly, and the quality is definitely better. So organic should come out with slower growth.

C: But in reality, the quality of a lot of product that’s labeled as organic tea is terrible.

NM: Yes.

The image above, of mercury on cinnabar is from a photograph by Parent Géry on Wikimedia Commons.

Note: Cinnabar is a compound of mercury, and I have a strong affinity for the toxic element in its liquid metal form as well. But I wouldn’t want my tea to be tainted with it!

Note two: For an additional connection of tea and mercury, milliners during the Victorian period often suffered from mercury poisoning due to the use of mercury in the process of transforming fur into felt for hats, thus we have Lewis Carroll’s “Mad Hatter” and his uproarious tea party. In addition to insanity, mercury poisoning produces hard looking red skin, which I would expect to result in those afflicted looking a little like they were made out of cinnabar.

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At least four lovely infusions.  This is no fussy tea.

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• ATB Blog Carnival: AdagioTeas’ “Roots Campaign.”
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• Tea and Martial Arts

It’s probably not time yet to start running about in a panic wondering what to buy all of the people that you have to buy stuff for this holiday season, but you should plan ahead if you want to take advantage of the Christmas Range on special now at Canton Tea Co., particularly if you are in the United States. And really, you might as well make it easy on yourself and just buy everyone you know good tea. It will benefit you to supply family members or friends with good tea for their cabinets for when you visit, or you might just be able to show someone what a wondrously great thing excellent tea is in the first place. Plus I presume there must be those among you who have people to give gifts to who are already well-informed, devoted tea lovers. They will most certainly appreciate gifts from this selection.

Here are a details on a few of the special packages. You can receive 10% off of your order by using the promotional code GFG, and any orders placed before the 30th of November will include a free hand made bamboo strainer.

A few selections from the Canton Christmas 2010 Range:

Two Tea Pack $15.89
Contents:
Box Green Tea (Pouchong 50g)
Box Oolong Tea (Tie Guan Yin 50g)
Save £2 by choosing a pack containing two of our most popular teas, presented in two Canton gift cartons packed in a white card box – and ready to pop under the tree.

Gold Award Tea Pack $23.84
Contents:
Eight Great Taste Award-winning teas (in 10g taster packs)
Eight outstanding teas in one pack giving you the opportunity to taste the very best teas right across the spectrum – from jasmine and white to black and puerh. Packed in two Canton gift cartons.

New to Tea $31.78
Contents:
Straight Glass Teapot
Five 10g taster packs
The easy way to kick off a love of fine, whole leaf tea. Five of our most popular teas including a jasmine, white, green, oolong and black tea with an easy-to-use 400ml glass teapot and a Canton Tea leaflet on how to brew the best tea.

Monthly Tea Box from $95.35 for 6 months
Contents:
A 260g box of 16 handmade tea infused chocolates
Five 10g tea taster packs in a Canton gift carton
Like a veg box, sign up for you or a friend to have seasonal teas delivered every month straight to the door. Free P&P. If you don’t love it after your first delivery we will refund your money. We will send out a gift certificate if you’re buying it as a present.

Visit Canton Tea Company to place your order and view the rest of the specials.

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Unlike most of the sets I have it is very modernist/contemporary in design rather than a more traditional style of teaware. Functionally it is the same as other sets, and I found it very nice to use. The water cooling vessel feels really nice in the hand and both it and the teapot pour very smoothly. This past weekend I used this set for the first time, to brew some third flush Jakseol by Sulloc-Cha, and it was really pleasant, especially sitting in front of the fireplace.

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The teaware in the above photograph may look like a teapot, but it is not. It is a Bofura (ボーフラ), which is a type of Japanese ceramic kettle used over a Ryoro (りょうろ), a specific kind of ceramic tea stove to heat water for tea. These implements are traditionally used in Sencha-do, the Japanese tea ceremony used for preparing loose leaf teas, such as Gyokuro. A large number of people (including myself) were presented with the rare opportunity to observe a Sencha-do ceremony at the Rishi Tea booth at World Tea Expo this past June. Surrounded by a chaos of people and tea stuff, the lesser known of Japan’s two most practiced ceremonial forms was demonstrated by Master Tadao Yoshikura of the Obaku Kofu Ryu school.

This particular Bofura is not an antique or a signed artisan piece. It is a contemporary item, although it is in a style and form that is seen often in teaware for sencha-do. It has a pure simple design that I find profoundly beautiful, and I have to be exceptionally careful not to mar its pure white surface by accidentally scuffing it on a piece of charcoal or anything else. It is unglazed, so the surface has a nice texture, and the shape of the entire object feels really nice to hold, at least when it’s at rest, not filled with just-boiled water on the way to the yuzamashi.

There are kyusu (teapots) made in a very similar form and design, and also pure white, but they are typically glazed on the outside, which changes the aesthetic considerably. There are undoubtedly some differences in the physical properties of the clay as well, since a kettle must withstand a tremendous amount of heat over a coal fire, while a teapot doesn’t have to endure such punishment.

A couple of things to note about the details of this wonderful utensil: the knob handle on the top keeps fingers further away from the hotter part of the lid. Also, the handle, while completely enclosed, is hollow, which keeps it from getting as hot as it would if it were solid clay. And the gently tapering shape of the bottom allows it to nestle safely into the top inner part of the Ryoro.

(Note: the Bofura shown in use on top of the Ryoro in the photograph in this article is not the same object as the one discussed, obviously. It’s a different, but also typical, style of Bofura.)

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Longjing is a tea traditionally brewed in glass. I used a glass gaiwan, glass faircup and glass cups. Glass has a neutral impact on the tea and also displays the rich green, distinctively flat leaves to nice effect.

There are plenty of poor quality Dragon Well teas on the market, and they won’t provide much of an experience of what this tea can be when it’s good. The Longjing that Teas Etc. sells is a very nice one, typical of good quality Longjing, and one that I would recommend to anyone who has been interested in trying this legendary tea.

This particular Longjing is from Long Jing Village in Zhejiang Province, which is the only legitimate place that can produce a true Longjing Cha. It is a pre-Qing Ming tea, which means it is plucked before the Qing Ming festival in early spring. It is best enjoyed with a soundtrack of Purcell ground bass as reinterpreted by Michael Nyman, along with a profound sense of satisfaction at fulfilling a daylong desire for a particular delicious tea.

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It took a bit of work, but I have identified this tea as third flush Jakseol. When I bought it several weeks ago I was limited in the amount of information at hand, since I am not able to read Korean, but I could tell that it was good quality Korean green tea, grown and produced by the O’Sulloc Company on Jeju (Che-ju) Island, which was enough information to tell me it was what I was looking for. I was quite surprised and pleased to find any respectable Korean tea in a local store, even a large Korean grocery like Paldo World.

As attractive as the bright green tin is, even the company name was a challenge to puzzle out since it only appears in English in the highly stylized logo. But after I identified where the tea came, from I knew I could trust its quality.

The only English on the package says “not fermented green tea,” which didn’t tell me anything useful. Much later, after some comparisons with other tea packages, and some guessing what English to enter into the translator to identify the characters, I was able to translate enough of the package information to tell when in the season it was picked and what kind it was, which was harder than it sounds. I was using Google Translate, which is useful, but I couldn’t type in the Korean characters, and while the translations from English show the Romanizations it wouldn’t translate them the other direction.

The two large characters in the middle left of the package front, under the Sulloc-Cha logo and company name, are Jak-seol (Jakseol), which is a type of Korean green tea, often referred to as “Sparrow’s Tongue” due to its appearance. 중제 means third picking, or third flush, sometimes written Jung-jak (중작), and in the case of this package, the Romanization is “Jeung Je.” (The second character is “third;” the first is jung, or jeung, which translates as “during,” which shows how ineffective literal translation is, in this case.) The third pick of Jakseol is in the later part of June, so this is last year’s tea.

That was a lot of wrangling with language to come up with little actual information, but what is more important is that this is very delicious tea. I’ve made it at home, prepared in a Korean black stoneware tea set. I have also been drinking it fairly often in a Korean celadon cup/infuser set at work, which is quite pleasant.

I need to find the proper Korean name for those sets. They’re not at all like a Chinese gaiwan, although I’ve seen people call them that, and they’re not just a cup or mug. They’re very efficient devices for brewing and drinking Korean green teas. for the first infusion I pour boiling water into the empty mug part and then insert the infuser with the tea in it after the water is around 160-170 degrees (fahrenheit).

Possibly Related Posts:

• ATB Blog Carnival: AdagioTeas’ “Roots Campaign.”
• Lan Xiang Xian Zhi (Orchid Fairy Twig, 蘭香仙枝), a wonderful green tea sold by Life In Teacup
• Part III of the interview with Nigel Melican
• Part II of the interview with Nigel Melican
• Kuradashi Sencha