All of the teas in the sampler are lovely when made correctly, and I was surprised to find how each rewarded at least 3 infusions, yielding an attractive and tasty brew each time. The cow skull is optional, but a distinctive aesthetic touch.

Margaret’s Hope Silver Moon (2010 Second Flush):
Subtle but full of flavor with a nice acerbic edge, smooth.

Singbulli White Jade 2010:
The first time I made this tea, I failed utterly. I used what a quick Google search suggested was the standard Darjeeling method: about one teaspoon per cup, steeped for three minutes with boiling water. This way, I achieved a pretty but nearly tasteless liquor. After a little advice from Benoy Thapa (of Thunderbolt), I managed to produce a very nice tea. Steeped at about 180 degrees for 5 minutes, using about a tablespoon of leaf per cup, it brews up a nice honey brown, with a full slightly woodsy aroma and sweet subtle flavor. Later, I made this tea in a gaiwan, again with cool water, and was greeted on the first infusion with an extremely pleasant burst of dried apricot flavor and aroma; two more delicious infusions followed before the bitterness overtook the deliciousness.

Arya FTGFOP1 Autumn Flush 2009:
This is my favorite of the four. It shares with the others a taste and texture that I’d now call “a character of classic Darjeeling,” but then as I swallow there is a burst of flavor at the back of the tongue that is just delightful.

Arya Diamond Second Flush 2010: This is a good, seemingly classic tea, perhaps the smoothest of the bunch. It doesn’t have, and doesn’t really need, any interesting or unusual flavor notes.

I’m not likely to make Darjeeling my mainstay as a result of these, but tasting them–and interacting with the Thunderbolt staff–was a lovely experience.

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Black Dragon Tea Bar: “Blueberry Tisane”

Chadao Europe: “How do I brew shu puerh using a gaiwan”

Gongfu Girl: “How I generally brew shu pu’er”

Life In Teacup: “ATB Blog Carnival – Milk Tea… Tea Milk…”

Tea Pages: “Itty Bitty Bao Zhong”

That Pour Girl: “Tea Blog Carnival No. 8″

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I try never to lose sight of the tremendous importance of physical, material beauty in the act and practice of preparing and drinking tea. Naturally, when the light glints off of the droplets on the lovely curved inner surface of glass and the flat, dark rosewood surface of the tea table, there’s no danger of engaging only some of the senses during tea.

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“A musician can have Kung Fu, or the poet who paints pictures with words and makes emperors weep, this too is Kung Fu.”

As mister Jackie Chan said above, kung fu is more than throwing a punch or pouring a cup of tea. Everybody can learn the basic steps of gong fu cha, but how come the results are so different?

The answer to this question is well understood by somebody who practices any skill with diligence. I will focus on two skills today: martial arts and tea.

There are few kung fu movies, especially old movies, which don’t show any tea related item in them. In every movie, a master accepts a student only after he serves him tea from a gaiwan.  I think today, this custom has vanished, but the practice of drinking tea by martial artists has not.

I grew up reading Japanese books like Musashi and Taiko.  Tea is often mentioned in those books. I believe that the Japanese tea ceremony would not be the same without the centuries of war that Japan experienced.  Tea was truly a moment of peace in those struggling times.  I would go on and say that concepts like wabi sabi were created by warriors, and polished by artists.  The concept of finding perfection in imperfection would seem only natural in those conditions, as natural as finding peace in the middle of war.

Those warriors were first of all schooled in the arts of war. Of course, those skills are no longer necessary today, because if you kill a person with a punch you go straight to jail, no matter how skillful you are.  Martial arts have evolved into something else over time.  Rather than being skills used to kill, they become tools of self improvement. One can now train his mind, body and soul by practicing over long periods of time.

In martial arts, a fist hits or does not hit.  There is no “what if”. You learn to accept and work on your own mistakes. No matter the cause of being hit, the only answer to why that fist hit is: because you are not good enough. Skill doesn’t come in a day.  This is exactly how I see gong fu cha, and for me, it’s just a different ‘martial’ tool to practice, and both skills ‘brew’ me as a person.

Most of you who read this blog should already know how many things one should take into consideration when brewing tea.  I think you can agree with me that those skills cannot be obtained by reading books or by a scientific approach.  You cannot expect to obtain a perfect formula for tea brewing.

The only difference between you and a master is decades of practice. This is the only way of learning.

As in martial arts, the body learns, not the mind.  In both skills, practitioners learn to ‘shut down’ their mind.  Mistake by mistake, success by success, the countless hours spent practicing sum up and without knowing, you start to have results, but you realize you are far away.

One should accept his inability when it comes to tea.  For example, I often brew tea for people who have never heard of gong fu cha.  I do want to make sure that I don’t lie to myself, and I brew enjoyable tea.  It’s easy to build your own imaginary world and imagine yourself as a ‘tea or zen master.’ Reality checks are a must.

Martial arts teach you to accept yourself and work on your mistakes. So does tea. Trying to behave as something you are not reflects in your art. You, as a human person, are an indispensable element of gong fu.  Your essence is reflected in what you do.  As I read somewhere, “the cup of tea you brew will reflect all of what you are and will leave an impression on those who drink your tea.”

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• Dallying with Darjeeling

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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Of course “tea” is more than simply one topic in the first place – it is a host of topics, interwoven and interrelated. In writing under the wide umbrella that covers everything relevant in a blog about tea, I can research and write about a tremendous range of different things that fascinate me and engage my passions.

For example, I can research and write about science and technology, citing studies that have to do with tea and its use in medicine, or its chemical composition, or about the impact of technological advancement on methods of production. Or I could write about the importance of technology in providing the online interactions that make it possible to form a widely connected body of tea people across the world. I could write about the huge change that has resulted from wider availability of tea information – and misinformation – due to online tea research.

Or I can write about tea and art, particularly with regard to the fantastic variety to be found in objects made for the preparation and consumption of tea over the past several centuries, in many countries and also in the here and now. The skill and artistry that have been devoted to the creation of tea-related objects is enough to form the basis of a lifetime of research, exploration and writing by itself. Closely related to the art of tea, I can write about tea as a reflection of culture, and the wide array of differences across worldwide cultures and how they prepare and consume tea and what items they do it with. Although there is already a great deal of writing about tea and its relationship to different cultures, the topic is by no means exhausted, and will continue to provide me with considerable inspiration and ideas of what to write on.

I can also write about the pure epicurean, sensory experience of the different preparations and applications of the tea plant, in its many variations. This approach has a direct relationship to general culinary writing or writing about other specific food/drink topics, many of which are also quite fascinating, with the capacity for deeper exploration and writing than most people ever have time for. Wine and coffee are the most obvious examples, along with spices or chocolate, or perhaps something as fraught and complicated as sugar. But none of these other comestibles has the same draw for me that tea does. I can’t picture myself getting as passionately involved in writing about some other food or beverage, at least not on any kind of regular basis. And it seems to me that the core appreciation of the consumption of tea must be at the center of any writing about tea. I doubt that anyone could write anything particularly engaging or interesting about tea if they did not enjoy it at the basest level – as a beverage. So even though it sounds quite obvious, I write about tea because I like drinking it.

But at a greater distance from the personal, I can also explore and write about politics and history, with regard to the ways that trade and labor practices in the tea industry have impacted the human experience. I can talk about environmental impact in both directions: the way the industry effects the environment and the ways that dramatic environmental events like typhoons affect the tea industry. Writing about tea also includes discussions about fair trade initiatives (and deceptions) and global and local trade policies. I can write about sustainability and the responsibility of the individual tea consumer with regard to awareness of the implications of the infusion.

Or from a very different side of people’s relationship with tea I can write about religion and philosophy, particularly with regard to formal tea ceremonies, which are to greater or lesser degrees directly involved with religious practice, depending on the particular tea ceremony. For something to be a tea ceremony, it must grow out of the philosophy of the culture in which it is born. I believe that a tea ceremony can not be devoid of connection to larger questions of meaning, or it is no longer a ceremonial act, and is instead, a habit or tradition. That concept alone is considerable fodder for further exploration and writing.

Even with the above stated wealth of potential for learning and writing, I feel I’m merely skimming my subject and my explanations of why I choose to write about it. And I find that the tea writing that I find most rewarding happens when I can cross reference two or more of these aspects of tea and connect things together from elements that may seem initially to be unrelated. It is entirely inconceivable that I could either get bored with my subject or run out of individual topics to write about. So I will continue to write about tea, and hope that people will continue to read what I have to say about it.

Find the links to the rest of the blog carnival on Walker Tea Review.

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Homo Laborus glutto. Glutto chugs tea, and is identified by the enormous mug at its workstation. Just as salmon instinctively find their way upstream, you can will observe glutto’s well-worn path and bee-line movements toward the nearest toilet several times each day. If you are of the glutto variety, you are better served by a tea-maker. Zarafina has one, and Breville’s will soon be available in the US.

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Homo Laborus ritus. Ritus uses tea as an oasis of calm, a form of comfort in the workaday jungle. Observing ritus in its natural habitat, you will see a creature of habit. The tea may change, but the process follows a form. Think of a bird’s nest- each bird constructs a little differently. Ritus may use a single serving pot to avoid over-steeping tea. Other ritus fill their own muslin or filter bags. Ritus, however, may be labeled as time-wasters by gluttoes.

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Homo Laborus sippus. The Sipper adapts the behavior of glutto or ritus, modifying the practices of either. Whether quenching thirst, seeking a break, or using tea as a social lubricant, sippus will use a variety of tools, including a brew mug. Although not producing the quality of tea ritus is known for, sippus can still pause and savor tea more than gluttus.

Guest post provided by Jason Walker of Walker Tea Review.  Jason’s site hosts online tea tastings and video tea reviews.

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The Association of Tea Bloggers is hosting a series of blog carnivals, which are round-ups of posts centered around one theme and published on the same day. For more details on the tea blog carnival project read this post on the ATB web site.

Brett of Black Dragon Tea Bar, finding the specialness in a somewhat unexpected tea tool, wrote about a beautiful, elegant, rustic and functional wooden tea strainer.

I wrote about a marvelous, and somewhat mysterious, Yixing clay teapot in the shape of a hand.

Gingko of Life In Teacup wrote about the beautiful simplicity of brewing in a glass mug, and of the often humble and unexpected places that mugs of this type can be acquired.

Katrina of Tea Pages came to the conclusion that her favorite tea ware encompasses an entire category: tea wares made of Yixing clay.

Adam of The Sip Tip, after his assertion that the favorite piece of tea ware is always the most recently acquired, goes into more detail regarding his love of Hagi Yaki, a branch of Japanese ceramics.

Jason of Walker Tea Review wrote about a prized antique Yixing teapot which was given to him and his wife by a friend in Shanghai.

Kay of That Pour Girl wrote about an Alice in Wonderland themed teacup and saucer that she painted herself.

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