Package

Inspired by positive reviews of teas sourced by the Cha Wang Shop folks (particularly some of their Lapsang Souchong) I decided to dive in and give them a go.  After fishing around on the Cha Wang webpages I discovered that the company offers a fairly stunning array of Heicha.  I've not had much experience in this realm, but have enjoyed what I have tried.  I still don't really understand what the hell Heicha is.  I'll be searching for a primer in the near future.  Ordering tea from Kunming always provides an excuse to splurge for more than I originally intended to make the most of the shipping costs. 

It has been awhile since I found one of these plump basketballs of  tape-girdled joy on my porch (this time hidden by our sly mail carrier behind a set of shellac Rubinstein recordings left by our friend "The Hippie").  Very reminiscent of Yunnan Sourcing parcels.

  
I have dabbled a bit in the contents of this box over the last couple of days and have been quite pleased.  The LS is enjoyable and I'm already sorry I did not order more of the '03 Wuzhou Liubao as I see it is sold out and it is my kind of tea.  But more on that in another post.  For now, I'm just so pleased to have some new tea that is exciting for a change.  It should keep me occupied for a bit.  I had a stomach upset today after picnicking on a sunny hillside with a spread of chorizo, roasted almonds, Alishan, blood oranges, green bananas, goat cheese, honeycrisp apples and, of all things, lemon vodka.  (WTF?)  Some liubao set everything right.  And I'm finding I can drink it in the evenings and still sleep like a bag of rocks.  Nothing wrong with that. 

Tea Kettle Complacencies

After many years of pussyfooting about, I finally bought myself an electric tea kettle.  It's a 1 liter Bonavita with a long, slender spout.  I was looking for a way to make tea brewing at work more enjoyable.  I spent a lot of time trying to choose a kettle that was not going to lend a bad taste to the water.  The first time I brewed tea with it, a terrible scent whacked me like a 12 foot tube of kindergarten construction paper paste.   Bummer.  Another piece of tea flotsam clogging the the mess of junk in my apartment.  Hster wisely suggested I send it back.  But I am lazy and do not relish a trip to the post office.  It is almost more trouble than it is worth.  So I have kept on with the thing.  I even brought it to work and it tripped one of the breakers a couple of days ago.  I've been hoping the glue smell would dissipate.  And, you know, after a week of operation, IT HAS!  There is no detectable odor and work has become more pleasant. 

It boils water pretty fast.  Way quicker than the Lin's Studios ceramic kettle at home, which leaves me waiting forever while I yawn in the pre-work twilight.  For a few days before I took the kettle to the office, morning tea making was so painless.  Fill it up the night before and flip the switch on the way to my morning ablutions.  It's like.....a coffee maker.  So I think I've gotten spoiled a little and I'm going to buy a Kamjove for mornings at home.  I wonder if they make one that you can program to turn on at a particular time?

Mmmmm

Midwest Tea

In the early days of "serious" tea drinking, travel meant a lot of hand-wringing.  Should I bring a gaiwan only to have it pulverize in my bag? Why knock the handle off one of those pots I paid too much for?  Won't I need a little pitcher to decant my brews into?  Should I get one of those travel presses, or a cheesy infuser mug with a lid and a dragon on it?  Do I bring Puerh cha?  Oolong?  How do I wrest the best from these leaves without my little carefully-controlled brewing set-up, my tea table where I can slosh about and make a mess?

For years I drank lots of low grade tea and paid no attention to my brewing vessel or the quality of the water I was using.  I think once I fell in with higher quality leaves my initial tendency was to treat the whole thing way too preciously.  Naturally, I wanted to re-create while on the road or camping the tea experiences I was having at my tea table.  I worried myself unnecessarily.  It's not that tough to make a good cup on the road.  At this point, I leave my best leaves at home and bring my stalwart, go-to teas.  For a few years, I carried a little cup and gaiwan set in a cute padded pouch that I got from Scott Wilson.  It was a decent set-up (perhaps overly diminutive), but I kept breaking the gaiwans.  I went through three of the things.

These days if I'm going somewhere to stay awhile, I just bring a cheap gaiwan.  If it breaks, who cares?  If I'm in the woods or flying somewhere or moving around a lot from place to place, I bring a little thermos for brewing dian hong.  If I want to drink oolong or pu, I just go grandpa and I don't use pristine leaves. 

I recently visited family in St. Louis and my trusty black tea-thermos performed quite well in the mornings.  I just throw in a pinch of leaves, fill the thermos to the 3/4 level and steep in boiling water with the lid off or resting on the top.  If I screw it on, the leaves tend to taste a bit scalded.  The small hole in the pop-up lid of this thermos filters the leaves pretty well.  I might get a few fragments in my cup, but who wants to carry a strainer across the country?  

 

The weather was quite nice a few of the days.  Sunny and almost 60.  My brother and I were able to do some outdoor painting for my folks and the warmth also drew us out to walk along the wide muddy rivers lined with fat sycamores.  Add to that a large dose of boulevardier-fueled conviviality, some of the best ribs available in the country, a bowl or two of worthy Pho at a converted Burger King on the southside and a monstrous spread of grilled skirt steak, beans, rice, roasted poblanos and homemade chile roja we threw together after a spree at the local Supermercado and you've got yourself a decent vacation.  It was a nice break from sitting at my desk sipping tepid shengpu.  But the snow is melting in the valley, the honkers are circling the river and we saw snowdrops leaning their heads over the muck in someone's yard yesterday.  Bring on the spring and the spring teas.  I'm buying an electric kettle.  TODAY.

Mystery Tea Revealed

It turns out yesterday's delivery was one of Scott Wilson's productions, the "Chen Xiang" from Wu Liang.  Though the cakes were pressed in 2012, Scott's description states that the maocha is from 2007 which explains the slightly aged feel and look of the leaves.  Scott says the maocha was stored in Nan Jian township, which, if my google map search results are correct, is at roughly the same latitude as Kunming.  More humid than Montana, but it's not Xishuangbanna.

This morning, at four infusions, the smoke is finally starting to dissipate.  Granted, my brewing set-up at work is not ideal, but I'm not getting the orchid and camphor per the description.  We'll have to drink more at home.   

Special Delivery

I received a special delivery at work today.  It was ferried to me by a kind, long-lashed person.  When does this ever happen?

As you can see, this little packet was a cute wax-paper affair.  I must admit to feeling a bit nervous opening it up on my desk and taking photos of it.  Just act cool, I kept telling myself.  

Smokey and hairy.

As soon as the tea was unsealed the smell of a campfire wafted into the room.  I sprinkled some of these leaves in my trusty infuser mug and headed to the hot water spigot.

I got three infusions in before work ended.  The smoke kept coming like a barge full of that Lapsang Souchong you bought at your local co-op.  Lots of orange leaves and quite an orange-tinted brew:

I don't know anything about this tea, but it sure made the day more interesting.  Thanks! 

Tea in Missoula

I think there are quite a few people in this town who drink tea, but there hasn't really been a way that I know of to acquire decent tea without ordering it from afar.  Not surprising- this is Montana, USA, after all.  But there is good coffee-with fine selections available from the old standby Montana Coffee Traders as well as new and ultra-slick Black Coffee Roasting Co.  We are close enough to Seattle and Portland to have absorbed some of the coffee culture that keeps the mist-plagued citizens of those towns from jumping into Puget Sound or the Willamette River, respectively.  (I actually love both of those places and fantasize regularly about moving to Seattle. The weather is crap here in the winter, too, but much colder with an ugly inversion to boot.)

But good tea- fresh or intentionally-aged, whole-leaved, non-pulverized, unbagged, tasty, interesting- good tea has been hard to come by. 

(I took this photo at the Cooke City Store this summer.  The proprietor of this 1886 general merchandise joint that sits sandwiched at 7600 feet between the Beartooth and Absoroka Ranges said that these tea bins were original to the store.  I wonder if that oolong tasted like horse turds. And what was contained in the bin simply labeled "Japan''?)



I like to think of these guys drinking roasted tieguanyin grandpa style, filtering the leaves out with their remaining teeth.


There's a new teashop in Missoula, Lake Missoula Tea Company, and I have hopes that this budding business will come into its own and thrive.  I went to a green tea tasting there last weekend.  There was a watery Liu An Gua Pian and a smokey Vietnamese green both served out of a pump carafe into paper cups.  One of the store owners kindly gave me a porcelain cup after they had washed some.  We also drank some kind of jasmine pearl that was nicely brewed- boy, it has been ages since I had a cup of jasmine tea.  Not my favorite, but fine.  There was also a matcha that did not work out very well- gummy, harsh, no froth.  I would not try and serve matcha to a crowd, but I respect that the attempt was made.  It's hard to brew tea for a group of people, especially green tea.  I wouldn't know how to do it without an army of gaiwans.

The owners seem like very nice, humble people who are genuinely interested in tea.  I brought home a bit of super-oxidised oolong grown by a Taiwanese family in Sumatra.  It's not bad, a lot like a mid-grade Dong Fang Mei Ren but rolled into pellets of broken leaf.  Lake Missoula Tea has a connection with a Kenyan grower's collective and some of the black tea they are selling looks very nice, furry and golden.  We'll have to give that a shot and see if we can't start saving on Dian Hong shipping costs. 

*I filched the photo of the Cooke City residents from the C.C. Chamber of Commerce site.

Checking In

Tea has become so utilitarian over the last few months- it keeps me from yawning and slobbering on my desk at work.  My desk is my new home where I make tea in a squat infuser cup I got from Brett and Cinnabar last month.  Visiting with them and getting dangerously drunk on tea was a bright spot amidst a series of prosaic days.  I have been breaking up bits of shengpu for my cup which isn't the best way to drink shengpu but is a good way to utilize all those cakes sitting on the dry shelves wafting away their essence like miniature bales of straw in a cold wind.  Better drink em while there's something left, baby.

I've been slowly making my way through a grandpa-style-tailored care package sent to me by ultra-kind tea personality Hster.  Even more exciting was this second package:

We took care of these delectable chocolates in a week and a half and got a great introduction to some unfamiliar chocolatiers.  I've always loved chocolate and now we're regularly ordering bars from the Bay Area company LAmourette.  Their "Carenero Superior" bar has become a favorite and I bought a whole stack to give out for the holidays.  Thank you, Hster.  Such kindness is a beacon.

We went to a production of "Pinocchio" tonight put on by the Portland-based puppet company "Tears of Joy." It was a riotous performance for kids with more than a little adult humor.  I was angered and distraught when I found myself terrorized by the vision of some malicious, battle-clad young man bursting in and tearing a hole in this community.  My heart goes out to the people of Newtown, Connecticut and the victims of senseless suffering everywhere.