For those of you who have taken part in a lengthy gungfu session with friends (or wthout I suppose)...what are some of the teas (and in what order) that you've done a session with? Will you, say, sit down with multiple oolongs for a few hours? Go from lighter-oxidized oolongs to the darker ones? Just do sheng puerh? Or do one of each catagory (that's a lot of tea)? Or even jsut do one tea for a few hours? I'm talking the intensive sessions here, the ones where you're seriously JUST drinking tea.
Melinda, curious but planning some heavy drinking this weekend, ;)
Personally, I don't know too many serious tea drinkers in my neck of the woods, so my tea sessions are usually held to introduce friends to a different way of appreciating tea (different from tea bags etc),
I usually tend to start light then work up to the cooked pu'ers.
Typically start with some nice Dragon Pearl jasmine to get them on board - most are familar with jasmine teas. Then work up into the oolongs going from light to dark roasted, then on to the green and then black pu'er. I try not to overwhelm them with too many teas of the same type as they tend to forget what they had. We can easily pass 2-3 hours drinking and chatting this way.
Others may have a different approach - would be interested to hear them as well.
It's usually up to your specific tastes, but it's best not to mix too many different teas together because it can cause a stomach ache. I haven't really figured out why, but it does occur. You also have to make sure the participants begin to drink after a meal or after eating something. Drinking a bunch of different types of teas can cause you to feel "tea drunk" which is basically a condition that comes from low sugar in the blood or caffeine overload.
Order depends on what you are trying to showcase. I usually tend to save the better teas for the latter tasting. Just make sure you serve water or maybe some little cakes between teas to help cleanse the palate; sorta to reset your tastebuds to get ready for another flavor.
If you are just there to drink, it's best to save the very strong flavored, lingering teas to later. Like, I never serve flower tea (I hardly ever drink the stuff...actually) last because it is so unlike most 'real' teas and the flavor stains your tastebuds so it's hard to taste other things.
Forget the tea - it's the pot that really matters. The correct order is:
Large, slightly flattened oval pot to indicate generosity, welcoming, universal belonging in the tea-sangha.
High-form pot, leaning slightly toward the spout (like dragon egg-style Yixing) to focus on ascendant energies.
Gaiwan for introspection over the leaves.
Glazed pot to re-establish boundaries between the inner open spirit and the harsh realities of the outer world.
Low, flat pot to enhance grounding before heading out into everyday life.
To add another dimension, sequence the brewing waters from hard to soft to native tap-water. And then...
Oh, never mind. I was channeling. Personally, I start with more delicate, less astringent and generally colorless teas - white, tippy low-ferment oolong, and the like. Middles might be well-balanced green like lung jing or fragrant, higher-roast oolongs like my favorite Anxi types. Then more challenging green Pu-erh. (Typically no food until this point.) End with something really robust, liked cooked Pu-erh or a big DJ oolong. I figure it's a balance between real-time taste training and flavor fatigue.
I always use a different pot or gaiwan for each tea to help with memory, and keep the various leaves on display in the pot or carefully tipped into a wide, shallow bowl. If I'm tasting several nearly identical teas, I'll tend to do them back-to-back to pick out differences; usually worse-to-better to frame the advantages of the nicer example.
Aha! I knew there were esotaric secrets involved....need more pots...;)
I'm getting 6+ steeps out of this Ah Li Shan I'm doing...if one gets 5-8 steeps out of a tea that's...20-30 little cups of tea in a session if one does four teas. I guess it's do-able. Not late at night though, be running to the bathroom all night... Part of my problem I think is when I'm ordering teas I always want to try them right away when I get them. Those plus samples...I get overeager I think and then I have half steeped little pots/glasses/gaiwans of tea all over my counter.
Oh yeah - if I didn't mention it in my earlier followup... I strongly suggest using very small cups for a tasting like this - you'll end up being able to do more infusions without everyone going into caffeine overload. I use little cups that are probably 1 oz or so, and sometimes don't even fill them completely. And have a waste water container (I just use a little glass prep bowl) for people to dump in if they don't want to finish the whole cup.
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