Tea snobs - educate me!

Try links on

Here are my other "tea" links. Explore to your hearts content..

I personally like Darjeeling teas.

If you liked the greens you drank, you should definitely check japanese green teas, i.e. Sencha, Gyokuru or Kabuse-cha, also Matcha. You should be able to get them at upton/specialteas and the other "usual" (online) vendors, but:

I never tried this site since I am in Japan right now, but after returning to Europe next month, I will give it a try. Their range of japanese greens is quite large, and what they write on their site seems o.k. to me. Also they are located in Japan...directly at the source ^-^

ciao Patrick

It seems like an endless journey.

If you are going for Chinese tea, you should definitively give a try to Wuyi tea and some raw (green) pu erh. If you do like green tea, try some yellow tea too. Those are really delicate and very pleasant (better wait for spring though).

Drink, take notes, educate yourself about the tea before buying some. There are a lot of people in this group that will be able to help you with that. Tea-vendors should also be able to answer any question you may have about their teas.

SEb

i am not a tea snob-just someone who enjoys drinking a properly prepared brew-

i also enjoy drinking an occassional cup of coffee-i used to drink only coffee- try upton and special teas for their sample size teas-that is the best way to get started-

Throw away the URLs and credit card. Drink the same penny/gram tea found in the ethnic stores by the rest of the world. Buy the first 25 teas you come across and you'll never get bored. My first sage piece of advice for 2005 don't worry about what others are drinking. New Year's Eve I pass a cigar store and some guy in the store is standing at the window blowing smoke from a stogie directed at people as they walked by. I think it is a metaphor for something really profound.

Jim

Gadfly wrote: ...viserated...

knowledgeable

importantly,

I say go for some good LongJing (Dragon Well) and experience for yourself what it's like to ingest some of the most heavenly green tea in existence...IMHO, of course. heh.

Japanese Matcha is good too, if you're looking for some blended greens...it has a fresh taste and it's easy to accept to even the most picky palates even on first drink.

Other greens....biluochun (spring snail) is good.

Mydnight

-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

Space snipped-for-privacy@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com1/2/05

Sage advice it is, Jim. Well worth remembering. Nothing to add to it. Gadfly, take note.

Michael

snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com/2/05

Mydnight, my pal: What's that "H" stand for? Not a good descriptor for the likes of you and me, eh?

A friend gave me a mortar and pestle of agate so fine that it refuses to grind kitchen grains, seeds, or beans. You've given me an idea. I'm going to take some of my sencha, grind it down in a more standard mortar, and then continue grinding in my new beautiful agate mortar to get a super-refined powder. Cool, eh?

Both Dragon Well (LJ) and Spring Snail Spiral (BLC) should be available in your friendly ethnic Chinese grocers. That way, you can get an idea whether you like them or not, for cheap. If you like one or both, you can graduate to an on line vendor. BTW, on LJ and BLC, I concur with Mydnight.

Michael

My last purchase of Pi Lo Chun from Chinatown simply said "Spring Bud Green Tea". I like it better than the one from my local tea shoppe. I also recently got a West Lake LJ I like better than the shoppe. Both come in hermetically sealed glass apothecary style jars. I know it is fresh as the day it was packed.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote: ...wishing well...

available in

Are they also packaged into transparent plastic boxes with red labels and large green "cha" character? BiLuoChun from it was kinda muddy (may be I did not brew it right?) How do you brew it? I heard so much about this tea and I never had a chance to develop a taste for it.

Thanks.

Sasha.

I think just the glass cup method will work. We tried it gongfu style in a shop, but also hot water on top of the leaves in a cup...either way tasted fine. It's not very good unless it's really fresh, I do know that much. I think I've only drank it like twice.

Mydnight

-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

Welcome Gadfly. The first thing you need to know about being any kind of snob is that you must wholeheartedly believe in your own superiority. I believe in you. But saying things like "I'm still woefully unsophisticated" simply won't do. You must denigrate your inferiors. At the mention of any other beverage, you must affect a nauseous expression, and then a turning away of the head. Those as sophisticated as you (and you certainly are sophisticated and knowledgeable) are too refined to take the word of anyone else. You alone know the truth: your truth. With such exceptional and rare sensibilities as yours no one can argue with you. Look, you have tasted the exquisite delicacies of teas so rare as to be without label.

Be sure to hold your teacup lightly, delicately, and with aplomb, but be sure to do this in a manly way if you are of that ilk. Women of course may hold their small finger in the air in the most feminine of knowing gestures.

Be sure to practice picking up your teacup in front of the mirror. Practice makes perfect.

Hope this helps.

Christopher

I hadn't seen any packaging like that in my Chinatown. One style of jar lid has the pancake shape and the other rounded. In both cases there is a plastic ring on the lid which seals to the lip of the jar. Slowly back out the lid from the jar. I'm carefull but there will be a pop and tea easily spills. In the case of PLC use more tea than you think. The taste is sublime which is my coded word for understated. It doesn't remind you of a green tea in the sense of grassiness or astringency. I like it because I didn't have to learn a new taste. This style brews from the bottom and I just wait for the dark/light oxidized leaf to turn green and open up which I guess is about three minutes. I use holy water to make my teas which is water with the hell boiled out of it. The small leaf looks like it was cut in half on the long axis to remind us of a snail where some of the brewed leaf has enough of a curled edge to look like little heads popping up. This is a tea I like drinking at moderated temperatures less than sipping hot so let the cup cool a little.

Jim

Alex Chaihorsky wrote:

shoppe. ...sand blasted...

I've know a lot of rich Texas daughters, and many of them have had the bad manners to raise a finger in my presence, but it has usually not been the little one.

Speaking of tea manners, a Chinese guest recently told my daughter that it is polite to slurp one's tea. It seems that some types of good manners take more easily than others.

Rick.

ah!

Christopher

Slurping tea (which is a "gourmet" way of enjoying it,) is not the "society" way of using tea as a backbone for socializing. I actually love Texan women and together with French, Polish, Italian, Ethiopian and Russian (I politely put my own at the end) they make up a crown of femininity. But I prefer the wilder variety, the true small town Texan hotie... That wonderful puerish smell mix of Shalimar and barn with a whiff of heavy Texas oil... But opposite to puerhs, they do not need no ageing.

Sasha.

Won't argue with you here, as my wife is from South Texas. ;-)

However, she has been (voluntarily) off caffeine, so we do not share tea together except for les tisanes. :-(

Joe

Alex ChaihorskyQnYDd.489$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com1/8/05

Sasha, Ho, ho. Michael