drinking while unwell

What do you drink when you absolutely can't taste anything?



That's a bit of an exaggeration, because although I have a bit of a cold, I'm still able to taste. It's just that I'm sniffling and wheezing and all I want is something that soothes my throat. Last year when I was in Greece, I introduced Greek Mountain Tea when I wrote:

You needn't Climb a mountain

I remember when I wrote that I thought, 'I'm so rarely ill. It might be years before I actually get to find out if this helps when I'm under the weather.' So back to my question. If your sense of taste is muted or even deadened, what tea do you drink?



Was in my local Asian Supermarket this weekend, and look what I found. If you've been reading lately, you know I'm slowly getting deeper into Pu-erh tea. Whenever I wander into such a shop, my fantasies take me to a place where I make some fantastic find. Some tea that has nondescript packaging, but is excellent tea. I had to find out if this was any good.







I'd had enough Greek Mountain Tea loaded with honey. It had soothed my throat, but I needed tea. Real tea. Just so happened that my friend Jeffrey the Contrarian was visiting, and I cajoled him into trying this stuff. But not before he indulged himself in plenty of jokes about the name Pu-erh and how the un-steeped tea smelled of 'poo air'.

Jeffrey the Contrarian had had the fannings that I wrote about last week, and was less than impressed. He said the taste was noticeably fermented, and it was clear this wasn't a complement. So I wanted to see what he thought of this simple Yunnan Pu-erh.

He said it was less pungent. It was definitely drinkable. I thought it had almost no taste, but my above-mentioned muted sense of taste might have something to do with that. My suspicion is that I'll use this nondescript tea in some blends, but that it won't easily become a regular tea in my rotation.

What about you? Do you even forego tea entirely when you're ill? Do you drink infusions?

I'll show you mine if you show me yours

What an enjoyable afternoon Neil of Neil's Yard and I had trying a variety of tea. Am going to briefly go over the highlights, and possibly come back and go into more detail if there's more to cover.

I wanted to see what he thought of the Darjeeling I have from Darjeeling Tea Express, so I started with a Goomtea Pre Autumnal Black. You can read about it here: Darjeeling Pre Autumnal. This is a tea I like, but Neil was immediately smitten. He loved it. Couldn't help but taste the muscatel, he said. He could clearly see why I was so excited to share this tea with him.



Then I tried his Everyday Kenya from leaf. (leaf. tea), and I was similarly impressed. I've not had much Kenyan tea, but this was delicious. It smelled smoky like a good Yunnan, but was so smooth and spicy. Here's how the leaves looked before adding boiling water (Very dark brown with yellow tips):




Although many Darjeeling lovers wax rhapsodic about first flush tea, I've always liked the stronger second flushes. So I was excited to brew a bit of Gopaldhara 2nd flush (again from Darjeeling Tea Express Gopaldhara 2nd flush). Although he liked it, it didn't make nearly the same impression that the Pre Autumnal did.

This is one of the things I love about tea. Not just the variety of flavours, but the incredibly subjective response that can result from two different tea drinkers.

After we got the black tea sorted, we spent the remainder of our time on multiple infusions of something called Organic Blue Tea (again from leaf.). According to their website, Oolong is sometimes called Blue tea because it's somewhere between black and green. Had never heard that description, but why not? Here's how they describe it: Organic Oolong 'Blue' tea, and it's stated, 'this oolong tea is a Qi Lan from the province of Guang Dong in China.'

From both appearance and taste, this is clearly a highly-oxidised Oolong. Like many first infusions, the smell was more pronounced than the taste. Nevertheless, you could tell what an enjoyable tea drinking session was in store based simply upon this smell.




Sure enough as we drank multiple infusions, the taste of the tea developed. How I ever brewed one single infusion of a decent Oolong still makes me shudder. It was at this point that we sat down and looked at twitter. I think Neil was a bit impressed, as well as intrigued, that the tea companies he'd been in contact with were so easily accessible on Web 2.0. So often, twitter makes no sense until one can see it in action.

There you have it. A wonderful tea tasting experience, and the more he talks about it, I can't wait to see how Neil's Yard turns out. Stay tuned.

A couple of greens

Recently Sir William o.t.L. mentioned that he'd like to read more tea tastings/tea notes from me. I aim to please, so this evening I prepared two very different green teas to review here.

One I bad mouthed a long time ago. In the comments to that post, someone recommended I try other Yunnan teas and I'm really glad I did. This one is simply called China Yunnan, which is so vague I almost don't want to review it. Both of these teas I got from Claus Kröger in Hamburg. The other one is much different, and has character that this specific Yunnan could only hope for. It's a Sencha called China Dong-Bai. The Sencha is not a light, soft green tea. Not by a long shot.

I have to say that since that bad experience with one questionable Yunnan, I've tried several and was pleasantly surprised. Have come to understand that Yunnan greens can be very very good, and I just picked a lemon at the outset. It happens. This one I'm drinking tonight is mild, but that's not always a bad thing. It'd be perfect if I'd just had something stronger and wanted a break.

The Sencha, on the other hand, is fantastic. Not a tea for people who're trying to ease into green tea. Very strong and earthy taste. Now, one of the Japanese teas I like most is also a Sencha, but this only tastes remotely like that one. The Japanese is called Schattentee (Shadow Tea) and is very smooth and almost hesitant. This Dong-Bai is the exact opposite. There's something smoky about it. Something so much like Lapsang Souchong. I know that's a black tea and this is green. Nevertheless, the smokiness ties them together in my mind.

So many green teas are called grassy. I guess that's how I'd describe the Yunnan. A bit like the taste of grass. But the Sencha is in no way grassy.

When I first started this blog, I focused on the different kinds of black teas at first. I knew more about them and had more connections to India, so it was a logical decision. The thing was that I was and am very curious about China and Japan and wanted to dig deeper into their teas. I knew even then that the more I got into green tea, the more obsessed I'd be.

Well that's exactly what's happened. I read more about the specific greens and whites, and all I want to do is go there and see where this tea is grown. There was a video blog last summer from Kevin Rose and some of his friends travelling across China drinking tea and eating bar-b-que out of the back of a portable grill pulled behind the guy's bicycle. As I watched the footage, all I could think of was, 'I wish that was me. I wish I was hoofing it across China, looking at tea plantations and interacting with the people.'

Not too late. I could be taking just such a trip later this year. We'll see.

A couple of greens to try and one to avoid

I'm sure you, my legions of readers, know by now that I'm on a green tea binge at the moment. It's all the buzz on twitter and foursquare. 'Have you heard? Lahikmajoe's moved on from black to green teas?' It's got the makings of a revolution.

Watch the Digg.com charts next week. You'll see my tea exploits are an internet phenomenon.

Here are my top green teas from the first Hamburg shipment and the single dud:

China Lung Ching Grade 1 was delicious, as was the Japanese Sencha Fudji. I had a few white teas I won't mention here yet, but there was one green I didn't like and want to warn you from choosing. It's a Chinese green and is called simply Yunnan. The tea dealer said it was tasty, but it's simply not my definition of taste.

Let me be realy blunt here. Some people try green tea once, think all of it is exactly like the single one they've happened upon and shun all green tea for the rest of their days. I wasn't thrilled with it several years ago when I first tried it, but merely just hadn't tried the right one yet.

My point? With this sort of tea, you have to be patient. It doesn't conform to our Western tastes. At least not easily in my opinion.

I will say that Japanese Senchas seem to be more tasty to the newbies I've polled. My friend Sylvia was cooing about her Sencha that she had in her mug the other week. I was so pleased she'd found a green she liked. There's something wrong with me, eh? To get jazzed over a friend discovering a new tea is not something society seems to value much. Guess it's not hurting anyone.

Except bad tea purchases. That seems like a good trade off. More good tea choices and less China Yunnan. That's my motto.