tea with lemon and catching up with a good friend

First Annual International Tea Trade Convention summer 2011

Xavier and I haven't known one another for such a long time, but we're fast friends. Not sure where that term comes from, but I don't know of any faster friends.

We met last year in the summer when he came to Munich for the First Annual Tea Trade Convention, and I saw him at New Year's when he and Sabine came to Nice at the same time my wife and I were there.

I've documented all of this here on my teablog, but I thought I'd give you a quick synopsis of our backstory. Xavier and I have spent much of our time together either drinking or talking about tea. He's one of the many tea people I've found as a result of teablogging, and he quite possibly might be the most important.

Why?

He's just some French dude, right? Not exactly. He's one of the best teabloggers I know, because he does a niche thing that no-one does quite the way he does.

Xavier writes about tea and business. It's intriguing what he writes about. Every single time I read one of his posts, I learn something I'd never even considered before. Every. Single. Time.

If you don't know TeaConomics, you should.

What'd we drink when we met yesterday? Here:

I'll write about the tea another time, but I can tell you that it's going to be available soon. If you like the things that they do over at the Le Palais des Thés, you're going to love what I have to tell you soon. It's an entirely new line of tea blend. Four blends this year and then two more next year and two more the next. 

That means that by 2014, you can get one of eight exceptional tea blends from Le Palais des Thés. I'll review the four that're coming out this year as soon as they're available. 

Xavier and I had le Citron yesterday, and we both liked it quite a lot. More on that soon.

Second Annual International Tea Trade Convention in London

London bound for the Convention

Last year we had the First Annual International Tea Trade Convention in Munich when the founders and administrators of the site visited me, while on a whirlwind tour through Germany. Xavier also met us, as well as his girlfriend who we met for the first time (and really liked).

So, although the founders can't be there, I'll be visiting Robert Godden in London next weekend, and we've decided to hold the 2nd Annual International Tea Trade Convention. Might sound like we're blowing a small gathering out of proportion and making it sound much more important than it really is.

Who? Us?

Like Robert and I'd ever do such a thing. I'm almost offended at the very thought.

Here's the thing, my little tea drinking friends: we need a venue. Like, desperately. Robert has some favourite tea salons in England's capital, and I know some quirky cafés that may or may not serve decent tea. Those aren't nearly good enough for such an event. Hardly.

We need a place with wifi, so we can have a bit of virtual tea drankin' with whomever shows the slightest interest in taking part in such an astoundingly important event. And it'd be nice if the place actually served tea.

However, now that I think about it I realise The Devotea and I probably carry around enough tea that we could have our convention anywhere that'd let us plug in our travel kettle and give us space enough to brew up. My taste buds are perking up at the very thought.

You're probably asking yourself, 'How might one take part in the virtual tea drankin' and more importantly will there be teablogging of the 2nd Annual International Tea Trade Convention?'

For the former, contact Robert or me on twitter or Feckbook. And the answer to the latter is, 'Most definitely yes! There will be teablogging.'

It has been decreed.

and you thought Bubble Tea couldn't get any worse

You probably already know that I don't have good things to say about Bubble Tea. Despite people assuring me that there are versions that aren't obscenely packed with sugar, I haven't found one. And the ridiculous price that one pays for a huge cup of sugar water makes it all that much easier to walk right past any Bubble Tea establishment.

However, there's been a bit of a Bubble Tea renaissance here in Germany, and in Munich in particular. So much so that McDonald's is getting in on the act. Take a look for yourself:



Chan McTi, eh? Mc TEA, get it?

That's not at all racist, is it? He's supposedly Chinese, but he screams out 'Bubblezaiiiii...', which is a play on the Japanese Banzai Charge. So not only are McDonald's being insensitive, but they can't keep their inane stereotypes straight.

Nice.

I know it's easy to get self-righteous about this organisation. The Golden Arches really do make themselves an easy target. If I ever do find a tolerable example of Bubble Tea, it won't be at McDonald's. I know they have plenty of customers, but I'm most certainly not one of them.

tea out of egg cups

Don't know many tea drinkers where I live. I'm sure they're out there, but for the most part my tea community is online. There are some really nice tea places in Munich, and one of my goals in the new year is to spend some time visiting the different options and reviewing them here.

Yet I have made some friendships online that've transitioned into the real world. Wrote about meeting a few of you at the 1st annual Tea Trade gathering, which was quite a joy. I mentioned to Xavier then that we're often in Southern France for New Year's, and there was talk about maybe meeting each other there. Or here I should say, because Nice is where we are.

I'm sure there'll be plenty more about tea in the days to come, but in the meantime, we had a very nice Gong Fu session with some simple Dung-ti Oolong. I packed a Gaiwan for this very purpose, but knew I'd have to improvise when it came to tea cups.

The flat we're staying in had the perfect-sized egg cups, so that's what we drank out of. Unconventional as they might've been, it worked perfectly. 

an as yet unheralded tea people in Munich

Altes Rathaus in Munich

Peter at Tea Trade had an idea this summer that I'd already considered, but it was nice to hear it from another source. When tea lovers are going to Munich, I want them to think Lahikmajoe. Of course many of you would. You know I'm here because I write about it all the time.

But I was doing an internet search this week, and on a whim I searched 'Munich' + 'tea' expecting to see myself well represented. Go ahead and try it. I'm not represented at all. This has to be corrected.

For one thing, I don't often include the word tea in my tags. And even though I've written about teashops and tea salons here in my adopted home, I should keep talking about my favourite places and their tea here. There's quite a selection.

If you happen to be travelling through Germany and find yourself here in the capital of beer consumption,  I want you to know of your tea drinking options. If I happen to be in town at the time, I'd love to meet you in one of those shops to share a pot of tea or three. When you think 'Munich' and 'tea', I want you to think Lahikmajoe. I don't think that's too much to ask.

Let me remind you of some of my favourite places here in the Bavarian capitol:

a general sense of well-being

That's all about the Tushita Teehouse, which is normally first on my list of places to take people here. There's also the sweet little shop around the corner called Laifufu, which I wrote about here:

Oolong Nirvana in the next street over

What about teashops? Well, my local shop is called teegalerie in Munich-Neuhausen. I was so excited this summer when he had some Flugtee for me:

finally a cup of first flush

There are quite a few other tea drinking and tea selling places here, and I plan to go into much more detail about them. From now on, I'd like to be much easier to find when people are looking for tea people in Munich. 

tippling at the Japanese Teahouse

Finally did something today which I'd been planning for months. See, the Japanese Teahouse in the Englischer Garten in the heart of Munich has very limited opening hours. It's not a teashop actually, so I guess it's not so odd. Nevertheless, they're only open on the second weekend of each month (and I'm doubtful that they open through the winter).

I kept intending to go, and then promptly forgetting that it was the second weekend of the month till Monday morning. Too late. So each time this happened, I had to wait roughly another four weeks.

Before I go into my impressions, here's what Wikipedia has to say about it in the middle of their article about the Englischer Garten:

Japanese teahouse/Japanisches Teehaus KanShoAn

In April 1972, to celebrate the Summer Olympics of that year, which were held in Munich, a Japanese teahouse and a Japanese garden were created on a small island at the south end of the Englischer Garten, behind the Haus der Kunst. The pond in which the island is set had been created only a few years earlier, in 1969. The teahouse was a gift to Bavaria by Soshitsu Sen, head of the Urasenke tea school in Kyoto. Its designers were Soshitsu Sen and Mitsuo Nomura. A traditional Japanese tea ceremony takes place here regularly.




Here's what it looked like inside. My experiences in Japan were so intriguing. I only wish I'd been more into tea back then.

The overall sparseness and simplicity of everything is appealing to me. It's no accident. It's a crucial aspect of the tea ceremony in general.






The four principles of the tea ceremony are: wa-kei-sei-jaku, or harmony, respect, purity and tranquility respectively.



The tea we were served was a simple Matcha (what else?) and as much as I enjoyed it, I got the impression that some of the others there weren't terribly impressed.

The whole experience was like being magically transported to Japan. Although there was a German introduction and explanation about what we were soon to witness, the actual tea ceremony was entirely in Japanese. It was exotic as well as somehow calming.



As much as I'm a Westerner on the outside looking in at this, I'm undeniably intrigued and would like to know much more about tea ceremony. It's something I thought I'd get around to blogging about much earlier back when I started blogging about tea. Instead I was preoccupied with such important topics such as which tea I might drink with former French leaders like I did in Tea with Charles de Gaulle or even better what tea the infamous drink in Celebrity tea drinkers.

But here I am buckling down and attempting some serious tea blogging topics. Don't worry loyal readers. I'll get back to the frivolous soon enough.

meeting old friends for the first time

Several months ago, I mentioned how excited I was to host some tea folk in my adopted hometown of Munich. The day has come and this weekend different people in the Tea Trade community will descend upon the Bavarian capitol.

What a joy not just to show off the surprising variety of tea shops here, but to be able to walk through the small passageways of the old city and remark on what's left of the medieval city.

We met up at the Tushita Teehaus, which I wrote about in a general sense of well-being.

In some ways, you'd expect seeing people you've never met would be unquestionably awkward. Nevertheless, the strange reality of virtual friendships means that some people you 'know' online have a much better picture of you than you'd first think. Meeting the Tea Trade folk was like reconnecting with old friends.

There was good natured ribbing that whatever was drunk and talked about would find its way onto my blog. All in good time. We did laugh about how terribly seriously we sometimes take ourselves. Or at least I did. Laugh at myself, I mean.

In the next several days, there's going to be plenty more of the same. There are a few surprises planned for the weekend and I'm sure in the next few months you'll hear both here and over at teatra.de what things are being cooked up in our corner of the tea world. You've been summarily warned.



the Theatine Church (Theatinerkirche) viewed from the Hofgarten.

accesible Gong Fu

When I think about who I write this blog for, other than for myself, I imagine people who're curious about tea and want to know more. There are certainly some rather knowledgeable people who come here, but there are so many beautiful and knowledgeable blogs about tea. I want to try and help demystify tea drinking a bit, and so I purposely write with the tea newcomer in mind.

Because I'm passionate about it in my daily life, I get a lot of earnest questions. I'm sure some of the more direct inquiries never get made. Along the lines of, 'Wow, this guy's a bit obsessive, isn't he?' But instead, people ask me a variety of questions both general and specific. And I figure such curiosity is the perfect sort of thing to write about here.

So my friend Gaby was over the other evening, and I offered her a glass of wine or some sort of sparkly fruit beverage. She knew I'd be drinking tea, so she insisted that sharing tea with me would be just perfect. I have a new Gaiwan that she hadn't seen, so I decided to go the way of Oolong. It wasn't immediately clear if I'd made the right choice.

Recently, I read something Alex Zorach said about not doing Gong Fu in a traditional way. Essentially his idea was, and I hope I'm paraphrasing it correctly, that he did a sort of a modified Gong Fu that might look a bit strange to a purist. Those are really my words, but the point was that he brewed in a way that worked best for him.

I think it's applicable if my above-mentioned goal was to make tea drinking a bit more approachable. As I poured the first infusion of the Milky Oolong for Gaby, she looked at the curious little snifter cup. 'Where did you learn about all of this?' It's a funny question. I've watched plenty of videos, been to tea ceremonies, peppered tea shop owners with a myriad of questions.

She didn't particularly like the smell of the first infusions of the Milky Oolong, so I didn't make such a big deal of sniffing every infusion. She did like the taste. She said it smelled like a flower you can get at the Viktualienmarkt, which is an open-air market in downtown Munich. Maybe it was called the Joshua flower, but she wasn't sure.

The nice thing was that she was so curious and so eager to try each new infusion. Although she preferred the taste of the tea to the smell, she continued to use the snifter cup. She liked the tea as it got weaker and lighter. As we continued through cup after cup, I tasted less 'milky' and more Oolong, but it wasn't the most complex tea.

What's my point here? Do I really think I can proselytise and convince everyone I know to not only drink tea, but go the way of Gong Fu brewing? No way. But it was a pleasure to see how accessible it was for a tea newcomer. It was nearly a foregone conclusion that I'd have a good time with all of this, but I was very pleased that Gaby did.

planning to host fellow tea obsessives

This week I found out that a fellow tea obsessive that I met through twitter will be visiting Munich this summer. Actually a couple of tea obesessives. Should be quite the experience. Am already pondering where to take them for tea.

I go on and on about the meagre opportunities for decent tea drinking here in this city, but we do have tea shops/tearooms and I honestly can't wait to show these places off.

My visitors are already very familiar with the city of Munich, but in Southern Germany the people are much better known for their Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake) than they are for their knowledge of tea and tea drinking. This is slowly changing. We have a budding tea culture.



There's the Tushita Teehaus, which I wrote about in a general sense of well-being, and then even closer is the Laifufu Teesalon, which I wrote about in Oolong Nirvana in the Next Street Over. (pictured on the left)






There's a very British place, which I'll talk about another time, where we could have cream tea, and if we're really ready to throw caution to the wind, there's always Afternoon Tea at Die Vierjahreszeiten (The Four Seasons).



So there's no reason for me to get overly excited just yet. Still have to wait several months for the opening ceremonies, but just going through our options for tea in Munich is making me thirsty.

pondering tea trends

Found an interesting article in the local paper about trends in tea drinking, and wanted to bring them up here. Maybe you've already heard about these. The title of the article is Teerapie, which is a mix of the German words for tea and therapy.

One thing I like is that the author reports on a thriving tea culture in Vienna, which I was surprised to find last year. He introduces us to Bubble tea, which although I've read plenty about, I have yet to try. According to the article, there are hordes of teenagers drinking wild shades of these tea-based concoctions in the epicenter of coffee culture.

Not just for youngsters, there's also a more traditionalist streak in tea shops. Not just in Vienna but in Munich, as well. The German speaking world is trying Matcha not just as a beverage, but sprinkled on ice cream and as a spice in a variety of rice dishes.

The biggest trend that the writer supports is that tea is growing in popularity while the demand for specialty coffee is actually decreasing. He specifically cites the example of American tea drinking and quotes Wired magazines pronouncement that 'Tea is the New Coffee'.

There's already quite a substantial business in Germany. 18,000 tons of tea annually and growing.

The article ends in the shadow of the Stephansdom back in Vienna. Hass und Haas is a wonderful place I took my mother for tea. If you asked me to list the stereotypical trappings of a traditional afternoon tea, this place had all of them. No matter where the trends take us, there's still plenty of room for a bit of tradition.

tasting of the flask: carnival edition

It's been mostly a bust tea-wise in Cologne. It's not because there's anything wrong with tea drinking here (that I know of). Instead, it's because Carnival, or as they spell it Karneval, was going on. Many shops were closed, and some even boarded up their show windows. It really looked like the preparations for a hurricane.

So, this whole trip was another example of how a tea lover should be prepared to travel. Almost always rent a flat when it's possible. Making tea in a hotel room is certainly possible, but if there is a kettle, it's normally tiny. So in that scenario, I'd have had to carry my own. Nothing wrong with that, but if you rent a place, a kettle is normally included.

The train ride from Munich to Cologne was a perfect 2-flask event. By the time we arrived, they were empty and I quickly brewed another pot for exploring the city. That night we happened upon the Geisterzug (ghost parade), which I'll talk about more on the travel blog (Lahikmajoe in Bayern), but the nice thing was that the night got colder and colder while I was nice and toasty with my tea.

In the past, I would've trudged from cafe to cafe getting cup after cup of poor quality tea (or coffee if they had no tea). Under the circumstances, it could not have been a better tea drinking experience. I did mention on twiitter the tea smelling of the flask but tasting really good, and someone answered that they hate it when tea tastes like that.

It doesn't taste like the thermos. It can sometimes smell a bit like the metal, but the taste is unadulterated. Others have said that tea is best enjoyed at home in the comfort of one's home. I completely understand that this is the ideal. But I intend to keep perfecting the best methods of travelling with my tea.

a general sense of well-being

Because of the harbours in the northern cities of Hamburg and Bremen, tea companies/importers and tea houses are in abundance. Southern Germans certainly drink tea, but the tea culture is smaller. Having said all that, people do drink tea down here, and it seems those people are becoming more visible.

Part of that is because several tea shops and tea houses have opened in Munich in the last year or so. I've written about a few of them, but might spend some time going over them again.

Have talked in rather intricate detail about brewing tea and pouring it into a thermos, so I can have it on the go. I do that almost anytime I travel, whether I'm gone for several days or only the afternoon. As convenient as it is to slurp my best tea en route from here to there, the experience of sitting down in a tea house is unquestionably different.

So I had an hour or so between appointments today, and I treated myself to a trip to the Tushita Teehouse in the Glockenbachviertel near the Frauenhofer Straße U-Bahn station.

I'll go into much more detail about this place in another blogpost, because I'd like to focus on something else. Sometimes when you really slow down and take the time to enjoy the tea, an overwhelming feeling of calmness can result. I had a moment after the three infusions of the their Kukicha, where I was practically glowing. I didn't force myself to get up and do something else. I didn't rush off to catch the next train. I simply sat there and enjoyed that peaceful feeling that sometimes results from drinking tea.

I don't want to get esoteric here. There are plenty of times I drink a cuppa while working or while I'm on the run. It's not possible for me to always take this kind of time to slow down. But when I do...when I really put down my newspaper, turn off my phone, set aside whatever's going on outside in the street or in the world, I can appreciate the tea in an entirely other way.

If you're into tea, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. On another visit, I'll have my notebook and describe each infusion and the cup colour and whether I tasted something nutty or grassy...I do like that sort of thing. But this time I decided to experience all of those things but focus on the overall effect of the whole session. The way several cups of tea today really enhanced my general sense of well-being.

Here's a photo of the Kukicha leaves (this is a teablog, after all):

Oolong Nirvana in the next street over

My plan is still to go into more detail about the teas I was sent by Darjeeling Tea Express, but something excited has come up. I have to talk about it.

Recently, a few different people told me that there was a new tea shop nearby. My hopes were not high. Immediately, my thoughts turned to what sort of shop it might be. My worst nightmare was kitschy knick knacks and assorted artificially flavoured teas. Just in time for the holidays.

I was in for a shock. Immediately as I walked up to the window, it was obvious that my assumptions were all wrong. Here's the Laifufu Teesalon:





The owner is a Taiwanese woman called Pei-Jen, and it was quickly apparent that she was a wealth of information about Oolong tea. This really could not get any better. First I wandered through and admired the teapots and cups on display:







Then at the back of the room there's a little set of tables looking out on the quiet, snowy courtyard. I think you'll find me here quite often in the coming months:








Asked for an Oolong recommendation, and was encouraged to sit and try multiple infusions of a high mountain Oolong called Alishan Zhu Lu. The first infusion was ok, but nothing special. It had a very strong floral smell, but I couldn't taste it. Luckily, each infusion became more floral and more dramatic. Once again, I'm not surprised that I like a tea grown at a high altitude.

While Pei-Jen poured cup after cup, we talked about a wide variety of topics relating to Oolong tea. Wealthy nouveau riche Chinese who come in and buy entire crops of a plantation before the tea has even been processed. Oolong tea being sold on the market as authentic Taiwanese, which is over-priced and potentially not even from Taiwan.

If you happen to be in Munich-Neuhausen, you'll find the Laiffu Teesalon at Maillinger Straße 14, 80636 München (Munich). There's a website still under construction, but I'll go ahead and give the address (http://www.laifufu.de).

I wanted to include a photo of Pei-Jen, but thought it might be overwhelming on the first visit. Nevertheless, here's a photo of the table where we drank the delicious tea I've described:

Darjeeling Tea Tasting

There'll probably be a bit more talk of Darjeeling in the next few weeks. Someone I know from twitter (@DarjeelingTeaXp) is launching a website offering authentic Darjeeling tea. The reason that authenticity is important is that although 40,000 tons of tea is sold globally with the name Darjeeling, they only grow about 10,000 tons.

I've documented my slow-developing love affair with Darjeeling here in earlier posts, but I'll give you the thumbnail sketch. Early on in my tea obsession, I tried a few teas from this region. I was so accustomed to darker/stronger teas that, at first, these teas were just too weak. Or so I thought. The more teas I tried, the more sensitive my taste became. Eventually, when I came back to Darjeelings, I was astounded at the delicate floral tastes in the tea.

Once my tongue could finally appreciate these teas, I became obsessed. I tried every Darjeeling I could find and read every Darjeeling website I came across. @DarjeelingTeaXp was one of the connections I made during that time.

On Saturday 4 December 2010, I'll be serving Darjeelings from various tea estates. If you happen to be in Munich then, you're certainly welcome. More details to follow.

Kräuter und Würzel 'Sepp'

After spending most of the week before last hunting down tea shops and tearooms in Hamburg, I was pleased to find a little shop here in my backyard that I'd only heard about.

It's essentially a spice shop. But the guy prepares his own spices. It felt like walking into a nineteenth century apothecary. The first thing I liked was that he said he doesn't aromatize any of his tea. Or anything he makes, for that matter. He assured me that he throws weird concoctions of things together, but actually adding aroma to something goes against his code, or something. He was talking Bavarian. I didn't catch all of it.

In Hamburg there was a similar shop that seemed to specialize in spices, but was much more interested in the esoteric/Yogi tea market. This shop is nothing like that. At all. If anything, I think the whole vibe of the place is the opposite. He seems to be a throwback to when people made their own ointments and health concoctions.

He showed me different herbs in bulk and how he would use them for different recipes. If you don't see how this relates to tea, then let me just say I'm becoming more and more intrigued my the medicinal value of tea. One of the shop owners I talked with in Hamburg spoke of how we instinctually reach for tea when we don't feel well. That our body almost tells us, 'You need tea.' Even for people who don't normally drink tea.

There are much better places you can read about the chemical properties and effects than here, but suffice it to say I'm going to try to learn more about this and pass it on to you in a digestible manner. It seems like every time I turn around there's an article in the newspaper about the benefits of tea. This week in the Münchner Merkur, I read about the health advantages of drinking green tea. Certainly not a new idea, but it just seems to be coming at me from so many directions.



http://www.phytofit.de