International Devotea Day

Robert Godden aka The Devotea

Boy do I have some good news for you. Some of you might think that the religious holidays and their requisite traditions are the most important things going on these days. I can understand why you'd see things that way, and I'd never want to interfere with the way you mark the season.

But me personally, I'm celebrating something else entirely. It's the Eighth of April...That's right, it's International Devotea Day and I'm here to tell you that this is arguably one of the best holidays you could ever imagine. What does International Devotea Day entail? I'm so pleased you asked.

Essentially, what we do on International Devotea Day is drink as much tea as humanly possible. If you're one of those sort who doesn't like to overdo things, this holiday might not be to your liking. There's nothing measured or sensible about a day like today. Under the circumstances, we're taking tea drinking where it's never gone before.

Now, you're most likely thinking to yourself, 'Sure, I like tea ok. It's a beverage that curiously both calms and enlivens me. But I have to be honest: I'm not one for going overboard.'

I hate to tell you this, but you really should consider locking yourself indoors and drawing the curtains. Keep your children and family pets away from any exterior windows. There's going to be some excessive tea drinking and it might not be pretty.

In honour of the big day, I'll leave you with one of my favourite Devotea videos. It's George Orwell's Nice Cup of Tea, and it still makes me smile whenever I watch it. I must leave you to it then. There's so much to prepare before International Devotea Day begins in earnest (Happy Birthday Robert).

Margaret hoping and hoping

Have been in a contrary mood all day and while I was deliberating what I wanted to blog about, I happened upon Robert Godden's most recent post

Where there’s life, there’s Margaret’s Hope.

He calls Margaret's Hope a gateway drug...ok, he doesn't say drug, but it is in a way.  His point is that you can get this tea almost anywhere.  Even if one doesn't know much about Darjeeling, they can probably name this estate.  And once you've tried it and got accustomed to the taste of this Darjeeling, you'll be more likely to appreciate the subtleties of an even better one.  

I like the story he tells about the origin of the name.  I wrote about it when I was relatively early on my teablogging path, and still in the throes of said gateway drug. Here's what I had to say:

Margaret's Hope? Brew it again.

I've wondered more about this little tale, and I'm glad The_Devotea has reminded me of it.  There's been a lot of talk lately in my circle of tea obsessive friends about inexperienced/unknowledgeable teashop assistants.   Not just the way some of them are lacking the most rudimentary facts about tea, but that they're willing to recklessly make stuff up in order to sell more tea.

So I'm going to play the part of the completely dumfounded teashop assistant answering the question: Where does the name Margaret's Hope come from?

See, this is the story of a girl called Margaret, who desperately waits and waits to no avail.  She's says to herself, 'Why do I have to wait?'  But there's no answer.  No matter how often she asks or for how long she waits.

Many years go by and she gets so busy with her daily life that she forgets she's even waiting.  She enjoys the small joys in her life, as well as the big milestones.  Every once in a while she has a quiet moment where she remembers that gnawing feeling that used to be so strong.

But only after decades have passed and she's sitting quietly with her tea, does she look back and realise she's had her answer all along.  She'd hoped that she made a difference, but it was when she wasn't trying so hard that she had the most impact.

She'd tried to say the right things in her life, but it was when she said as little as possible and let her actions speak loudest that she was most effective.  

Margaret's Hope was that it had all meant something.  That it wasn't yet another story of yearning and reaching that was never resolved.

The customer looks at the teashop assistant and sighs.  'What on earth are you talking about?,' he asks.  'I just wanted to buy some tea.  I didn't want some metaphysical journey.  I thought it'd be some simple story.'

Yeah, ok.  Here's the real story:

The plantation owner had two daughters. One of them, Margaret, loved it there so much and hoped to one day return. Sadly, she died and the plantation owner was understandably devastated. To honour her, he named the plantation and the tea that was grown there after her and her dreams of returning to their land. To this day, Margaret's Hope tea is associated with high quality tea from Darjeeling.

'Perfect,' says the customer, 'I'll take that.'

all the same teablogger

Jo Johnson suggested in a blogpost that Robert Godden and I were the same person.  Here's the whole post: World Tea East - Finale.  She was joking with VL Hamilton, as she describes it, and VL assured her that there was no way that we were the same.  Like I say, I'm sure that this was an offhand joke, but what better place to start off a blogpost.

First of all, Robert and Geoff Norman and I have joked that we're the Beasts of Brewdom.  We not only interact with one another on twitter, but we find ourselves blogging in tandem and doing what little we're able to for the sake of masculine tea drinking.

But I've taken the funny off-hand comment and wondered to myself what sets us apart.

Robert's blog which is called The Devotea's Tea Spouts is a collection of musings and curiosities that he's written and he's particularly good when he's somehow riled up and/or got a score to settle.  One of my favourite of these is Carry On Up the Spout.  Try it you'll like it.

And Geoff has included his explorations with tea, as well as cultural ponderings.  One of his better recent posts was Iran So Far for...Tea.  All about tea in a part of the world about which we get such murky information.  Periodically, he'll go on a tear and write a piece of tea-fuelled prose that is immensely entertaining.  Watch for just such a piece of fiction.  It's worth the wait.

What am I doing here?  What's the purpose of a teablog?  Partly, it's a documentation about my love affair with tea.  It's a place I like to record the minutiae and the tangentially tea-related.  I've also purposely tried to make this blog as accesible as possible for tea newcomers.  I joke about bringing people over to the leaf-side, but it really has been a pleasurable avocation of mine to attract curious people to try good tea.

More on that soon.  Much more.  But in the meantime I'll simply say that to be confused with the likes of The_Devotea or even Lazy Literatus is not such a bad predicament to be in at all.

charms of The Iron Goddess (Tie Guan Yin)

For regular readers of my teablog, I'll have to apologise at the outset. Normally I write about anything but tea. Sure I drag tea into it, but the topics I like most are tangentially related to that hot brown liqueur. I like to write about whatever film I happen to be watching or what I might serve footballers playing in the World Cup Final based upon the quality of each individual's play. You get the idea.

It's a teablog, but I rarely get bogged down in actually reviewing tea. Not in the traditional sense anyway. Robert (@The_Devotea on twitter) has assured me that there's nothing more boring than, 'I took the tea and I submerged it in the water and then I tasted it and it tasted like ______ and then I infused it again...' It might be informative and clearly written, but it's not the most exciting stuff. To each his own, eh?

But sometimes I feel I should just do a traditional review of a tea. It is still a teablog after all. And of course with the introduction I've built up, I'm almost daring myself to make it somehow more interesting than the typical teanote. I might have set myself up with unrealistic expectations in that case.

The tea I want to talk about is Tie Guan Yin (the notorious Iron Goddess). A while back I read someone disparaging comments about how everyone knows the sultry temptress that is the Iron Goddess.


As if this tea was somehow boring due to its popularity. I gave into her seduction when I visited Zhi Tea in Austin when I wrote An oasis on the Eastside.

Alex Zorach made a valid point, in the comments of that post, when he said, 'It seems to be the "default" named Oolong, so there have been a few cases where I tried it and it wasn't the best quality.' He went on to write that finding a good Tie Guan Yin is an entirely different story. I think I know just such an exception. The one I'm talking about is from Upton Tea Imports.

Now according to them, this is a 2nd Grade tea. Their description actually states:

A classic Tie-Guan-Yin, with dark-golden, rolled leaves, producing a flavorful cup with the aroma of sweet raisins complemented with robust earthy tones. The fine flavor lingers on the palate with a toasty, sweet aftertaste. (source: Upton Tea Imports).

I can definitely taste the raisins by the second or third infusion. Although the earthy tones are evident immediately, they somehow get stronger the more times I brew the same tea. In my estimation, that's the sign of a good, sturdy Oolong.




As I've heard so often when people talk about it, the thing to remember when brewing decent Oolong is to use more leaves and less water than you might be accustomed to. And almost as important are the incredibly short brewing times. Really.

Roughly twenty seconds to start. After many infusions, you might increase it to thirty or forty-five. But if you're truly using more leaves and less water, steeping this tea for a long time is only going to result in something bitter. And in my experience, Oolong isn't supposed to be bitter.

If you haven't before been lured in by the Iron Goddess charms, will this review convince you to try her out? No idea. I'd like to think this tea is a perfect introduction to Oolong in general. And might this specifically encourage you to try multiple steepings? That would please me more than you might know. Well, now you know. I just told you.

tea people in *real* life

Gingko mentioned something in today's blogpost (Life in Teacup) about meeting people from online tea communities in *real* life, and I'm sitting here pondering if I'd even seriously consider doing that. One of the weirdest things about twitter is that I adore communication with those people there, but I really doubt I'd actually want to meet many of them. Some would even make me surprisingly uncomfortable.

But tea people are different, right?

The thought of dodging a pterodactyl while sipping on some tea with Robert (@The_Devotea) is rather delightful. And after having read an old essay at Leafbox Tea about not blathering on about which estate the tea came from and actually having a bit of intellectual discourse about something other than tea, I can't stop thinking about where the discussion might head while chatting with Jackie and Pete. Last summer I was in Paris for a few weeks, and Ice Hellion and I have talked about trying to arrange both going there at the same time someday, and maybe meeting at Mariage Freres or one of the limitless tea salons.

There are far too many people I've come into contact with to list all of them here, but it is an interesting prospect, isn't it? Maybe you've already met people face to face that you got to know first in virtual tea rooms. Maybe you'd never risk it.

So here I am inviting your comments. Would you be interested in meeting some of the tea people you only know online face to face? If you're hesitating, what's holding you back?