drinking tea Gangnam style

'What does this have to do with tea drinking?' you ask.

Well, clearly you've never been teadrunk. Like I am now.

Several months ago, I wanted to include Mr Rogers singing over a funky beat before it went viral. If you're on social media, you often see things when they're first big, and then the major news sources find out about them days if not weeks later.

If you really want this to be somehow tangentially related to tea, then I'll tell you what I'm drinking right now.

Are you ready?

I'm drinking tea.

Mago Merlino and his tea world

On the way back from visiting the tea shop that I mentioned in the previous post, I stumbled upon this little establishment:

Mago Merlino Tea 

The manner in which I found it was a bit like something out of Lewis Carroll...almost felt like it sprouted up out of nowhere while I was still teadrunk from a bit earlier. While taking photos from outside, there was a gentleman lurking ominously outside. Turns out he was the proprietor of Mago Merlino Tea, and I was in for an experience.

Here's a bit more about the fellow in his own words:



As he says, 'My name is Rocco Raffaele Jacopini. Some people-they call me "Bellino". Some people-they call me "Mago"...magician, you know? Because when they enter this place and they go to the tea house, they breathe a kind of atmosphere of the long time gone...I want to show my little touch of class. Imagination. Fantasy. It's very important.'



This guy's fantastic. If he were a teablogger, I'm sure we could get him to be a Beast of Brewdom.

The little shop above is at: Via Matteo Palmieri, 21/r. But I don't find that anywhere else on the web (thus my surprise at it's very existence). Instead, I think he wants you to come to the Mago Merlino Tea House which you'll find at: Via de Pilastri, 31/r. You might want to call ahead (tel. 055/242 970), because I'm not sure when exactly the tearoom is open.



I went there this evening, but imagine my disappointment at its darkened, shuttered entranceway. There's quite a lot written up about this place on the web, and it looks like a lot of fun there.






Maybe next time I'm in Florence, I'll get to check it out.

The best part of finding Mago at the shop was the tea he had on offer. After showing me some very delicious smelling Tie Guan Yin leaves that I balked at buying, he measured out a nice amount of what he called King Oolong. I had very low expectations of this tea when I brewed it. Boy, was I wrong.

I brewed it and brewed it and brewed it again. This tea was sturdy and delicious and a very nice, delicious Oolong. Seven infusions and that same fresh vegetale flavour that makes some tea obsessives focus exclusively on this sort of tea.

Here I was thinking I would be penalised for not buying the top-shelf tea he offered, but instead I walked away with an unforeseeable gem of an unknown tea. I'd regularly buy tea from Signor Jacopini were I living in or near Florence. And I'm sure he has some stories to tell. Both stories of the tea-related as well as the non tea-related varieties.

quite a selection of tea ware

One more view of this tasteful little shop

tea drunk

Was reading something about being teadrunk at Oolong-tea.org, and thought it'd be a nice place to start for a post. Actually, they called it 'tea-tippled', but I thought teadrunk sounded more direct and sometimes even more accurate (teadrunk is actually used at one point).

Here was the original article (from this time of year back in 2008) that got me pondering the thought:

Cha-dzui: "Tea-Tippled"

So, he talks quite a lot about detoxification whilst drinking 'very good grade, chemical-free, organically grown High Mountain Oolong', and I'm wondering if I've gone through that. I know I don't drink only one sort of tea, and I have no idea if the Oolong I drink is all of those things.

But I definitely know the feeling of being teadrunk. It can certainly happen after a few pots of black tea, but there seems to be something to the unique effect of drinking Oolong.

There was an episode of Lives of the Cowboys on Prairie Home Companion this weekend, and one of the cowboys is given some fennel tea that knocks him out cold. I'm not sure I'd call that teadrunk. That's more like tea-comatose. It was funny how the cowboy talked about the way tea can relax you. Another one of those tea stereotypes that isn't necessarily so bad.

As always, I'd love to start a bit of a discussion here, so I'll just ask: do you ever feel drunk on tea? Does it matter if it's white, green, black or Oolong?