drinking tea that I can reach

Maybe I'll live here for a while

Am living out of suitcases right now while I search for a new flat, which means the contents of my tea cupboard is in my rucksack and in various boxes that're either strewn about the hotel room I'm in or in my friend Wolfgang's extra room.

Under normal circumstances, I think a lot about what the ideal tea is for this or that situation. Lately, I've simply grabbed the nearest sack of tea and brewed up. Sometimes, it's been the dregs of a shipment of Assam Mangalam, which is one of my favourite teas to drink in the morning or other times it's been the Ambagastowa Ceylon, which I got from a new supplier in Reutlingen (Spezialitäten-Compagnie).

However, what I've been a bit surprised at is that I keep reaching for really excellent Darjeeling. I should blog about each of these teas in detail, but I don't have the time for that at the moment. As it is, I found in the past that when the weather was cold and snowy, I didn't avoid tea from Darjeeling, but I didn't gravitate toward it, either.

While I was in Hamburg a few months ago, I got a few really nice Darjeelings from both Teehaus Shila and the first tea shop I used when I got into drinking this stuff in earnest - Claus Kröger.

It's very unlikely that I'll do a traditional tea review of any of these teas (I've simply decided not to waste my time with that ridiculousness anymore), but I do hope one of my upcoming posts can go into more detail about these particular teas. If I'd like to get back into the habit of posting here on my teablog, I could do with a topic or two that I'm passionate about.

Darjeeling tea has never done me wrong on that front. 

wet leaves and drier leaves

in Hamburg looking through the windows at Messmer Momentum's Darjeeling boxes  

Why are most Monsoon tea flush Darjeelings not normally sold outside of their region? Aren't all flushes worth drinking. I've had something called Autumn Flush from at least one company, and it was tasty enough. Certainly not bad. Anything but bad.

Then while I was talking to Michael J. Coffey and Geoff Norman, we got to talking about wet leaves versus drier leaves. Michael was talking about about Taiwanese tea rather than Indian tea, but he made an interesting point.

Apparently, the wetter the leaf is when it's been picked, the lesser quality the resulting tea will be. Now, I'm not a grower. Clearly. Sitting here in my flat in Germany, anything I say about growing tea is based upon very limited information. I read and I listen to tea people more knowledgeable than I, but I'm passing this onto you the way I heard it. My retelling is hopefully accurate.

I found the next thing Michael said to be the most intriguing. Here's what it was:

'There’s a tension between the farmers and the pluckers.  Pluckers want to work early in the morning, because the dew is still on the leaves and they’re plumper. They’ll be paid more for the same amount of work. Farmers know that higher quality tea results from plucking late in the morning.
 Some farmers will make a compromise, and they’ll do both an early and late morning plucking. Afterwards, they’ll sell the two different batches separately; the late morning one being of lesser quality.'

Michael Coffey said that this was true of Taiwan in general, so this doesn't directly relate to Darjeeling tea. The reason I even mentioned my favourite tea growing region of India, is I've often wondered how the rainy season affects the tea grown at that time.

There you have it. Wet leaves = ok, but not necessarily the best. Waiting until later in the morning to pick the leaves makes the resulting tea even better. Well, that's great because I was hoping to sleep in anyway.

searching for tea in choclate-y places

deceptively tea-related 

Last year when I was in Nice, I wrote a post called A few Nice places for tea, where I mentioned some of the possibilities for drinking tea here in the South of France. Earlier today, I walked by the Café Indien that I wrote about then and it appears business is still thriving. There are actually a few new tea shops as well as a Salon de thé or two that I've seen and I plan to talk about some of them in the coming days. You can hardly wait, right?

Today was the first day that some tea shops finally reopened after the Sylvestre (New Year's) holiday, and Xavier and I were on a mission to find good tea-related things to report on. I'd circled the block looking for a place a year ago, and I was persistent in my desire to locate it this time around. With Xavier's help, we got much closer. But it still eluded us, and I'm hoping it's a more enthralling story than that the place simply went out of business. 

Then we scouted out a few more places, but either they weren't open till afternoon or they were obviously inappropriate. Here's the thing: just because a place is called a Salon de thé in France, that doesn't necessarily mean that it has anything to do with decent tea. It might, but it's definitely not guaranteed. 

From what I can tell, Salon de thé only means 'an indoor place to sit and have something to drink and possibly eat'. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I wish they wouldn't include tea in the name. It's not only confusing-it's also a bit disconcerting.

A place I avoided the first time I scouted out good locations was Seizième De Soupir, which to my eyes looked like the sort of place a socialite might go to take a break in the midst of her shopping. But we were starting to get desperate as the other places on the list seemed less and less suitable. Or less and less open.

So here we were:

Looks more like a chocolate shop than anything tea-related, doesn't it? Well, there was definitely some other-worldly looking chocolate creations, and when I become a chocolate blogger, I'll definitely be returning to this place.

But I can assure you...this was quite a good find to get a cup of tea, as well. You want to read more on that, don't you? This is a teablog, after all.

The tea on offer was from a company called Mighty Leaf Monte-Carlo, and I have no idea if they're connected to the Mighty Leaf Tea in the United States. Will try to find that out. The choices were: a 'Himalayan Peak' Darjeeling, an Earl Grey, a very good Hojicha, something called 'Green Tea Passion' (something to do with green tea and tropical fruit), another green tea called 'Jasmine Mist', as well as a 'Marrakesh Green Tea' (gunpowder mixed with peppermint), and finally a very radical thing called 'Coco Chai' (Rooibus with coconut, red pepper and other spices). 

What would you guess we went for? Well, we both wanted to try the Hojicha. And a good portion of our afternoon was spent talking about this tea in particular and Hojicha in general. To anyone but a tea obsessive, that sounds like a dull afternoon. For us, it was anything but boring.

Again with my translation of the French (aided massively by Xavier): 

'This green tea is quite popular in Japan. It's rather tasty due to the manner in which it is roasted. Woody with an aftertaste of hazelnut.'

Here's how the leaves looked (I thought they looked more like a highly-oxidised Oolong than a typical green tea):

The first infusion tasted nothing like a green tea, which is a common reaction to Hojicha. Only in the second infusion were we able to detect the hazelnut aftertaste.

But the whole experience? The tea, the location, the beautiful sunny day in the South of France. Would we recommend it? We definitely would. Right Xavier?






Here's how it looked under the chandelier:

it's not a tea problem, it's a Darjeeling problem

a kilo of the good stuff

A while back I talked about how impressed I was with Günter Faltin and his Teekampagne. Actually, in the US it's called the Boston Tea Campaign, and I wrote about it in tea entrepreneur. While I promised I'd come back to the topic, I couldn't talk about it in any way but theoretically. The unavoidable truth was that I'd not had the tea. No matter how good it might be, I couldn't say so without personal experience.

The thing is I have quite a bit of Darjeeling in my possession. People know this stuff is my weakness, so they send it to me. Even when I already have plenty of Darjeeling, the thought of more increases my heart rate and I'm pretty sure my eyes even dilate. I don't have a tea problem. I have a Darjeeling problem.

That's why as excited as I might be about this extraordinary company, the thought of actually going out of my way to get this stuff was really impractical. Just didn't make any sense. That is until my friend Dermot reminded me that he's been ordering this tea for nearly as long as they've been sending it. If you want to know about the Boston Tea Campaign, go take a look at their American website. Really, go check it out. The vision as well as the history of this organisation is very well explained.

Decided to take this opportunity to do a very informal interview with Dermot and ask him how he learned about Teekampagne, as well as some other tea-related things that you might enjoy reading. It's not a very German name my friend has. If you guessed that he was Irish, you'd be right. You've likely heard this, but the Irish drink a lot of tea.

His description of how tea was prepared when he was a child in Ireland would make some of you tea obsessives recoil in horror, but we have to go there. This teablog doesn't just deal with the light and pretty aspects of tea. When it's ugly, I intend to show it in all of its gory detail. If you're sensitive about steep times and such matters, you may want to avert your eyes right now.

It's actually very simple really. Add tea leaves and boiling water to teapot, let it steep, and then drink the tea till it's gone. Don't take the leaves out. They stay in the pot to the bitter end. Literally.

I asked him if the tea was a sludgy abomination by the end of the pot, he insisted that no. It never took that long to finish said pot of tea. That made sense. Not so gory. Those who looked away can come back now.

How did Dermot learn about this source of Darjeeling goodness? He said he moved into a Wohngemeinschaft (shared flat) years ago, and that they already ordered their tea from Teekampagne. Even when he moved away, his taste for this stuff had developed.

Evidently, he has a tea problem, as well.

He told a funny story about going to his doctor years ago, and devising which medications he could take while still drinking coffee. He came to the conclusion that it was easier just to switch to drinking this above-average Darjeeling than have to worry about duelling medications.

He insisted that what he liked most at the outset was Teekampagne's economical price and convenience. If it'd cost more for the fair-trade status, he truly doubted that he'd have become such a loyal customer. I got the impression that only later he realised that the quality of the tea was so noteworthy.

What about the fact that the tea changes from year to year? That each season's tea really has it's own character? 

He smiled from ear to ear, and assured me that that was in fact the very best part.

overly satisfied customer

Karakorum Cha Cha Cha

I went a bit overboard with my praise for Greg Mortenson and his incredibly popular book Three Cups of Tea last year.  It appears the incredibility of the book's popularity was more incredible than at first suspected.  There was a huge scandal about Mr Mortensen and his questionable handling of his charity in general and his books inflated sales in particular.

Before all of that, I was rather taken with the ideas he espoused in the book (still am actually) and paraphrased his main ideas here: Tea Alchemy.

Once people find out you're into tea, they start bringing you tea samples.  That's exactly what happened when a friend went to see Greg Mortensen in person.  The Karakorum Cha pictured above was on sale after his presentation, and it was purchased and brought to me.

Although I'm always grateful to receive tea that I don't know yet, I wasn't particularly impressed with this tea.  It took a long while before I figured out the way to brew it that brought out its best qualities, but I'll save all of that for the tea review I'll be writing over at the Tea Review Blog.

But the bigger questions are: Can we still support Greg Mortensen's ideas without supporting deceptive method of collecting charity?  Can we still like the tea regardless of the bizarre circumstances that it came to us?

My answer to both is: Why yes, of course.  I still like the idea of our relationship going from stranger to friendship to family while drinking several cups of tea.  It continues to be a naive but powerful idea.

And as much as I love high quality Darjeeling tea, it's a pleasure to get to know other tea from the Himalayan regions.

So, I'll talk more about how it tastes in my tea review, but you want to see the leaves, don't you?  Here they are:

Karakorum Cha Cha Cha

Drinking tea for a second wind

Arrived in Weimar for completely non-tea-related reasons, and an already long day stretched out ahead of me.  There was an Onion Festival going on over the last three days, and to be honest I couldn't wait to drop off my bags and go see what the fuss was all about.

Before rushing back out the door, I decided to quickly brew a flask of tea.  I'd been sent some Darjeeling teabags from Hampstead Tea, and this is exactly the sort of situation I've chosen to use them.  Perfect on the go.

Then there was a lot of walking.  I have a pair of eager-to-run hunting dogs (Hungarian Vizslas).  I know quite a bit about walking.  This was a demanding amount of walking even by my standards.  But I endured.  There were onions to be sampled.  Onion soup, onion bread, onion cake...if this were an onion blog, I'd have quite a blogpost for you.

But it's not.  It's a humble teablog.  So?  What do I have to say about tea?

Well, at some point the sun was shining, my legs were rebelling, and I was getting unexpectedly irritable. At that point, a park appeared before me like an oasis in the desert, and I suddenly remembered the flask of hot, delicious Darjeeling in my bag.

Quite simple when such an opportunity presents itself.  Sitting in the sunny rays and sipping that brown luscious goodness, I was once again surprised by something I've experienced again and again and again.

There's nothing that'll give me a second wind quite as nice as a cup, or even an entire flask, of tea.  It's somehow simultaneously relaxing and invigorating.  Sometimes I'm curious how that works exactly.  Today I was simply grateful.

your teablogger just before enjoyment of tea

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.'

an entirely new sense of both taste and smell

It's been interesting to go back and look at some of my earliest blogposts and see not only how different my method was then but also the dramatic difference in content. I reported on some relatively early experiences with Darjeeling when I wrote Getting my brain around Darjeeling.

I mentioned an interview with a tea grower called Ashok Kumar Lohia and his attempt to explain what makes Darjeeling tea different from all others. I liked his musings so much that I'll actually quote what I said about it way back then:

The last thing I want to mention is how the interview began. He was asked why Darjeeling tea was so special. So different from other teas. His answer was that because the tea was grown so high in the mountains in the shadow of the Himalayas that there was something mystical about it. That the soil and the air was certainly crucial, but that the god Shiva lived there and his spirit affected the tea. It's easy for me to dismiss that part, but then he said that the people who actually tend to the tea have an important impact on the way every cup of tea turns out. That growing tea takes a patience and dedication that has been honed for generations.

I'm sitting here on a very humid rainy day drinking a cup of Darjeeling Singbulli and I'm contemplating how my tastes have changed. This very delicious second flush is rather good, but it's quite strong and possibly a little overbearing. Early on, I'd have veered away from a first flush because to my taste there simply wasn't enough there to taste. That was then. It's as if I've grown an entirely new sense of both taste and smell.

Don't get me wrong. This has both a floral and citrus taste that I love in good Darjeelings. The muskatel is bold and tasty. But I'm smiling to myself that there was a time I'd want more boldness. Maybe a hammer blow of it. My tongue is begging me to brew a light and delicate first flush Darjeeling next to balance all of this power.

I might just do that.

Here's a blogpost where I went into more detail about Darjeeling first or second flush?

that wet earth smell

Am on a bit of a blogging tear right now, but it's hard not to be when there's so much going on around here. There was a nice mix of sightseeing and tea drinking today, but I wanted to quickly talk about a tea that Xavier brought along with him.

It's a green tea from China that he got as a sample from Le Palais des Thés, which is a tea seller we both like quite a bit. The tea's called Gu Zhang Mao Jian, and the package says that it has, 'the aroma of wet earth after a storm that is so popular in China.'

We spent an inordinate amount of time trying to detect that wet earth smell. But now that I have a bit more time to think about it, I wonder if the Chinese really have such a fondness for this scent of damp soil. If so, why?


But enough about that. Here's how the leaves looked before they got all earthy wet:

I thought it looked almost like a Darjeeling, but it tasted like anything but.




The first infusion was nice but alas, as you might've expected, no wet earth smell. Maybe it'd materialise upon further brewings (it didn't). There was a freshness to this Gu Zhang Mao Jian that I almost want to call grassy. Nothing like a Japanese Sencha, but very vegetal.

There was something that almost tasted of asparagus in there, and that sent us down the rather confusing yet enjoyable path of finding the French word for asparagus (it's asperge by the way). The asparagus-like taste only became stronger on the second infusion.

The smell of the leaves afterwards was so delicious. Almost wanted to go search for something about cooking with green tea leaves. Almost, but not quite.


Here's how the leaves looked after the thorough workout we gave them:

Unfortunately, you can't smell the asparagus in a photo. Use your imagination, ok?




There'll be plenty more about the weekend that all these tea people came to visit, but I wanted to include this tea review before things got under way in earnest. There will be a bit of earnestness, after all. You don't believe a word I'm saying, do you?

Who would put milk in their Darjeeling tea?

There was a lively discussion this morning about polluting Darjeeling tea with milk. Robert Godden (you might know him as The_Devotea over on twitter) mentioned in passing that his wife insisted on drinking her Darjeeling with milk and sugar. It's Australia. They don't necessarily stand on convention in the distant reaches of civilisation.

For a few brief moments we had a Beasts of Brewdom situation. Almost immediately after the offhand remark about milk and sugar in Darjeeling, there was shock and dismay coming from up in Portland, Oregon. Lazy Literatus, who's also known by his given name Geoff Norman, could be heard spitting up his tea upon hearing how the Darjeeling was being mishandled.

Well at this point, another Australian (Verity Fisher also known as @joiedetea) quietly admitted that she'd uncharacteristically added milk to her Darjeeling that morning because she'd over-steeped her tea and the milk cut down on the bitterness. I was worried Geoff might have an aneurism at this point. She assured him that it wouldn't happen again, but I'm not entirely sure he believed her. Only time will tell.

I have an Irish friend who's been ordering Darjeeling in bulk for decades from the Tee Kampagne, and he's been putting milk in his tea since he was small. Or smaller. He wouldn't give a damn what these tea obsessives on twitter thought about how he took his tea. He doesn't idealise this high mountain delicacy like we do. It's simply another black tea for him. Simple.

So what about you? Are you more like Geoff, whose precarious health status seems to have recovered from the original shock, or me even? Would you sooner pour used motor oil in your Darjeeling than destroy it with moo juice?

Or are you a bit of a Philistine on the whole 'milk in my Darjeeling' debate? It's just tea, after all.

the 'best tea'?

Was asked by a friend today what the 'best tea' was. What a question, eh? But I love a good debate. And blog comments. In case I've been unclear in the past, I really really like blog comments. So here's my not-so-humble answer. I wonder how the rest of you might respond.

Many teabloggers focus on green and/or Oolong tea, but as much as I like them, I've focused more on black tea. Most tea sellers in Germany make their own unique Ostfriesen Blend that is often a mix of strong, malty Assam and a Chinese Keemun (and maybe an Indian Nilgiri). If I had to choose my favourite non-single estate tea, it'd be one of those specialty blends.

But if it's brands we're talking about, the tastiest and most consistent tea I've found is 'Yorkshire Gold' made by Taylors of Harrogate. But that's only if we're talking about black tea blends.

I'd say the best non-green/Oolong tea, in my opinion, is still a single estate Darjeeling (to be truly accurate, most 'black' Darjeeling is really only 90% oxidised, so it's actually Oolong). I like stronger tea, so I enjoy second as well as first flush Darjeeling.

But the best brand? If you're buying from a seller that can tell you on which estate a Darjeeling was grown, then the likelihood is that it'll be better than something labeled simply as 'Darjeeling'. The estimation is that 40,000 tonnes of Darjeeling are sold worldwide, while only 10,000 tonnes are grown. Logically, one isn't always entirely sure that purchased Darjeeling was actually grown there.

Again, I'm very grateful for the question. Clearly the answer you'll get is entirely objective. I like thinking about how to make loose-leaf tea drinking more attractive. If I were a tea snob, it'd be the worst way of going about the whole thing.

What about you other tea obsessives? When someone asks you what the 'best tea' is, what might you say? I know on the face of it, it's an impossible question. But please jump in and claim your stake on this issue.

Did I mention that blog comments are encouraged?

dying of tea drinking

'King Gustav III (1746-92), determined to prove coffee was a poison, ordered a convicted murderer to drink coffee every day until he died. In an attempt to do things scientifically, he ordered another murderer to drink tea daily, as a control, and appointed two doctors to oversee the experiment and report on which prisoner died first. Unfortunately, both doctors died and Gustav III was murdered before either prisoner succumbed. The two prisoners enjoyed, or at least endured, a long life until the tea drinker finally succumbed first at the age of eighty-three.'
(source: The World of Caffeine p.93)

Have been thinking about prohibitions of many kinds lately, and it might surprise you to know that European leaders didn't always see the merits of caffeine consumption. For some reason coffee got the brunt of this over the years. It was a dangerous beverage.

I wonder what it must've been like to be one of these prisoners forced to play guinea pig and drink these exotic liqueurs...as punishment. If I were either one of them, but especially the tea drinking one, I'm not sure how easily I'd be able to deceive my torturers. Right?

Even if it was sub-quality tea, and I'm assuming it wasn't first flush Darjeeling, the ordeal of being forced to drink tea daily would be a welcome respite from the drudgery of prison life. If they got the idea that I was enjoying it, I'm sure the doctors might feel obligated to find an unhappier subject.

So, there I am staring over at my coffee drinking colleague. We both make as if this is really the worst misfortune that could ever befall such poor creatures such as we. But we're smiling inside. We guinea pigs.

nostalgia for a place I've never been

I'll start out with a disclaimer. Bavaria is nothing like Darjeeling. Not at all. Not that I've been to Darjeeling. Not yet anyway. I'll go there one day. The more I read/hear about the mountainous region of northeastern India and its mystical air and bountiful soil, the more I desperately want to see it for myself.

So, instead I've been here in the Bavarian Alps for most of the last two weeks, and it's rained more than it hasn't. It's beautiful up here whether it's raining or not, but I love hiking and this torrential rain has definitely limited my opportunities to go up the mountain.

I was sitting here this afternoon, staring out the window at yet another dark and heavy cloud...I wondered to myself, 'What's the perfect tea for this weather?' Well, the mountain air and relentless rain is very similar to what I know of Darjeeling.

I've written quite a lot about Darjeeling in these pages, but here's one of the posts I liked the most. Actually, the comments/discussion after the post is what I liked most of all. Check them out: soil from which it came.

Had a few infusions of the Singell Estate first flush that I wrote about in the previous post. As good as it was down in the Bavarian capitol, it was somehow even more delicious up here at the higher altitude.

I somehow feel nostalgia for a place I've never been. Just thinking about is making me thirsty.

finally a cup of first flush

I wrote a while back about Flugtee and the way some German tea shops market the freshest Darjeeling. Here's what I said back then: 'flown tea' nine months too late.

I write about teashops when I travel. Love to find obscure, out-of-the-way places to either drink tea or purchase it. But I don't spend much time talking about the tea establishments in my immediate surroundings. Now that I'm getting to know more German tea fanatics/teabloggers, I feel I should mention the places I go for tea.

That's where the Flugtee comes in. I passed the Tee Gallerie the other day and saw a sign in the window announcing the freshest, right-off-the-plane selection of first flush. I was too curious not to go in and have a look.

The teaseller, Thomas Olmesdahl, is always very helpful, but as soon as I mentioned what I was there for, he couldn't hide his enthusiasm. He showed me quite a selection of wonderfully fragrant teas. One smelled of flowers and another of asparagus. Might not sound so great, but I've been pondering the scent of the asparagus-smelling tea since then. I really might have to break down and go get it.

What I did get was a Darjeeling Singell, which I'll talk about more in a later post, but suffice it to say that this is unquestionably a step above the Darjeeling that's been sitting on shelves since last year. The leaves smell like they've just been plucked (I guess that's the point of spending more for this stuff) and there's no question that this tea can be infused a second time.

Like I say, I'm going to get at least one other first flush tea and make a taste comparison. This isn't the last you'll hear of this 'flown tea'.

blindingly optimistic

I can feel my sense of taste coming back to me. For a few days there, I was drinking really strong (even bad tea) and getting nothing but a inconsequential jolt of caffeine. It was often loaded with Vitamin C and obscene quantities of honey, and I could barely tell. The consistency of the tea was a bit sludgier, so I guess the texture was noticeably different. But for a tea lover, having this sort of cold was the worst sort of punishment.

So here I am back in the saddle. There was plenty of Oolong, as well as a light, floral Darjeeling. It's so nice to stop coughing and sit down with a pot of tea and the paper. I stare off and think to myself, 'My goodness, I'm glad I don't talk about politics in my tea blog.'

There are incomprehensible things going on in the world, but here I am sipping on my Pasir Nangka Java. I wonder about another American politician making questionable choices, but I'm more embarrassed by the maelstrom of coverage it gets. Is any of it really necessary? Sometimes after reading an article about all of this I wish I could scrape the information away from my polluted eyeballs.

Instead I take another sip of tea and remind myself that a Bavarian politician had a love-child in Berlin several years ago. Of course, the press had a field day. They hunted the woman and her baby down and there was plenty of hand-wringing all around. Well-meaning columnists pondered whether he could keep his rather elevated position in the German political system.

Good thing this teablog's not about politics, huh?

So, I'm reminded of an article I read in Time this last week. The article was called Optimism Bias, and gave me plenty to think about.




Very roughly summarised, it said that despite all evidence that'd lead one to be morbidly depressed about the state of everything, we're hard-wired to believe things are going to turn out blindingly well. A losing streak has to end at some point. The storm was yesterday, and this is the first day of the rest of your life.






I don't know about all of that. But as I drain the last of this pot of tea, I weigh my options for the next tea I'll brew. Maybe there is something to this optimism, after all.

from a humble tea company

The last few mornings have started with an Assam Sephinjuri, which I adore. I wrote about this tea here last year, before I very lightly mentioned the issue of fair-trade and sustainability.

My tea supplier in Hamburg says this is an ideal tea for the morning. I've certainly been following his advice. Every morning, as I said. No idea why I like this tea so much. It's not nearly as expensive as an Assam from Mangalam or Hatamari, but there's something simple about it that really pleases me.

Says it's a first flush as well. Had no idea Assam was divided into categories of flushes like Darjeeling, but why not.

Did a rudimentary search to see what I could find out about this region of tea growing in Assam, and I found about Camellia Plc, which started out as The Sephinjuri Bheel Tea Company Limited. I'm certainly not doing any advertising for this company (I don't know any more about them than what they say on their website), but I do like the idea of a modern company involved in many things that started out as a tea company.

But now that I look at it in a bit more detail, they're involved in Agriculture & Horticulture; Engineering & Manufacturing; Food Storage & Distribution; as well as Private Banking & Financial Services. Goodness...that's quite a variety of things, eh?

Wonder what the founders of the tea company would think if they saw all of that today. They'd likely be very proud.

like a Cheshire Cat

I've had several whole day meetings with some clients, and something very curious happened during the coffee break each day. My tea was brewed and carried to the office in two well-worn flasks. It had to last me through the entire day, so I rationed it very carefully. By the late afternoon, I still had at least one very delicious cup of Darjeeling to savour.

And then it happened.

The break was announced, some headed for the toilets, others went outside to smoke, and one guy broke out his tea stash. I wish I could report that he was a loose-leaf tea drinker. Alas, it was a plastic Ziploc bag with a variety of bagged tea.

Nevertheless. The assortment was carefully arranged. Others were curious what his bag o' tea selection offered and gladly accepted his invitation to pull out their choice of teabag. Someone put on the kettle and soon thereafter teabags were submerged in nearly boiling water.

'Wait just a minute', I hear some of you say. 'You're a tea snob, right? No teabags for you. Why did this put such a ridiculous smile on your face?'

Well, of course loose-leaf tea is the goal. It's what I'm sure people would insist on if they knew how far superior the quality of tea almost always is when it's loose-leaf. We all know the arguments for rejecting teabags. But this was tea (no matter how substandard) being fully enjoyed by a group of people who very likely would've otherwise had yet another cup of overheated coffee. These were my people.

Did I try to lure them over to the leaf-side? I did not. I sipped my perfect cup of Darjeeling and smiled like a Cheshire Cat and took in a deep breath.

And then I let it out. Still smiling.

tea entrepreneur

Some weeks ago, Neil from Neil's Yard told me a story that I'm sure I've heard before but not in such detail. The way he explained it was that there was a business professor in Berlin who wanted to show his students an example of entrepreneurship. He also happened to really enjoy drinking tea. Darjeeling tea to be exact.

If you've read even a little of my blog, you know that this story quickly got my attention. The professor's name was Günter Faltin and his company is called Teekampagne. He was fascinated with how inexpensive products were in their country of origin, so he resolved to sell Darjeeling tea in bulk with nearly no markup. He was offering fair-trade long before it was the done thing. Here's how he describes how his rationale for not charging more for fair-trade:

'The education reformer Ivan Illich who I got to know in the early 1980s, used to argue vehemently against charging extra for fair trade. In this practice, he argued, the customer pays not only for the product but also contributes to an invisible “charity box,” a modern version of buying “indulgences” (paying money to save your soul) – a trade that Martin Luther was already inveighing against. Although charity has some positive effects, it does NOT challenge the business models that put pressure on commodity prices in exporting countries and inflate prices for consumers at the other end. Since it does not represent a systemic change of business practices, it is also not sustainable: it may stop when the charitable giver’s attention is drawn to
another urgent need. We practice fair trade with a different method: we do not charge the consumer so that we can feel good about ourselves; instead, we challenge costly conventions, and the savings benefit everyone. '

That's just one interesting point he makes in a lengthy article called “Citizen Entrepreneurship” for a Meaningful Life. There's enough here to make several meaty blogposts, which I intend to write, but I wanted to quickly introduce him to those of you who might not have heard of him or his company yet. Teekampagne is Germany's largest mail order tea company, as well as the biggest Darjeeling importer in the world.

If you're in the US, you might know his company as Boston Tea Campaign. In Japan, it's called Teeidee. Can't wait to dig in deeper to this guy's ideas.

this tea lark

Lately, I've been writing a lot about attracting people to loose-leaf tea, and I've been pondering how difficult it is to convince someone not only to eschew teabags, but to order tea online, as well. I'm sure those of us obsessed with tea will continue to see the benefits of ordering tea from as wide a variety of places as possible. And the possibilities with the internet are vast.

But how about someone who's just not that far along on the tea journey? Why not just send him to the shops for whatever loose-leaf tea he encounters? Yes, why not?

One solution to this I've found is to assess what teas are available in the shops. Have recently been introduced to Hampstead Tea, and it's exactly because of them that I bring up the subject of what tea you can easily obtain.

Well, I went into an Alnatura shop here in Munich, and found these teas alongside the Alnatura brand. I like the idea that if someone asks where to get decent tea, that this is an option.

And calling this tea decent is an understatement. Seems all of their Darjeeling is grown in the Makaibari Tea Garden, which is a well-known and respected source.

I'm so excited about the coming year's first flush teas, that I was thrilled to try theirs (from last year). Here's how it's described on their site: Hampstead Tea first flush. And here's what the leaves look like:



The tips are a much brighter yellow than the photo shows. The smell of the leaves was so delicious as I broke open the bag. This isn't a proper teanote, but there was a wonderful butter taste to this tea. I've been alternating between this and the tea that they simply call Darjeeling all week. Here's how it's described: Hampstead Tea Darjeeling.

So Neil from Neil's Yard came over last night and we went through some tea he had, as well as one of mine. I'm going to write about what he had to offer another time, but it was this Hampstead Tea Darjeeling that he liked so much. The muscatel and fruit tones are definitely there, but Neil said he could even detect a hint of vanilla.

I love it that this guy who was measuring his steeping times with how long it took to smoke a cigarette a few weeks ago is already noticing these subtle flavours. This tea lark just gets better and better, doesn't it?

over to the leaf-side

Even though I enjoy drinking green tea and Oolong fascinates me the more I learn about it, I've noticed that most tea bloggers have already cornered the market over in the semi-oxidised and not-at-all-oxidised categories of tea. Not that no-one writes about black tea, but to me it seems that in our world of the tea obsessed, darker tea sometimes gets short-changed.

This is something I like to focus on. What tea might entice a coffee drinker? If someone only knows teabags or herbal tea, what could I say to lure them over to the leaf-side? Those questions are normally answered with malty Assams or light Ceylons. Maybe even an Indonesian or Kenyan black tea for those accustomed to sipping the liquor of the Arabica bean.

But there's a tea that I've found myself more and more drawn to the longer I research and write about tea. I've written at length on this blog about being drawn to Darjeeling tea. I did a search through my old blogposts on the subject, and I really have written the most about these teas. Bordering on obsessive I've been.

In the early days I tried these teas from multiple estates, and my taste hadn't developed enough to appreciate tea that I tried from the first flush. Slowly, as I tried more and more tea, I developed an appreciation even for these teas. I'm excited to try the newest crop of them this year as they come out.

The tea that's rushed back at the earliest possible moment is sold as Flugtee, and Germans pay a hefty price for the opportunity. I try to remember what it's like for someone new to tea, who is introduced to all of these exotic names and tea specific terminology. It's overwhelming.

So, you've heard about Darjeeling being nice in the afternoon, and the selection you read about online only baffles you. Do you just buy the simplest generic Darjeeling teabags you happen upon in the supermarket?

In my experience, that's not going to persuade anyone to drink different tea. Most teabags that're called Darjeeling might as well just say 'black tea' on them. There's hardly any relation between this and the real loose-leaf tea that I'm talking about.

What's your experience with this? Have you attempted to sway anyone to drink loose-leaf tea with anything other than the best quality? Has your taste changed, so that you're surprised at the tea you used to think was so tasty?