tea for every (phlegmy) situation

(a very phlegmatic statue in Munich)

There's been a lot of talk about phlegmatic people in my little world lately, and although I've attempted to portray myself as such, I'm not actually allergic to anything that I know of. That was the meaning of the word phlegmatic that was used. Someone with a lot of phlegm. Someone whose allergies had got the better of him or her (I think it was a her in this case).

I was thinking of the Four Temperaments meaning of phlegmatic. The one that's '...receptive and shy and often prefer stability to uncertainty and change...', but then I realised that the phlegmatic person in question was coughing and wheezing and generally being a nuisance in the office. Her kindness was not the problem here.

I should really go back to the beginning of this story. Lisa Galaviz (@lgalaviz) describes it all rather concisely in her blogpost How to Create Drama in your Life and Workplace. And if you got down to the bottom of the post, you know as well as I do that Cara in Cleveland (@zippy219) won Drama Day and did so rather convincingly.

So the question now is: What tea is best to mask the taste of Allegra? Apparently it's got quite a bitter taste, and we don't want it to be detected.

I asked Erik Kennedy (@thetearooms) what tea he would recommend for the job. I asked him partially because he's a very knowledgeable chap, but also because he was there. 99% of life is showing up. Let that be a lesson to you.

His answer? A nice Japanese Sencha. Strong enough that you won't even notice the bitter medicine-y taste of the Antihistamine. He actually didn't specify whether the Sencha should come from Japan or China, but I know some of you loathe Japanese tea as a general rule. It's my responsibility to mention it at every opportunity.

Right after his wonderful recommendation, Erik said that for this purpose he'd actually use fruit juice. But this isn't a fruit juice blog. You'll have to go somewhere else for that sort of information. This is a tea blog. We're giving unsuspecting people medication that they may or may not need in their tea, thank you.

One last thing before I leave you and go brew some more tea sans medicine. There's been quite a lot of traffic lately to my teablog from some unsavoury countries and places. I don't know exactly what you're doing here, but it better be tea-related. No funny business, eh? You hear that Newfoundland and Labrador? Don't make me come over there.

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?

virtuous Sencha

Have been on a bit of a Japanese Sencha bender of late, and was doing some reading about the way it's processed. Actually, my first query as I trudged through page after page of what the search engine spit out at me was whether Japan Sencha Fuji was a real tea name or something a tea seller created. Although I really like this tea that has the name Fuji on the package, it seemed like too generic a name. Turns out my assumption was wrong. It's a real tea name.

If you like vegetal, dare I say grassy, Japanese green tea, this is a really nice one.

But another thing I happened upon as the Sencha sites flew by my head, were the Ten Virtues of Tea. I've seen these before and knew that at some point I'd drag them over here to my blog. I'm going to take a few minutes and ponder whether tea does these things for me. First a list of the virtues:


It has the blessing of all deities.
It promotes filial piety.
It drives away evil spirits.
It banishes drowsiness.
It keeps the five internal organs in harmony.
It wards off disease.
It strengthens friendship.
It disciplines body and mind.
It destroys all passions.
It gives a peaceful death.

'All the deities'? Really? All the minor and major ones? This isn't starting well. I can't even fathom the parameters of this one. Whichever deities there are or aren't however, I can definitely accept that they'd give tea their blessing.

What on earth is 'filial piety'? Do I really need to be pious toward my brother? If I even tried this one, it'd make my brother very uncomfortable.

I can without any reservations agree that tea drives away the 'evil spirits'. There. I sorted that one nicely, didn't I?

Tea lessens drowsiness, but 'banishes' it? Maybe this one was lost in translation. It does give one a nice gentle lift, and it often does so in the most opportune moments.

But I'm a little uncomfortable with the 'five internal organs'? I'm no whiz at physiology, but I'm certain that my internal organs number more than five. So which five does tea keep in harmony? This one makes me uncomfortable.

There are tons of websites that promise the health benefits of tea. I'm not going to even try to open that Pandora's Box. I can honestly say that I feel better when I drink tea, but that's the simplest sort of empiricism. I wouldn't be surprised if it does 'ward off disease', but I'm not going to attempt to prove it.

But the next one I like the most. Tea definitely 'strengthens friendship'. Assuming those friends like tea. In my experience, friendship needs a great deal of time. Drinking tea slows me down. I'm sure it improves my ability to be a better friend.

The one about 'disciplines mind and body' is another virtue that I've undeniably experienced. Sometimes when I feel I just cannot continue the task at hand, I pour a cup, take the deepest of breaths, and after a few sips, it's as if the fire of life has been blown back into me. Both mind and body-back on track.

Not quite ready for either my passions to be destroyed or my death to be peaceful. The former might sound better if it were passions tempered instead, while the latter sounds fine as long as it's off in the distance. A 'peaceful death' far, far away.

There are your Ten Virtues of Tea. They were allegedly brought to Japan by Eisai, a Zen monk, when he delivered the original seeds from the Chinese tea plant. I try to imagine greeting Eisai the monk as he arrived in Japan. First the seeds and then the list of virtues. I like to think I'd waste no time at all planting those seeds and tending the plant as virtuously as possibly.

turtle pee

It's a rainy Saturday evening after weeks of unbearably hot weather. I'm drinking a simple Bancha tea, and listening to the rain pitter patter on the window.

The little bit of research I've done about this tea is that it's a simpler/coarser form of Sencha, but even if this is a lower grade tea, I really like the way it tastes. It's grassy and rather bitter. But the second and third infusions lose the bitterness while keeping the flavour.

Years ago, someone told me that the taste of green tea was what they assumed turtle pee would taste like. It was on a trip to Japan, and she had one sip of green tea, decided she didn't like it, and from then on referred to it as turtle pee.

Only on reflection did I realise I should've asked her how she knew how terrapin urine tasted, but I think it was just the worst thing she could think of to compare it to. At least that's how I remember it.

But somehow over time because I love the taste of green tea more and more, I've started to imagine that maybe turtle urine isn't that bad. I know that it's madness, but that's where my thoughts take me this evening.

Read a book years ago by Rudolfo Anaya called Tortugas in which the waters from Turtle Mountain healed the wounded protagonist. The characters in the book saw the waters that came from the mountain as healing and I think they also referred to the waters as turtle pee.

Regenerative green tea. Low quality Bancha or not, this is delicious.