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:

add tea preparation to her feminine wiles

she can make me tea anytime she likes

Xavier showed up the other day with a book in tow. He asked, 'How good is your French?' and in retrospect, I suppose it's not as good as the impression I gave him it was. Although I understood most of what I was reading, my translation is questionable enough that I had to double check it with him.


The book is Le thé dans l'encrier, which is nicely displayed here: Grillon du foyer. And immediately I was drawn to an essay about Honoré de Balzac and the seduction of tea. It talks specifically about one of his later books La Cousine Bette and what sort of tea drinker Balzac was in reality. 


The essay starts with a Chinese proverb which has been translated from the original Chinese to French to German and finally to English, but here it is:

'You can forgive a murder, but never a mistake while preparing tea.'

And the author (Gilles Brochard) discusses two sorts of people when it comes to tea drinking. Again with my pigeon translation: 

'I want to give them the opportunity to express themselves. We shouldn't confuse those who can or will be entirely seduced by tea for the entirety of their life and then those who alternate between both coffee and tea. I believe that Balzac was in the second category.'

This is a curious topic on which I find tea drinkers go back and forth. Some of us are even a bit hesitant admit that they even drink coffee. Some tea drinkers have never had coffee or when they have they simply didn't enjoy it.


Why is this even a topic, right? If you like drinking both coffee and tea, why should you have to somehow hide it? Not with me you don't. There's been some enjoyable joking in my circle of acquaintances about how drinkers of the bean and the those drinking of the leaf can live in some sort of harmony. From my perspective, I certainly cannot see why we can't.


Even more interesting was the Cousine Bette translation that I found online. I've gone on at length about how men shouldn't feel ashamed drinking tea in masculine tea drinking. The masculinity of drinking tea continues to attract not only the most readers but also the most comments on this and other teablogs. Even with the assumptions and stereotypes of women and tea drinking, I was intrigued by how Balzac handled the topic.

'Just then, Valérie herself brought Steinbock a cup of tea. This was more than a mark of attention; it was a special favour. There is a whole language in the way a woman performs that office, and women are well aware of this. And so it is interesting to study their movements, their gestures, their looks, and the pitch and intonation of their voices, when they perform this apparently simple act of courtesy.      

From the question, 'Do you drink tea?' 'Would you like some tea?' 'A cup of tea?' asked coldly, and the order to the nymph presiding over the tea-urn to bring it, to the eloquent poem of the odalisque coming from the tea-table, cup in hand, and offering it submissively to her heart's pasha, in a caressing voice and with a look full of voluptuous promise...'

(source & more about Cousine Bette at Google Livres)


Not only that she asks 'Do you drink tea?', but it's the manner in which she asks it. She may add tea preparation to her list of feminine wiles. I looked up the definition of wiles to make certain that it doesn't always have a negative/sinister connotation. It doesn't. Well, it doesn't necessarily have to.


Is the entire question of the femininity of tea drinking or tea serving completely outdated? Am I going to get a lot of feminist blowback for even asking if a discussion can be made of this?


If we were talking about the book itself, the theme of tea drinking would hardly come up in discussing Cousine Bette. It's a bit of a stretch for me to even write an entire blogpost about it. This text is a blend of a morality tale full of vice and salaciousness and a study of mid-19th century Paris society and culture.


Having already excused myself for stretching this into a theme, is there such a thing as feminine tea drinking? Is it even worth mentioning?


(update: here's something that @elaine4queen sent me as a response to this post: Catherine of Braganza. I'm pretty sure I saw something on either Leafbox Tea or Tea Trade about her a while back, but it's good to be reminded of this again.)

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. 

you can brew tea in cold water?

that's Tie Guan Yin on the left and Silver Needle on the right

This is really a post for summertime. So all of you in the Southern Hemisphere will be happy. The rest of you are probably asking, 'Why not wait until it's seasonally appropriate? What's the story on a summer topic in the opening days of winter?' Well, in my defence, I started thinking about this in summer. And if I try to wait for the right time, I just might forget.

Over the summer, I read people talking about cold-brewing tea. Putting leaves in cold (not remotely warm) water and waiting until the leaves naturally steep into some delicious goodness. You can do that? It works? I'm here to tell you that it does.

Those of you that already know this are going to think it's a non-story. Of course it does. Why wouldn't it? Now I know that...but it was somehow beyond my understanding. My mother made sun tea when I was a child. In her case it was tea bags in a container of water that was set out in the sun. After several hours, the warmth of the sun had brewed up a really strong tea (that people ruined with ice cubes and various forms of sweetener), but that's because of the heat. Right?

If you want to make tea, you need either hot water or you need to add some sort of heat. Isn't that correct?

Not necessarily. Why have I been sitting on this since summer? Well, it's simple actually. I had to try it. I had to know it was true before I went off half-cocked about it (I know that's not my normal way-I'm well-known for going off half-cocked). And once I got started experimenting with cold-brewing tea, I couldn't stop. It became a sort of obsession.

That's why it was so timely when in the comments of a recent post Tea Trade Peter mentioned drinking white tea cold. Here's how he said it:

'Let’s start with why does tea have to be drunk hot? I like white tea, but when it is hot, I find that I cannot appreciate the flavors, but when it is just warm, or at a temperature just slightly above the room temperature so you still get the aromatics (though, I think they still come through at room temp). I’ve gotten to the point where I’d rather let my white tea cool off before I drink it, it just seems better that way.'

Now, he's talking about brewing it hot and letting it cool. It's not the same thing. But when I read what he'd written, I had unintentionally been doing exactly that with various white teas. After I got as much out of the leaves as I could with hot water, I went on and soaked those same leaves in cold water overnight. With astounding results.

It's not the same as tea brewed with hot water. There are times when the result is something like faintly-scented water. It's subtle...a lot like what I've recently written about white tea in general. There are also times that I've left leaves in cool water, forgotten about them entirely, and after a day or so, the resulting tea was as strong and flavourful as any hot-brewed concoction.

Here, let's move in a little for a closer look:

Don't really drink the leaves, ok? Pour these through some sort of filter.

My question is: Have you tried this? What were your results? Though I don't think I'd do this with any black tea, it's had unbelievable results with Oolong, green tea, and white tea. How about you? Any experience?

brain is on holiday with the rest of me

Christmas tree in front of the Neues Rathaus in Munich

Don't think I did any sort of Christmas post last year, and I'm not sure why. For one thing, they really celebrate Advent here in Germany right up until Christmas Eve. The tree typically doesn't even go up until the 24th. Then you keep it up for the whole Twelve Days of Christmas. It's how things are done.

What tea-related thing am I up to for these festive days? Well, for the most part my tea consumption carries on exactly as it always does. But I made a mince pie earlier and as it was nearly ready, I thought to myself, 'Which tea would go well with this?'

Then I remembered...the first Rooibus I was introduced to was during the holidays. I always associate these festive times with this Rooibus with caramel pieces. Actually, I like it so much on occasion that I often have a little package of it sitting waiting for me year-round.

It's also one of those things I reach for when I have a sore throat and want to add a lot of honey to my mug. You don't think I'm going to ruin a cup of genuine tea for that, do you? Absolutely not.

But here I am not remotely ill, nibbling on a piece of mince pie, and sipping away at this caramel-smelling concoction. I do like the taste of Rooibus. It is a nice change every once in a while.

I've been reading limitless articles and blogposts about the holidays, and to be perfectly frank, as nice as they all are, I just can't bring myself to pile this one on top of them.

I was really touched by Geoff Norman's Tea Gift Gratitude, and I really racked my brain trying to think of some ideas to help Rachel Carter manage to review all of her tea samples. You can read about it in Vacation, Resting, Relaxing, Tea Drinking, Tea Reviewing, Need Your Ideas-Please, and if you have any thoughts on that, please let her know. It's like my problem solving brain is on holiday with the rest of me.

Have just realised my mug of honey-soaked goodness has run dry. Before I go replenish my Rooibus, I'll wish you all a safe and peaceful Yuletide.

give us a slug of that Builder's Tea, yeah?

imagine the tea these builders might've brewed

A friend recently mentioned Builder's Tea to me, and I realised that I've never bothered writing about this before. It's not common parlance outside of Britain (not that I'm aware of), but it's such an evocative term. Here's what Wikipedia says about Builder's Tea.

It describes so brilliantly that milky, sugary sludge of black tea that your everyday typical British construction worker carries to the building site in his flask everyday. Sure, some drink it without milk and even more rare is a flask filled with Builder's Tea that has no sugar. The stuff is too strong. Too bitter.

You can drink it black, but it can't be good for you.

If you didn't have a look at Tea Trade Peter's account of drinking insanely strong black tea in Kosovo while he was serving in the army, do yourself a favour. Go read it. You can find it at:

Russian prison tea, Outpost Terminator and me

Go ahead and look now. I'll wait while you're gone. It's ok. I have time.

Doesn't that sound enticing and dangerous and delicious all at the same time?

I love these sorts of tea that people drink in such an unassuming manner. A little like the Grandpa Tea that I wrote about months ago. Throw leaves in a pot, add boiling water, wait a bit, drink it down, repeat with the same leaves ad infinitum.

You could be drinking all day from the same pinch of leaves if you do it right. Doesn't that sound great? It's the simplicity that gets me every time. Just me, some decent tea leaves and boiling hot water. What more could you want?

The Prison and the Cult of Tea

Not sure exactly what I can say about the death of Vaclav Havel, but I do try to keep this blog topical. What on earth does that have to do with tea? Well, I'll let him explain it in his own words (translated of course-I don't speak Czech, do you?) Here's what the late playwright had to say about drinking of the leaf: 

'When I was outside, I didn't understand the cult of tea that exists in prison, but I wasn't here long before grasping its significance and succumbing to it myself. . . . Tea, it seems to me, becomes a kind of material symbol of freedom here: (a) it is in effect the only fare that one can prepare oneself, and thus freely: when and how I make it is entirely up to me. In the preparation of it, I realize myself as a free being, as it were, capable of looking after myself. (b) Tea - as a sign of private relaxation, of a brief pause in the midst of the hubbub, of rumination and private contemplation - functions as the external, material attribute of a certain unbridling of the spirit and thus as a companion in moments of focused inner freedom. (c) The world of freedom considered as leisure time is represented by tea in the opposite - in the extroverted and therefore the social - sense: sitting down to a cup of tea here is a substitute for the world of bars, wine rooms, parties, binges, social life, in other words again, something you choose yourself and in which you realize your freedom in social terms. . . . I drink it every day. . . . I look forward to it, and consuming it (which I schedule carefully, so it does not become a formless and random activity) is an extremely important component in my daily ''self-care'' program. From ''Letters to Olga.'' '

(source: The New York Times 8 May 1998 from an article by Michael Scammel called The Prison and the Cult of Tea)

It turns out that this is referenced multiple places on the web, but I found it thanks to Thomas Kaspar, whose a member of the Facebook group 'Teefreunde'. He has an intriguing teablog Siam Teas, which if you're not careful, you might lose an inordinate amount of time perusing.