http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/index/ en alnedra.mofi@gmail.com Copyright 2010 2010-03-20T09:09:13+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/late_night_tea/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/late_night_tea/#When:12:49:31Z After attending a concert the other night at the Esplanade, my friend and I tried to avoid the post-concert rush by sitting down for tea somewhere. We came across the Cookie Museum, but were told that there were no more tables available at the rather small shop. Disappointed, we queued at a shop opposite, but a few minutes later, the waitress who had turned us away came rushing over to tell us a table had just been cleared, and were we still interested? We were, and took a nice window seat in the corner. The decor of the place was very roccoco, full of gilt, mirrors and heavily patterned fabric. The tea menu was quite impressive, with at least 2 or 3 dozen types of tea, including green and white tea. My friend ordered a Lady Grey, which she had not been able to obtain for quite a while. I ordered an infusion named Bed of Roses, which were pale rosbuds with marigold petals. The Lady Grey was impressive, the black tea a soft background to the lavender and bergamot. In successive infusions, though, the bergamot began to get stronger, and the lavender weaker, so by about the third pot, it became rather like a lowgrade Earl Grey. But kudos for the tea lasting even 2 steepings, which is fairly good for black tea. The Bed of Roses was a bit more disappointing, but I was not expecting much from a flower infusion. The rose was fairly strong in the first infusion, subsequent steepings became very weak. We also sampled a white tea named Peony Garden and a green tea named Lotus Garden. We were very taken with the Peony Garden, although they scalded the white tea with water that was too hot. The fragrance of the Peony was noticeable but still delicate enough to allow the innate fragrance of the white tea to come through. The Lotus Garden was less impressive, as the flower scent (definitely not lotus) was too strong, almost artificial. Still, I could tell that the green tea base was good, although overpowered by other fragrances. I am definitely going back to try some of the other teas, and perhaps even the cookies, of which they had a mindboggling variety. Tea, Black, Green, White 2008-12-15T12:49:31+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/savour/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/savour/#When:14:38:00Z Green tea has more recently become popular in the West because of its high anti-oxidant content (polyphenols), which is reputed to protect against a variety of ills, including heart disease and cancer. To this end, many supermarkets now stock at least a few varieties of green tea. Most green teas sold in the West are heavily flavoured with fruit or flower, largely with the intention of masking the smell of the tea. If you are used to drinking black tea, then the savoury, meaty taste of green tea is startling and may put you off. Chinese green tea and Japanese green tea are different beasts. They are similar in that heat is applied very early in processing to stop enzymes from breaking down the phenolic compounds in tea (the all-important anti-oxidant bit). In Chinese tea, the heat is applied in a hot metal pan (much like a wok), which removes some of the colour and imparts a savoury fragrance very reminiscent of meat (which comes from pyrazines and pyrroles). In Japanese tea, the heat is applied as steam, which preserves much of the grassy taste of the leaves, allows it to retain a fresh green colour even when dried, and is also responsible for the distinctive seaweed flavour of Japanese green tea (dimethyl sulphide). Tea contains a unique amino acid called theanine, which is able to cross into the brain and produce feelings of relaxation and improve cognition. Some of it breaks down to glutamic acid, which is a flavour enhancer. Tea also contains guanosine monophosphate and inosine monophosphate, which are both flavour enhancers as well, and serve to further intensify the savoury taste of green tea. Lu K, Gray M, Oliver C, Liley D, Harrison B, Bartholomeusz C, Phan K, Nathan P (2004). “The acute effects of L-theanine in comparison with alprazolam on anticipatory anxiety in humans”. Hum Psychopharmacol 19 (7): 457–65. doi:10.1002/hup.611. PMID 15378679. Haskell CF, Kennedy DO, Milne AL, Wesnes KA, Scholey AB (2008). “The effects of l-theanine, caffeine and their combination on cognition and mood”. Biol Psychol 77 (2): 113–22. Tea, Green 2008-07-18T14:38:00+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/ginseng_and_orange/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/ginseng_and_orange/#When:14:15:00Z My father’s Croatian friend recently visited us with his wife, and brought some very interesting presents. One was a pair of traditional Croatian gold earrings for my mother; another was a packet of tea for me. The tea is Ginseng tea, but on a sencha base, and with bright red slivers of orange peel mixed in as well. Truly an eclectic mix! The tea leaves are very deep green, very fresh and strongly scented. It is obviously a very fresh tea, without an brown to the leaves at all. The ginseng scent is subdued, possibly overpowered by the orange peel and the sencha itself. Some people find the scent of ginseng and sencha unpleasant, as one is quite medicinal, and the other quite raw. The addition of the orange peel balances out these flavours and makes it more familiar, making it slightly akin to the orange bergamot used in Earl Grey Tea. I’ve not yet tried the tea, as I’ve just had some teeth extracted, and am unable to drink hot liquids at the moment. But even just smelling the tea leaves makes me feel refreshed. I do look forward to trying it out soon! Tea, Green 2008-05-23T14:15:00+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/a_trip_to_chinatown/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/a_trip_to_chinatown/#When:13:27:00Z [Miss Neddy: Today another good friend of mine es el queso has kindly agreed to do an entry for me, about his trip to San Fransisco’s Chinatown. He also runs a very interesting blog What I Had For Dinner Tonight. Check it out!] I was in San Francisco’s Chinatown today, as part of a friend’s pubcrawl/gift exchange, I was on a bit of another mission, however, looking for some good tea and an infuser mug to use so I could brew less tea and re-infuse it, something alien to the American disposable teabag mentality. We started our day with dim sum at a place called the Four Seasons, where we sampled all kinds of shumai and dumplings and pot stickers. We then moved on to a series of bars, and drew names and bought three gifts for under $10 from the touristy shops around the bars while most people drank a healthy amount. Miss Neddy had suggested TenRen as a reliable place to get decent tea, I had been many years before, but not recently. The front half of the shop now sells bubble tea, which I avoided. I went straight to the back where there are shelves filled with bright brass canisters full of tea. She also suggested I try the rose green tea if I was to go, so that is what I asked for first. It was very pretty and had a magnificent floral scent, so I had the nice woman serving me pack some up. She then went right for what I wanted, the jasmine pearls, I’m still not enough of a connoisseur to really know if it was fresh and top-grade, but the color looked good to me, and the sent was magnificent. I probably bought more than I should have, but I really do enjoy it. I looked around at their tea sets and cups and didn’t see anything that really inspired me. So I went up the street to a slightly more modern looking tea shop called Vital Tealeaf, where my friend and I got roped into a tourist-special tea tasting…. which was free, so we went along with it. We sampled a lovely earthy pu’erh, a wulong that was almost as nice as the one I get from http://www.yixingxuan-teahouse.com/ [Miss Neddy: This is the Yixing Xuan Teahouse’s website, the teahouse in Singapore that I frequent] ), and one that was called Monkey Picked, although the tea server allowed that the tea was no longer picked by the monkeys. It was actually fun, and interesting, although he insulted the jasmine tea I had just bought, when my friend said it was her favorite; he likened it to considering Budweiser a good beer. Nevertheless, at the back of the shop, there was just the mug / infuser I had been looking for… so I ended up actually buying two. I still haven’t found a new teapot, but all my friends marveled at how small and delicate the standard Chinese teapot was compared to what we were used to. All in all, it was a fun summer-like day, and my tea supply has been restocked! Tea, Green, Jasmine, Tea Related 2008-04-14T13:27:00+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/japanese_teas/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/japanese_teas/#When:00:37:01Z Japanese teas are now more popular and well-known internationally than they were ten or twenty years ago. People who frequent sushi restaurants are probably familiar with sencha (煎茶), which has a distinct scent and a rich, grassy flavour. Some might find it astringent or even bitter, as sencha, in many restaurants, is often steeped with water that is too hot. Sencha goes well with food because of its strong scent and flavour, and even when paired with strongly-flavoured foods such as unagi (marinated eel) or sake (salmon) or sweet foods such as chocolate or azuki (red bean) paste, the taste of the tea fills the mouth and nose, cleansing the palate at the same time. Matcha (抹茶) is powdered green tea, usually from the same type of leaves as sencha. Aside from the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, it is not that common to encounter matcha as a drink; more often, it is used as a flavouring for ice-creams, cakes and even noodles. Cha soba (茶蕎麦 - buckwheat noodles) is often eaten cold in the summer time, and the tea flavour makes the buckwheat noodles taste even more refreshing. From a traditional Chinese medical viewpoint, the introduction of the cooling matcha helps to counter the summer heat.  Genmaicha (玄米茶 - literally “dark rice tea”) is green tea mixed with roasted rice. The rice look like peach or brown coloured buds, and give the tea a roasted, almost smoky flavour that is reminiscent of the Shuixian (水仙 - Narcissus) teas, but much lighter. Aesthetically, Genmaicha is a delight to drink, as the tea leaves mixed with the rice make a beautiful contrast between dark (leaves) and light (rice), and the colour of the tea a pale yellow, much like wulong. The most expensive Japanese green tea has to be the Gyokuro (玉露 - Jade Dew), which requires painstaking labour to maintain, harvest and process; it is a variant of sencha but is much finer. The bushes are protected from direct sunlight around 20 days before harvesting, by placing screens above the bushes that diffuse but do not entirely block out the light.  The leaves are more tender and moist due to this protection and the tea made is sweeter and greener. The colour of Gyokuro leaves are a startling jade green, ranging from a dark shade like dried seaweed to flakes of light grass green. The shape of the leaves are flat and sharp, reminiscent of Longjing. One has to be careful with Gyokuro, as it is as delicate as Biluochun; the water temperature must be fairly low (well below boiling, around 40 to 50 degrees Celsius), and more leaves (almost twice as much) are usually required than for the usual sencha.   Tea, Green 2008-02-20T00:37:01+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/jasmine_tea/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/jasmine_tea/#When:00:30:00Z The most famous floral scented tea is probably jasmine tea.  The Chinese name for jasmine tea is xiāng piàn 香片 “slivers of perfume”.  Tea leaves are placed beneath a silk screen over which is spread a layer of fresh jasmine flowers.  The tea leaves are left to absorb the floral perfume and the flowers are then discarded; cheaper teas may be made using up to three changes of flowers, but the more expensive teas may require up to nine changes of jasmine flowers.  The tea used to make jasmine tea may be white, green, wulong or black.  The dark, smokey fragrance of most black teas means that they make poor partners with the light floral fragrance of jasmine; jasmine black tea is therefore often made from poor quality leaves with little intrinsic fragrance, or tea leaves with unpleasant odours that the manufacturer hopes to mask.  Better quality jasmine teas are more usually made from green or white tea leaves whose own delicate fragrance will complement that of the jasmine.  Poor quality jasmine tea often have whole jasmine flowers mixed in with the leaves in order to deceive the ignorant: this in fact a fault and ought not to be mistaken for a sign that the tea is “genuine”.  Jasmine tea should never have whole jasmine flowers in it, because the flowers make the brew bitter. Bìtán piāoxuě 碧潭飄雪 “Snowflakes floating on a jade-green pool” is one of the most visually stunning jasmine teas available, and is best served in a clear glass bowl.  It is made with Bìluóchūn 碧螺春 “Jade spirals of spring” as a base and upon infusion with hot water, white jasmine petals float to the surface of the delicately sweet pale-green liquor.  In common with the green tea from which it is derived (see previous entry on green tea), Bitan piaoxue is extremely sensitive to water temperature, thus making it very difficult to brew correctly: water that is too cool will fail to release the fragrances of the tea, but water that is too hot produces a liquid with the flavour of used engine oil.  In common with all green teas, Bitan piaoxue also has a short shelf life of less than six months. Tea, Green, Jasmine 2008-01-21T00:30:00+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/timing/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/timing/#When:00:30:01Z Lu Yü 陸羽 introduces the medicinal uses of tea in the first chapter of the Tea Classic《茶經》：「茶之為用，味至寒，為飲最宜」 ‘As to the usage of the tea leaf, its flavour is exceedingly cooling and is best used as a beverage’.  He then proceeds to list the conditions against which it is effective, but also cautions that 「采不時．．．飲之成疾」 ‘If plucked at the wrong time…then drinking it will cause disease.’ It is not probably true that plucking tea out of season will cause disease in the drinker, but it is true that the best tea leaves are taken from the spring and autumn harvests.  Most teas (but not all) use only the youngest leaves, which are sweeter, as older leaves tend to produce a bitter and more astringent brew.  The preference for younger leaves has a number of consequences: the number of leaves harvested and frequency with which they can be harvested must both be limited to avoid killing the plant.  The plants are sometimes guarded so jealously that some plantations have a spring harvest only.  All teas are seasonal to an extent, but the most treasured of seasonal teas are probably Míngqián Lóngjǐng 明前龍井 and Yínzhēn Báiháo 銀針白毫 (literally, “silver needle white fur”).  Longjing is the most highly regarded tea in China and the leaves plucked before the festival of Qīngmíng 清明 (usually around early April every year) are believed to have the strongest fragrance.  Yinzhen is a white tea, made from the first leaves of spring still covered with the silvery white fur that gives the tea its name and also its sugar candy-like sweetness. Miss Neddy adds her two cents: Míngqián Lóngjǐng is aso known as Yüqián Lóngjǐng (雨前龙井), as the festival of Qīngmíng is usually associated with the advent of spring rains.* A famous poem during the Tang Dynasty by Dù Mù 杜牧 highlights this association: 唐·杜牧 Tang [Dynasty] · Dù Mù 清明时节雨纷纷， During Qīngmíng, the rain falls copiously, 路上行人欲断魂。 The passer-byers seem as severed spirits. 借问酒家何处有？ I asked, “Where is the tavern?” 牧童遥指杏花村。 The cowherd pointed towards Almond Blossom Village. *[Edit: Miss Neddy has made a mistake. Míngqián Lóngjǐng comes just a while before Yüqián Lóngjǐng. More specifically, Míngqián Lóngjǐng is harvested between the 25th of the 3rd lunar month and 5th of the 4th lunar month, while Yüqián Lóngjǐng is harvested between the 6th and the 20th of the 4th lunar month.  Of the two harvests, Míngqián Lóngjǐng is considered the superior. Colloquially though, some tea drinkers do not make a distinction between the two. Tea, Green, White, Tea Related 2008-01-14T00:30:01+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/longjing_and_bi_luo_chun/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/longjing_and_bi_luo_chun/#When:00:30:00Z As with the other types of tea, there is a multitude of varieties for green tea. Green tea is more popular among the Japanese, but there are still some widely famous Chinese green teas. Two of them are Longjing (龙井） and Bi Luo Chun （碧螺春）. The best and most famous Longjing, of course, comes from Hangzhou, especially the area around the Xi Hu （西湖）or West Lake. There is temple in Hangzhou with the same name, as well as, uh,  a well. However, the best water for Longjing, proverbially, is not the Dragon’s Well water, but the Hu Pao （虎跑） spring water － the proverb is “Longjing from Xi Hu, water from Hu Pao Spring”（西湖龙井虎跑泉）. Hu Pao means “Tiger Running”, and spring water is reputed to be very light and clear, enhancing the grassy flavour of Longjing. Longjing can be an acquired taste, as some people who are used to darker teas may find the taste too raw, too much like just-cut grass or even raw fish! My first experience with good Longjing from Xi Hu was electrifying. As the tea was steeping, I thought I smelled freshly cooked chicken wings, and when I tasted the tea, I thought I was tasting freshly steamed fish! That year’s Longjing was particularly fragrant and robust and I have never encountered such an excellent Longjing again. Bi Luo Chun （碧螺春）is another excellent green tea, although it is not easy to make properly. The quantity of tea, the water temperature and steeping time must be handled very carefully. The leaves are very fine, sometimes almost wispy, and very curly, even more so than the average wulong. It is this extra fineness of the leaves that make them prone to scalding from over-hot water and also over-steeping. With this tea, it is always best to underestimate rather than overestimate: use less tea leaves, lower water temperature and a shorter steeping time. If the tea tastes too insipid, try again with a longer steeping time. If the flavour still does not come through, you may wish to risk a slightly higer water temperature. I may sound paranoid about the matter, but the truth is I have yet to come up with a foolproof method for making good Bi Luo Chun every time. Every year, I would encounter a slightly different quality of tea leaves, some which tolerate higher water temperatures, and some which need more leaves or a longer steeping time to bring out the flavour and fragrance. The scent of the tea is very strong and much like a floral fragrance, but it has less of the raw, grassy flavour that most other tea leaves possess. The story goes that the original name of the tea was “So Fragrant It Scares You To Death” (吓死人香); the Qing dynasty emperor Kang Xi （康熙）, who was travelling in the region incognito, loved the tea, but hated the name. So he renamed it Bi Luo Chun. Two reasons are cited for his choice of name. The more romantic one goes that he had a lover in Hangzhou by that name, and so bestowed her name upon the tea; the more pragmatic one is that the three words describe the tea intimately. Bi （碧） is a kind of jade green; Luo （螺） means to spiral like a snail’s shell; Chun （春） means springtime, as this tea is most often harvested in spring. I would like to believe the romantic reason, but that would deflate Kang Xi’s wit and poetic spirit. However, considering how fickle the tea is to my (admittedly indifferent) tea brewing skills, it is rather reminiscent of a beautiful woman who is unpredictable in her favours. Tea, Green 2007-12-21T00:30:00+00:00