Tea

To be honest, it had been a long time since I had had really good tea.

The kind of tea that is so good that it makes you stop thinking about other things. Tea so good that, for fleeting, existential moments, there is nothing else in the world but the million, minute sensations relating to the tea. Grassy, sweet, bitter, bright, earthy flavors and smells coating your tongue making your mouth dance with the complexity. The feeling of the delicate cup in your hand. The heat that the freshest sips leave on your lips.

Drinking tea can be an amazing experience.

I realized this when I was studying abroad in China three years ago. Within one of our first weeks in Beijing, some of my friends who were also studying Chinese and I happened to stop at a tea shop nearby campus. I was excited by the idea of loose leaf green teas that were better than in the States, and I needed the caffeine for the early morning classes. I had been a tea-addict since early high school, and had upgraded to the general American version of “aficionado” with loose leaf teas a while back. I was delighted to explore the great world of Chinese tea, which seemed to promise a greater appreciation for delicately-processed green teas which I knew little about, but sounded exotic (jasmines and dragonwells and gunpowder…)

We ended up returning to that same humble tea shop several times throughout the summer, and passing many hours with the shop owner while she brewed us countless cups. Her patience and her smile were encouraging, despite our occasional failures to communicate. Between telling us about the tea that we were drinking, she gave us snippets of the culture of tea and told us classic stories, demonstrated traditions. Of course, she also asked us questions, and we did our best to keep a dialog (despite language skills of varying levels). Sometimes her son of about 5 would run through the shop while we would be sitting and chatting. Sometimes she just taught us how practical know-how of how long to brew this tea, how to pour it, how many times it can be brewed. The ever-present bustle of Beijing was only separated by a glass window pane, but the way we drank tea made it easy to feel serene and focus on the simple conversation.

My friends and I happily purchased a great deal of teas from her, not out of obligation but because they were delicious. Drinking them with the shop keeper had rendered them ever better. I had never derived such pleasure from tea, never known such complex flavors and satisfaction. I thought that the Chinese teas in China would be cheaper, but even though they weren’t, I realized now that the experience was worth it. I spent more money on tea and tea accessories than I did on any other souvenirs that summer (including a skateboard with light-up wheels) . I brought these things home, and quite a few times recreated for myself the joyous experience that it was to sit and drink tea this way: the tiny cups, fresh brews, delightfully bright flavors. At some point, a friend of my parents also gave me some very high quality tea from Taiwan, which I treasured and drank in small batches on quiet weekend mornings when I needed a treat. One of my friends who shared this experience with me went to Taiwan the following summer and brought back some excellent teas and a nice clay teapot as well, and my love for tea this way was sustained through these things.

But the teas got old, and I was busy with life as an undergraduate and it was seldom that I found someone to sit and drink with me in this style. (I also realize now, that I rarely asked anyone.) By the end of last year, my carefully-selected teas from China and Taiwan ran out, and the time spent in a small tea shop in Beijing was a distant memory. I have, of course, continued to drink teas of all kinds in the past several years. It had been a long time, however, since I had really sat and savored a tiny cup of tea the way I had in the past.

On Sunday, I had a chance to once again sit and drink tea slowly with someone who knows far more about tea than I can even guess about. David and Austin of Tearroir were gracious enough to take me and several others along to one of their favorite tea houses in Muzha, where we drank tea for several hours with Master Gao-Que (more on him in Austin’s post here).

I remember again why I love tea. It’s sometimes for the caffeine and the powerful kick of bergamot oil in Earl Gray in the morning. But I also love tea for the nearly unimaginable richness of culture and flavor that can be appreciated in a tiny cup of oolong brewed by a tea master.

Chinese tea culture is as mystical and ancient and complicated as you might imagine, but you can take some relief in that it’s also just as obscure for a modern Chinese person as it is for a modern foreigner. It is also pleasurable this way. There aren’t very many how-to books written (certainly not in English, maybe there are some in Chinese, but I don’t know) that one can use to self-educate about this mystical world. It seems to me that the best way to learn about tea is to share it with people who know more than you. And that is an excellent way to spend some time.

Perhaps I have waxed on a little bit more romantically about this than you care to read. In sum, I am happily re-inspired to chase the experience of drinking good tea, and I look forward to this exploration while I’m here in Taiwan.

 

Tea 101:

All tea comes from a tree called Camellia sinensis (that is, all true “tea”; other herbal brews are more properly called “tisanes”)

There are two different species of this tree, and then many different cultivars that are used to produce the variety of teas sold throughout the world.

Tea is produced by plucking off the freshest leaves from the tree and processing them by varying methods of oxidation, drying, roasting and fermentation. These processes give rise to the major differences between types of tea. For example, black teas are thoroughly oxidized whereas green teas are less so or not at all.

Obviously, the processing methods have large impacts on the outcome of the teas, such as the clear differences in flavor and caffeine content. But did you know that the exact weather conditions of when the tea was picked from the trees does as well? The season? Clearly the location also plays a role: soils, altitude, aspect – these all influence the productivity of the plants, and thus the compounds and thicknesses of the leaves, which give rise to the flavor. Appreciating these nuances are what one can do one takes the time to carefully brew a tiny cup of tea and savor it.