Introduction to White Tea

White tea is made when the tea leaf is simply picked and then dried, preferably in the sun. First the leaf goes through a wilting stage, where it is place in the partial shade to remove some of the moisture, after that is exposed to full sunlight to dry. After sun drying, the tea is baked to remove all excess moisture , resulting in the finished product, white tea. As simple as it sounds, the process is highly delicate. Traditionally white tea is baked in the sun, but since the sun’s heat cannot be controlled, a steady eye must be kept on the leaves to ensure that they do not burn. Since there is only one step to making white tea, there is not a large margin for error. For example, unlike Yan Cha making where if you mess up one step you can cover it up in the following, with white teas, if you mess up the drying step it is ruined. The best white tea is from Fu Di in the Fujian province. Zheng He is also known for making white tea, but has become less popular in recent years and has become also known for making red tea. 
(www.tea-drunk.com)

White tea is categorized by how and when it is picked. The four main divisions are Silver Needle, Bai Mu Dan, Gong Mei and Shou Mei.

Silver Needle: Silver Needle is the most sought after category of white tea as it usually uses the first picks of the season and is made up of just the bud of plant and no leaves. The bud is the most potent part of the plant and provides the mostly complex flavor and sweetness. A good Silver Needle is subtly complex, staying light yet hardy in its flavor. The flavor range is vast and include flowers, honeycomb, cucumbers, vegetal, honey, sun soaked cotton, and nuts.

Bai Mu Dan: After Silver Needle comes Bai Mu Dan. Bai Mu Dan picking still takes place early in the season, but is made up of the bud as well as the leaves. The addition of leaves cut the flavor a bit. When tasting a Silver Needle and Bai Mu Dan side by side from the same location and year, the Silver Needle will generally have a fuller more complex flavor while the Bai Mu dan will be sweeter with a lighter more refreshing body. Bai Mu Dans tend to have notes of flowers, nuts, honey and vegetalness.

Gong Mei: Gong Mei consists of the same picking as Bai Mu Dan but grows later in the season. As the tea season goes on, the bud of the plant shrinks and the the leaves grow larger. With Bai Mu Dan, the bud is still at a decent size, with Gong Mei, the leaves tend to outweigh the bud. This provides for a bolder flavor, but also results in a lack of the complexity, sweetness or smoothness as the previous two picks. Gong Mei is generally darker as well with earthy and woodsy flavor notes.

Shou Mei: Shou Mei is the last picking of white tea. Very late in the harvest the leaves are very large and there is very little to no bud. Often times when there is a white tea cake, this is the tea they use, since this tea is generally undesired and needs a gimmick to sell it. The least sweet of all the white teas, this tea is earthy, bold and the roughest of the three teas.

White teas are, in this authors’s opinion, one of the most underrated teas. They are often described with words such as light and delicate, giving them the conentation that they are a more or less tasteless or basic tea. The truth is a good white tea is quiet complex. I have tasted notes of honey comb, nuts, honey and flowers all in one tea. This misunderstanding comes from in proper brewing, bad tea, or that damn snapple commercial. (A topic of Wednesday’s first mini post.)

While white teas are soft, they are also very full. The Tai Chi of teas. They should have a round body with confident notes. To bring out these characteristics boiling water should be used. White tea is a big leaf varietal so using less than boiling water will yield a pleasant tea, and while this tea will be sweeter it won’t have the full range of characteristics that the same tea brewed with boiling water will present. 

Originally the white tea regions brewed this tea like a green tea, but the gaiwan is now the favored style. As I said before boiled water should be used and the steeps can start at about 3-5 seconds. White teas can go for a long time starting at 10 brews and going longer for the better teas.


Knowing the different types of white tea is important because they are usually sold under the wrong name. I have seen Bai Mu Dan being sold as Bai Hao Yin Zhen, and Gong Mei being sold as Bai Mu Dan. (this is very common). Understanding what the differences are and how to tell them apart will help you recognizing a false tea when you see one.

Introduction to Green Tea

What is Green Tea?

Green tea is the most pristine tea in China, with the longest history, and consistently selling for a very high price. Next to black tea (hong cha), green tea is the most recognized tea across the world. But what makes a tea green?

Compared to the other five categories of tea, leaves made into green tea are placed on high heat the soonest. After the tea is picked, it is let to wither to pull out some of the surface moisture. Then, the leaf is exposed to temperatures around 200 degrees celsius to kill the green. Most other teas also go through the kill green step, but usually not right away. (For example, in wulong making, the leaf is shaken first.) In the kill green step, enzymes working in the tea leaf are halted, preserving the tea in its current state. Since green teas go through this step the earliest, its leaf is in the freshest state compared to the other categories of teas, often imparting the most bitter and tannic notes, but also the most refreshing and liveliest flavor.

The four major subcategories of green tea all refer to how the tea is made

-baked green (Hong Qing), -steamed green (Zheng Qing),
-pan fried green (Chao Qing),
-and sun dried green (Shai Qing).

Each making style describes the step after the enzymes are killed, where residual moisture is removed from the leaf. Stir-fry green is the most well known style and includes famous teas, such as Bi Luo Chun and Long Jing. Stir-fried greens are usually stronger. Baked green is one of the most common styles and includes teas such as Mao Feng and Hou Kui. These tend to be softer and have a savoriness. Sun dried is very rare and is most well-known as Sheng Pu. While steamed green is almost unused in China, it remains the main method of green tea making in Japan. There is still one famous Chinese green tea that is steamed and that is En Shi Lu Yu. 

History 

Green tea has the longest history. The earliest writings mentioning tea are from the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD), when poet Wang Bao records buying and preparing tea in “A Contract With a Servant”. How do we know this is green tea? Well, for a long time, tea was a tribute item to the emperor, forcing strict regulation on how tea was made. It wasn’t until the Hong Wu Emperor that these restrictions were abolished and other kinds of tea were allowed to be produced. Thus, up until the Ming Dynasty, all tea was made in the green tea style.

Brewing Green Tea

When it comes to brewing green tea, things are a little different than most teas. Since the leaf is in its freshest state, it is the most delicate and susceptible to temperature. So it is common knowledge that you should use lower water temperature. To dive a little more deeply into water temperatures you should use different temperatures depending on the the type of green tea, taking factors like leaf size, tenderness and pick time into account. Teas that are smaller and picked earlier are more tender and should use slightly cooler tempetures. A good example of this is Bi Luo Chun. Teas that are larger or picked later, like Mao Feng our Hou Kui, can handle a little more heat.

Another trick to brewing green teas that is less known is to not cover the leaves and they are brewing and to never completely drain the water. Covering the leaves as they brew traps the heat and bakes the leaf. Why this won’t completely ruin the flavor, you will lose the softer more subtle qualities that often separate an high quality tea from an average one. Draining the water completely will also have the same effect. Between each steep leave some water in the bottom of the vessel. Just enough to completely submerge the leaves and give them room to move a bit. This will not only keep the leaves from oxidizing, but it will also act as a temperature neutralizer so in your next steep you will no longer need to cool the water off as the water standing there will already do that.

In China though, it is common to just through the leaves in a thin walled vessel and drink directly from that; chewing any leaves that get into your mouth. This will make the tea strong and it wont usually last as long, but it is convenient for times when you are doing something else and just need tea. A good green tea should float when you first add water. (Exception being Bi Luo Chun and other rolled teas). If it sinks to fast it is the sign of a dead leaf. 

Judging the Tea

The flavor of green tea should be very refreshing and lively. It is once again the leaf in its freshest state. What is very important for a good green tea is come back sweetness. After you swallow the green tea there should be a sweet taste left in your mouth. This can be the key factor to tell apart a green tea and a yellow tea in a blind tasting. (They taste very similar).

When looking at the liquid it should be light. A light tea, such as green tea or unroasted Tie Guan Yin, should have a light. At the same time though the liquid should be lively as well. I always describe good tea liquor as giving off a neon like glow. Green tea liquor that is too dark or looks dead is the sign of a bad tea. 

 It is hard to generalize the visual apperance of green tea because their are so many. Hou Kui has a vastly different shape than Bi Luo Chun, yet both are historically famous. Usually though a sign of a bad green tea is leaves that are too large or that look spread apart. Green tea is most sought after in the earlier picks, when the leaves are young and tender. A green tea with leaves that are too big means that the leaf was picked later in the season and wont have the same complexity and sweetness as an earlier picked leaf. When a tea leaf has an unclear shape, that means that the leaf isn't as tender. When tea leaves are young and healthy they are tender and juicy. Tender leaves stick to themselves better during the making. (This is important when looking at rolled wu longs). A green tea leaf that is spread out with no clear shape means the leaf was not tender enough to maintain during making. This can be from a late pick or a bad terroir. These leaves are often bitter and tasteless.  The image below is from a company claiming to have Long Jing. See how the leaves are much too big for a Long Jing and have no clear shape. 

Photos:
-www.tea-drunk.com
-Instagram

Information
www.tea-drunk.com
www.britannica.com/

---

When We Reminisce Over You, Tie Guan Yin

"I did it" The message said "I got some of the old flavor back".
This was the Wechat message Tea Drunk owner Shunan Teng received from her Tie Guan Yin farmer in An Xi. To understand this we must know a little about Tie Guan Yin's history.

For those that don't know Tie Guan Yin is a rolled wu long from An Xi, Fujian. Wu Long by definition are teas that go through a shaking step. When the leaf is shaken it activates the enzymes found within the leaf which start a metabolism process. The leaves are then laid to rest and water is allowed to travel out of the leaf. (water leaves the leaf through the stem). These two process are repeated until the tea master, constantly inspecting the tea, thinks the tea is done and it is heated to stop any enzymic activity. The result is a very floral and aromatic tea.

 
(The tea master checks the rested tea as his son turns another batch, curtesy of Tea Drunk)

In the late 80's Tie Guan Yin was immensely popular, much like Pu Er is today. When a tea becomes popular the farmers from that region try to bank on the popularity as much as possible, often resulting in over cultivation. The best teas come from areas where the tea grows among other plants, thus keeping the soil balanced and rich. When teas like Tie Gun Yin in the 80's or Pu Ers today, become popular farmers rip up all other plants so they can plant more tea. While this may produce a high yield in the short term, in the long term it strip the soil of its nutrients and ruins what ever made the terroir so great in the first place. And this is what happened to Tie Guan Yin.

(An Xi tea field, from Tea Drunk)

Another good thing to know about Tie Guan Yin is that it refers to a cultivar and a making technique. It is the Tie Guan cultivar in the Tie Guan Yin making style. It use to be that An Xi produced other cultivars besides Tie Guan Yin. You use to be able to find An Xi Qi Lan in the Tie Guan Yin making style, but all other cultivars were ripped up to to plant Tie Guan Yin and now they are harder to find.

In reason years there has been a movement among the farmers to bring Tie Guan Yin back. They are growing the teas from seeds and not samplings, and giving the plants space instead of putting them right next to each other. This along with more focus on making techniques is an attempt to restore the true flavor of Tie Guan Yin. 

So last Autumn, when Shunan got the message "I got a bit of the old flavor back" we knew it was going to be good, and it was. When this batch was fresh, it was light light but deep vegetalness, with a blueberry essence. I can't say it had the flavor of blue berry, just the essence, like the fragrance of a passing beautiful lady. This plus the floral, mouth tightening metallic finish, quickly made this tea one of my favorites. For roasted Tie Guan Yin look at Tie Guan Yin Traditional, for light look at Light. 

http://tea-drunk.com/collections/tea/products/an-xi-tie-guan-yin

Monday Night in the Brooklyn Zoo

Last Monday was our first tea session. We sat around a living room coffee table, half of which was taken up by the tea table and the other half was taken up miscellaneous teas. Everything from Shi Feng Long Jing fresh from the 2016 harvest, to a giant tuo pu er with from an unknown location and year was present on that table.

At 6 pm the party kicked off with a White Honeycomb Yan Cha from West China Tea Company. This was a nice one to start with because the flavors in this tea are confident with out being overpowering. The waxy honeycomb flavors are balanced nicely by the roast. This is it was an easy drinker and was met with positive responses by people who are not easy to please.

The group was a nice mix of geeky tea drinkers with people who know nothing about tea and just like to hang out. As the night went on the five of us sat around the table and talking about everything from geeky tea facts to Korean bodybuilders. We broken only to run and get towels when the tea table, which is not made from the right wood, started to leak out of a small crack in the bottom. 

I lost track of all the teas drank that night but the West China Tea Company's Yan Cha and Tea Drunk's Long Jing 2016 were defiantly the stars of the night. The mystery pu er was brewed and then quickly discarded with suspicions of mold.

Probably the most interesting part of the night for me was when we brewed a pu er cake I got two years ago. This pu er cake will be a post of its own in the future, but when it was steamed into its cake shape not all of the moisture left the leaf. This obviously put the cake at risk. In the first brew we could taste the moisture. I describe the taste as my grandfather's garage/workshop. This is a taste I often find in bad pu ers, but was surprised to find someone who actually liked it. This taste was present in the first brews, but faded in the following steeps leaving the figs, branchy, nut flavors often found in pu ers. The tea will never be too great, but I think more of the flaws will fade as it ages.

The night went on until midnight. By the end most were proficiently tea drunk and talks began of next week's tea session. We decided that small finger foods would be allowed and if possible we would move it to the communal backyard. These tea sessions tend to start around 6:00 pm but people come and go as they please.

If you are interested please leave a comment or email me at conroy.dylan@outlook.com
All are welcome.

It's Been a Long Time, but I Brought a Dope Beat to Step to.

This marks the return of my blog. I've been though a lot since my last post. I drank a lot of tea, met a lot of people, had a lot of discussions, and now I'm ready to share a bit and join in on the conversation. I will dedicate a lot of my efforts to not only Chinese tea culture, but Chinese tea culture in New York City.

I am personally disappointed with New York tea culture. We seemed scattered, unknowledgeable, and often time unrighteously competitive like old 1980 kung fu schools. I see all the tea meet ups and friendly photos in California and wonder why that doesn't happen here.

So with that in mind I bring back my blog with a few scatter brain ideas that are just crazy enough to work.

Some people just get tea

She came in with her fiance. A lovely young indian women with hair that flowed past her shoulders. Her boyfriend a slightly bigger man, stepped in like a man unsure of how to act in a new place. I greeted them and told them they could sit where every they like. "Let's sit at the bar." she said confidently and with purpose. She ordered for the both of them, a Phoenix if I do recall, and we began to chat. She told me about how she had met Shunan at a tea show and how Shunan had been joking about all the tea she had drank and how tea drunk she was.

As I began to serve the tea she showed a knowledge of tea. She would tell her boy friend some facts and then turn to me to verify or to ask me a question. "You seem to know about tea" I said pouring out the first brew. "No, no" she said, but then flawlessly explained why we poured out the tea to her boyfriend.
When the first cup was poured she offered me some to share. I accepted and we began to sip tea and chat.

As we talked I tried to get a sense of her tea knowledge. She was obviously very comfortable with tea, but she swore she didn't know that much and she seemed to believe it. While she obviously wasn't an expert on tea, there was something about her that said she knew more than she was letting on. This bugged me even after they left. (I am skipping over a lot for the sake of my point, but we really did have a lovely time).

I later realized what it was; she may not have known about tea, but she understood it. She understood tea was something you had with friends, that's why she sat at the bar and offered me tea. She understood that tea was quiet and humbling, that's why in all her knowledge she still looked toward me for information. She understood the true spirit of tea.

I have seem many people who know about tea. One lady at Harney and Son's was the complete opposite of this lady. She came in talking about how she had been trained uptown in the matcha tea ceremony, but when I brewed her tea she criticized that it was a little watery. Now while she was right, I had added a touch too much water, her attitude and arrogance showed a clear lack of understanding about the heart of tea.

Tea is not being able to have a perfect cup. Tea is about fully experiencing the cup you have. That is what makes tea ceremonies and specialized tea pouring systems so great, they fully emirs you in the tea right in front of you.

Some people get that. Some can take a bad cup of lipton and turn it into a fine afternoon.
Other people don't. Other people see tea as materialism, and miss the finer point of tea drinking for the fancy terms and useless knowledge.

A tea experience is made up of two parts, what the tea brings and what you bring. You are as much as important part of the tea drinking as the tea its self. Remember that, it can kind of be a big responsibility.

Once upon a time in China

Recently I took a two week trip to China. I stopped by Shanghai, Hangzhou and went to the Anhui province. 

Among my time there I met a lot of cool people, saw a lot of cool things, and drank a lot of good tea. The focus of the trip was tea. I wanted to look into a culture that had tea ingrained in their lives to see how they treated it. That is exactly what I saw. 

Over the next few posts I will discuss various parts of my trip to China but first I want to talk about the person who taught me the most about tea, Aaron.

I met Aaron in a hostel at the Touran Hangzhou. (A highly recommended hostel). He was a kid about 19, with short black hair with a calm and almost shy voice. He wasn't very out going but when he spoke you could tell he was smart and had things to say.

 We first chatted on the patio and became good friends. Aaron was studying clean air technology in hopes to help clean up China's air, but his family were tea farmers. His family was from Suzhou and grew Bi Lo Chun. 

Tea was a part of his daily life and always had been. Though he didn't know it, Aaron actually gave me the best lesson of my trip while standing on a busy street corner. 

The staff at Touran hostel was great. Among many things they actually got to know you and hung out with you. One day we all took a trip to the city center. While the girls were going into some store, Aaron pulled me aside to see the tea shops in the area. We first went into a tea house. This was a most upscale place where you sat down to have tea. The atmosphere was quiet and peaceful and every table was in its own room. Aaron would explain the significance of that later. 

Afterwards we went to a chain tea store called Ten Fu. When we first walked in a nice sales lady came up to us with a tray of small paper cups, each about 4 fl oz, and offered us some Lung Jing. 

I knew this wasnt going to be good tea, but I wanted to test my tasting skills. I looked at the color, smelled it and took a slurp, making sure to take in air to enhance the flavor. 

Needless to says I was right, it wasnt a fantastic tea by any means. The color was a simple green, with no shine or anything to make it really noticeable. The smell matched it. It was a light vegetle smell but lacked that fresh mist like quality that quality teas have. The taste fallowed suit. A simple green taste, with a darkness that sat uncomfortably on the back of your tongue after you swallowed it. I finished the small 4 oz cup in two sips and was very proud of my tasting ability, until I looked over at Aaron; he wasnt even half way done. 

When I looked over Aaron was carefully smelling the cup. You could tell he had taken a small sip already and was smelling it for what was probably the second time. What struck me the most was how he was smelling it. He was smelling it slowly and was paying full attention to the tea as if it was telling him a secret. By the way he took the long sniffs you would think he was holding a high quality tea, not a free sample at a chain. He glanced over to me, saw my empty cup, and almost in shock he said "You finished that fast". 

We walked out of the store and on the corner Aaron gave me one the of the best lessons of my trip. "Tea is the practice of peace. You drink tea in the spirit of slowing down and appriecating. That's why all the tables in the tea house were sectioned off, so people could have peace." 

This struck with me. In the tea store I had been so worried about tasting the tea right, I hadn't tasted it right. Sure I had gotten the tasting notes, and had very systematically determined the quality; but I hadn't given the tea its full respect and attention. I had taken all of the soul out of the tea. 

I laughed, told him that I now understood I had drank the tea too fast and promised him I would slow down next time. He laughed and we went back to meet the girls.