Teas, Etc. Sale

Teas, Etc. is having a Memorial Day Sale through Monday. It's 20% off all teas, teaware and accessories. I'd suggest their Bai Hao Silver Needle and their award-winning Assam Reserve, but there are lots of great tea (and more) to choose from.

What are you up to this long weekend?

Tea Chemistry

In honor of the Chinese New Year here's a cool video on tea chemistry with a New Years angle. It covers some very cool aspects of tea chemistry that I think even the non-geeks out there can enjoy.

EDIT TO ADD -- PS -- Teance is having a two-day, free-shipping sale on orders over $60. Enter the code "CNYFREE" on January 30 and 31 for free shipping. They recommend the following as Chinese New Years gifts:

Yunnan Gold
Yellow Gold Oolong
Osmanthus Oolong
Flower Bouquet
Pu-Erh 15 Year Aged

Tea Eggs

Tea eggs are a beautiful, traditional Chinese dish made with tea, eggs and spices. They're fun and easy to make, and the flavors are perfect for cold weather. I recently made some with a variation on this tea egg recipe. (I substituted loose leaf Assam black tea for the bagged tea and changed up the spices just a bit.) Yum! I just wish the crackling turned out a bit better. Have you made them before? How did they turn out? Do you have a good recipe to share?

Thanksgiving Teas

Thanksgiving can be an ideal time to share delicious teas with friends and family. Aside from flavored teas, there are a number of rich, warming and even digestion-aiding teas, tisanes and tea cocktails/mocktails you can make for Thanksgiving. This year, I'm making home-blended masala chai, fresh ginger tisane, Superior Pu-erh from Imperial Tea Court and Ti Kwan Yin from Teance. I'm also making homemade rum-spiked apple cider, which I'll also be spiking with black tea. Yum! What are you brewing this Thanksgiving?

Vampire Weekend and Tea

So, at this point, everyone has gone completely nuts over Vampire Weekend, and there has been indie backlash (as there usually is in the cases of meteoric rises to fame in the "indie rock" world). Many have noted the obvious Paul Simon influence (I think they took a cue from Mark Mothersbaugh's solo work, and Wes Anderson's directorial influence can be seen in their video for Oxford Comma -- very appropriate given the similar cultural milieu that produced Anderson and his usual scorewriter, Mothersbaugh), but have any of you dear readers noticed their connections to tea?

These preppy Columbia-educated rockers seem to partake of the stuff rather regularly, but still seem to be lacking in their knowledge about it. In the video for "Mansard Roof," they relax and play music on a sailboat, taking time out of their navigation around Manhattan and New Jersey for tea in their Brooks Brothers casual wear.* They are clearly enjoying the salty air and the (most likely) tannic brew, but do they even know what they're drinking? (OK, OK, yes, tea... But beyond that!)

In the lyrics for "One (Blake's Got a New Face)" they actually say, "English breakfast tastes like Darjeeling." What?!?! No, it really doesn't! Sure, both are black teas, but beyond that there isn't much similarity. English Breakfast was traditionally a blend of Assam and sometimes strong Ceylon teas (later on), but now is generally a strong, astringent brew that most enjoy with milk and sugar. Darjeeling teas, on the other hand, are typically either delicate and floral (first flush) or complex, with muscat notes (second flush), and neither benefits at all from milk OR sugar (in my strong opinion). They are not similar at all. (This goes way beyond the Coke-Pepsi debate, I tell you. It's a whole other level of difference, more like Coke-Sprite.) Perhaps they're overbrewing the Darjeeling? Or overpowering both with milk and sugar? (Maybe they should take one of my tea classes!)

Of course, on the positive side, their fans are looking more into tea when they look into the lyrics. SongMeanings.net included comments like, "english breakfast and darjeeling are both teas! i just learned that today." I wonder if any of them will actually try the Vampire Weekend-endorsed teas, and perhaps even notice that they do NOT, in fact, taste all that similar. We can only hope... :)

*The Guardian has an amusing take on the video.

England Goes Foodie, Tea Prices on the Rise?

England is following and surpassing the American trend of "going foodie." Acoording to a recent article on CNN, they are getting ahead of the American trend towards for organic, fair trade, and local: the British govenrment has even asked retailers to develop "eco-labels" that indicate the environmental impact of each product. The focus is much more on sustainability than on personal health. (It seems to me that most Americans are more interested in their own health than the planet's when it comes to organic food production.) The ethical treatment of animals (still a mojor taboo in the US, despite all of PETA's well-meaning efforts) has also gained some attention in the press on both sides of the issue.

I wonder how the foodie movement in one of the world's biggest tea-drinking nations will impact the tea market. Will more plantations and gardens go organic/biodynamic? Will packaging be altered to be more sustainable and will marketing begin to reflect the (in many cases, newfound) sustainability more? As tastes change in England, will the ubiquitous teabag be replaced more and more by loose leaf tea?

As for the prices, it is already predicted that tea prices will rise in 2008 due to civil unrest in Kenya. Of course, most tea production in Kenya is CTC at present, so it may not impact the prices of loose leaf. Perhaps a price increase in CTC black tea (Kenya's main tea product and England's favorite cuppa) will actually encourage a shift to loose leaf. We shall see!


EDITED TO ADD: A new article on the UK's efforts to make grocery stores more sustainable, ethical, and healthy. Yay!

Pantyhose Tea

Though tea is typically drunk without milk in China, Hong Kong has one big exception: "pantyhose milk tea." It is a Sri Lankan or Indian black tea brewed in a "tea sock," strained repeatedly, and blended with milk. It is served in milk tearooms, somewhat similar to the more rowdy diners of NYC. According to a recent Reuters article:

"'You can talk as loud as you like (in the tea-diners) and no one will complain,' laughed Pallas Ng, a bank clerk.

'Starbucks is too quiet. We prefer louder places,' she added."

It sounds like quite a contrast to the US sterotype of tearooms filled with ladies and lace! Read the full article here.