Archive for the ‘Sencha’ Category

2 comments

with or without hallucination


2011
09.18

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in hallucination, Japanese cult of tea, Sencha, The Empire of Tea | 2 Comments »

Had vast and far-reaching plans for this teablog this weekend, but the Oktoberfest got in the way.  Actually, I didn’t have anything so terribly riveting to talk about, but I did intend to cover the next chapter of The Empire of Tea by Alan and Iris MacFarlane.


It’s all terribly interesting, but you know that if you’ve already read my earlier posts on this. I started out with contemplating The Empire of Tea, then moved on to devouring the Memoirs of a Memsahib and most recently I asked is tea drinking an addiction? due to something that jumped out at me as I was reading the next chapter.


And exactly the same thing has happened again.  In this case, I’d planned to introduce you to the main points of the next chapter or two, but got hung up on one little thing.  Here goes:


‘Tea became like the hallucinogenic drugs that have helped shamans in many other parts of the world to enter or communicate with the spirit world.  It constituted the mystical centre of the rites of withdrawal, self-abnegation and the attainment of nothingness of the new sects…’ (Source: The Empire of Tea p 54)


He’s talking about what he calls the Japanese cult of tea and specifically how tea influenced the religion and society of the Land of the Rising Sun.  I don’t know specifically what new sects he’s referring to here, but the idea that tea became such an integral part of the culture due to its hallucinogenic properties is not something you read in most tea advertising.


Well, not yet anyway.


Now, please don’t take this literally.  I don’t steep a pot of Japanese Sencha and start seeing spiders crawling out of the cracks in the wall.  But at the same time, I can see how drinking tea might provide a monk a bit of hallucinogenic-like thoughts.


Earlier in this chapter, which is called Froth of the Liquid Jade, he says that tea drinking is one of the ‘four ways of concentrating the mind’.  The other three are walking, feeding fish, and sitting quietly in thought. (Source: The Empire of Tea p 54)


At different times, I could definitely enjoy all of these things, but I’ve just drained my teapot and it’s time to brew up again.  With or without hallucination.

a Bavarian mountain that reminded me of Mt Fuji



2 comments

tea for every (phlegmy) situation


2011
08.28

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Sencha, teablog | 2 Comments »

(a very phlegmatic statue in Munich)

There’s been a lot of talk about phlegmatic people in my little world lately, and although I’ve attempted to portray myself as such, I’m not actually allergic to anything that I know of. That was the meaning of the word phlegmatic that was used. Someone with a lot of phlegm. Someone who’s allergies had got the better of him or her (I think it was a her in this case).

I was thinking of the Four Temperaments meaning of phlegmatic. The one that’s ‘…receptive and shy and often prefer stability to uncertainty and change…’, but then I realised that the phlegmatic person in question was coughing and wheezing and generally being a nuisance in the office. Her kindness was not the problem here.

I should really go back to the beginning of this story. Lisa Galaviz (@lgalaviz) describes it all rather concisely in her blogpost How to Create Drama in your Life and Workplace. And if you got down to the bottom of the post, you know as well as I do that Cara in Cleveland (@zippy219) won Drama Day and did so rather convincingly.

So the question now is: What tea is best to mask the taste of Allegra? Apparently it’s got quite a bitter taste, and we don’t want it to be detected.

I asked Erik Kennedy (@thetearooms) what tea he would recommend for the job. I asked him partially because he’s a very knowledgeable chap, but also because he was there. 99% of life is showing up. Let that be a lesson to you.

His answer? A nice Japanese Sencha. Strong enough that you won’t even notice the bitter medicine-y taste of the Antihistamine. He actually didn’t specify whether the Sencha should come from Japan or China, but I know some of you loathe Japanese tea as a general rule. It’s my responsibility to mention it at every opportunity.

Right after his wonderful recommendation, Erik said that for this purpose he’d actually use fruit juice. But this isn’t a fruit juice blog. You’ll have to go somewhere else for that sort of information. This is a tea blog. We’re giving unsuspecting people medication that they may or may not need in their tea, thank you.

One last thing before I leave you and go brew some more tea sans medicine. There’s been quite a lot of traffic lately to my teablog from some unsavoury countries and places. I don’t know exactly what you’re doing here, but it better be tea-related. No funny business, eh? You hear that Newfoundland and Labrador? Don’t make me come over there.

3 comments

that wet earth smell


2011
08.06

Posted in asparagus, Darjeeling, green tea, Gu Zhang Mao Jian, Le Palais des Thés, Sencha, Uncategorized, wet earth smell, Xavier | 3 Comments »

Am on a bit of a blogging tear right now, but it’s hard not to be when there’s so much going on around here. There was a nice mix of sightseeing and tea drinking today, but I wanted to quickly talk about a tea that Xavier brought along with him.

It’s a green tea from China that he got as a sample from Le Palais des Thés, which is a tea seller we both like quite a bit. The tea’s called Gu Zhang Mao Jian, and the package says that it has, ‘the aroma of wet earth after a storm that is so popular in China.’

We spent an inordinate amount of time trying to detect that wet earth smell. But now that I have a bit more time to think about it, I wonder if the Chinese really have such a fondness for this scent of damp soil. If so, why?


But enough about that. Here’s how the leaves looked before they got all earthy wet:

I thought it looked almost like a Darjeeling, but it tasted like anything but.

The first infusion was nice but alas, as you might’ve expected, no wet earth smell. Maybe it’d materialise upon further brewings (it didn’t). There was a freshness to this Gu Zhang Mao Jian that I almost want to call grassy. Nothing like a Japanese Sencha, but very vegetal.

There was something that almost tasted of asparagus in there, and that sent us down the rather confusing yet enjoyable path of finding the French word for asparagus (it’s asperge by the way). The asparagus-like taste only became stronger on the second infusion.

The smell of the leaves afterwards was so delicious. Almost wanted to go search for something about cooking with green tea leaves. Almost, but not quite.


Here’s how the leaves looked after the thorough workout we gave them:

Unfortunately, you can’t smell the asparagus in a photo. Use your imagination, ok?

There’ll be plenty more about the weekend that all these tea people came to visit, but I wanted to include this tea review before things got under way in earnest. There will be a bit of earnestness, after all. You don’t believe a word I’m saying, do you?