2009 Anxi Monkey-Picked Tieguanyin ( Wild-Grown )

Wow…. those monkeys have been working overtime again. Thanks boys, for rushing this delicious tea to us; it is perfect for late-afternoon sipping on a warm fall day just before the cool of the evening settles in.

Kidding aside, those of you who follow this blog know that I love the monkey-picked yarn, but a yarn it is. For more on that, please read my blog posting on November 25, 2008.

Nevertheless, it’s time for the 2009 Anxi Wild-Grown Monkey-Picked Tieguanyin oolong. We decided to up the wow-factor this year and search for a wild-grown version of this tea. Wild-picked teas are teas that are plucked from bushes that are allowed for the most part to grow ‘wild’ without much human intervention.

These tea bushes are not pruned or cultivated as most tea bushes in most tea gardens are, but are instead allowed to grow as nature intended plants grow: wild, rangy and with a shape and habit all their own. Often, a wild garden is the result of the plants being located in an isolated or hard to reach place, in which case the plants are able to grow quite tall. Plucking is relegated to once a year in the late spring.

As tea enthusiasts know, no two Tieguanyin teas will ever be the same from producer to producer. In fact, this is a true statement for all tea,  and fortunately so. Exact duplicity of flavor should be reserved for white bread and processed cheese, not premium, hand-made artisan tea. Too many variables, including human skills and judgement, make duplicity impossible. These are a few of the major variables that come into play for oolong tea:

• terroir ( location, climate and weather)
• tea bush variety or cultivar (or age and condition of the plants when the variety is all the same )
• the specificity of the pluck ( what leaf or configuration of leaf is plucked )
• the amount of withering the fresh leaf undergoes
• the degree of oxidation
• the integrity of the leaf manufacture and how many of the steps of processing utilize hand-skills, such as rolling
• roasting / no roasting
• aging/ new crop tea

We loved this Tieguanyin because it is soft in style yet vividly floral and mouth-filling. It is a semi-ball rolled modern-style oolong oxidized in the range of 25-40%, which is much less than the usual range of 35-65% oxidation for semi-ball rolled traditional teas. The leaves are loosely-rolled balls that are very uniform in size, and the tea has not been roasted.

The color of the leaf is dark green tinged with highlights of gold. During  several repeated short steepings the color of the infusion will vary as the flavor is slowly drawn out.  Initially the liquor will be light and clear, and then it will darken with each infusion. After the leaves have given up all of its flavor it will return to a pale, clear brew. Both color and flavor rise and fall in appropriate anticipation and expectation.

More New 2009 Tea

Nepal Hand-Rolled Tips

New shipments of tea are arriving here daily and in rapid fire. These new additions are late spring /early summer green and teas that have been shipped by sea from China and Taiwan, and second flush Darjeeling and Nepal teas that have been shipped via air-cargo.

We are in the process of  unpacking all of them, and it is a lot of work to make sure all is well with the tea and to get all of the peripheral information recorded. For example, we must literally unpack all of the tea to make sure it is all there. Then, we must taste it all to insure that each tea is indeed the tea that we ordered. Then tea information must be written and added to our website and blog in a timely fashion. The jars we sell the tea from must be labeled and the individual labels that we use for customer purchases must be made, too. The tea must be inventoried in the appropriate place in our warehouse and last but n0t least, of course, the tea must be put into jars so that customers may purchase it.

Despite all of this work, we love the excitement of having new tea arrive. We always spend a few minutes as we unpack each one  to admire it’s unique texture, color and shape before we taste it.

Several of these new teas are of particular note. First up are two hand-rolled black teas that we ordered directly from the producers in Nepal as soon as we tasted their samples. These teas are from the Everest Tea Estate and the Shangri-La tea factory. Both are gorgeous and worthy of a place in the finest tea collections.

We chose these hand-rolled teas first, because they are delicious, and secondly, because they are spectacular examples of the tea makers craft. Nepal is one of the last places on earth that is still makes hand-rolled black teas, and we would like to support that effort and see it continue. Click here for more details:
http://tiny.cc/aZd6P

2009 Competition Grade Tai Ping Hou Kui

Tai Ping Hou Kui has never looked so lovely or tasted so fresh. In fact, this tea is so fresh you will swear that the leaf is still attached to the bush. If you look carefully at this picture you can see the little cross-hair marks embedded in the leaf from the weave of the paper that is used to line the top of the tea-firing baskets during manufacture. This paper absorbs moisture so that the leaf does not have to spend as much time over the charcoal fire as it otherwise would.

Tai Ping has some of the largest leaves of any green tea and this batch is certainly the most magnificent that we have ever had. This particular batch of competition-grade Tai Ping is a splendid example of the results that specific leaf plucking yields . The vivid green color and vegetal in flavor reveal that the tea was plucked in the early spring.  Click here for more details:
http://tiny.cc/kLvfB

Bai Hao Oriental Beauty

Bai Hao Oriental Beauty is Taiwan’s most beloved tea. Oddly, Bai Hao is not as well known in the USA as the semi-ball rolled teas such as Tung Ting and the High Mountain gao shan oolongs. Or even Baozhong. This is a pity because Bai Hao is very labor intensive to produce and can only be made for a short period of time in June. Taiwanese tea lovers favor this tea for its mellow and seductive apricot and melon flavors and its light, elegant style. The leaf for quality Bai Hao is an odd-looking mix of dark, medium and light colored leaves.

But that is as it should be and the best Bai Hao is not a blend. Bai Hao is given a long outdoor and indoor wither, which contributes to the customary appearance of this tea. Japanese tea drinkers adore Bai Hao and when they visit the island searching for tea to bring home, they willingly pay very high prices for the best tea. Accordingly, we made sure that our Bai Hao tea maker saved some of his great tea for our customers, too. Click here for details: 
http://tiny.cc/7CQnv

Tea Trekker Tea-Shirts

 Our beautiful new dusty-sage green tea-shirts are here and ready for wearing. Declare your love for the leaf and wear one with pride! Our shirts are a nice weight of 50/50 cotton/polyster blend to prevent shrinking ( we all know that we do not gain weight, but that our clothing shrinks).  A contingent of tea professionals recently all wore our tea-shirts on an educational tea trip to Taiwan – we loved that !

These thirts are printed for us by a non-profit company, Valley Tees. This unique business is run by The Association For Community Living, a Springfield, MA based program for people with developmental disabilities. Over the decades the ACL has made great strides in providing individuals with developmental disabilities the opportunity to reach their fullest potential, lead a productive, happy life and be valued members of their communities.

We love the quality of our tea-shirts and believe that you will as well. The front of the tea-shirt has a small image of tea trekker on the front, upper left ( where a pocket would be if the shirt had a pocket) and the phrase: ” I’m a tea trekker.”

Visit our website for more images and to place an order:
http://www.teatrekker.com/t-shirt.htm