Tag Archives: tea party

Tea Party Tuesday: Vietnamese Wild Black

I feel like one of those horrible guys you knew in college who was really into anime and greeted Korean girls with a “konichiwa” when I describe anything Asian as “elegant” or “delicate”, but I’ve always enjoyed Vietnamese teas because I find them elegant and delicate. They aren’t as up front with what they’re working with, and the flavor combos will knock your socks off if you’re paying attention. Since most of Vietnam’s tea exports go to Russia (something like 7:1, Russia:Rest of the World), it’s something most people haven’t tasted before, but it’s available enough to not be a major splurge.

Today, I’ve brought you a nam lanh varietal that I think you’ll dig. They’re just called that because Nam Lanh is the estate from which it comes, not because it’s something entirely different than what you’ve had. It’s the same drying/twisting/aging process we’ve gone over in the past.

I also like this because it looks like burned up twigs.

I also like this because it looks like burned up twigs.

You’re in the same general palate area as an assam, but this doesn’t knock you over the head like that does with the MALT MALT MALT stuff. It’s a little coppery, and has this not-subtle hint of molasses that I love (I feel like I’m on the record about molasses, right? Love that stuff.). If the copper is kind of a quiet, sly grin, the molasses part is like when your mom kicks you under the table really hard and you’re like, “OW WHY DID…no one kick me.”

You’ll want to do about two big pinches of this (equal to a teaspoon, but the twiggy structure makes it hard to measure out like you would something leafy) and to steep it for about three minutes the first time through, and more like five on the second. It’s high on the caffeination scale for tea, so if you’re like me, proceed with caution or make this a breakfast drink. I also love to make a diluted version of this tea to brine poultry and marinate tofu or mushrooms. Just a thought. I’m not going to tell you what to do.

This comes in pretty cheap, too, at $3.75 for 2 ounces. It’s from a Southern Season (expect to see a lot of this- they’re the best tea purveyors in Charleston), and it makes a good holiday beverage for teetotalers at your parties.

What are you drinking this lovely Tuesday morning?

Tea Party Tuesday: Cranberry Acai Herbal

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving down the road in the Charleston suburbs, and there I spotted a sign: A Southern Season.

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By Jove, could it be the beloved kitchen/grocery store from Chapel Hill that took a lot of my money when I worked in Durham> It couldn’t be. I didn’t dare to check just in case I was wrong. I was utterly terrified that my heart could not bear it.

But it was. It was! It was. To celebrate, I went there on their opening day and purchased a couple of their loose leaf teas, tea budget be damned. Yeah, I have a tea budget, and if you want to fight about it, please refer to the “About” tab.

This week, the selection is cranberry acai herbal. I’m not an enormous herbal tea drinker, since I like to get some real bang for my caffeine buck, but the berries looked so chubby and juicy in the tea bins that I had to try it. When I opened up the canister to do that annoying wafting thing that people do when they want to be horrible, all the autumn smells were pungent and singular. I think it’s the mark of a really good herbal tea if everything still smells like it should. Think about when you haul out the pear-vanilla Celestial Seasonings or whatever: it smells pleasant, to be sure, but not like something specific.

I hustled home with it and my suspicions were confirmed: It’s a damned winner. It’s berry-forward without tasting like jam, and is the perfect herbal tea for a quiet night spent reading with a dog/cat/chinchilla/large blanket. If you have a fireplace, more power to you. I remain a non-doctor, but acai is allegedly a powerful antioxidant, and cranberry helps ward off infectious beasts, so it couldn’t hurt to knock back a couple of cups. The fruits in this particular herbal are large enough, too, that I’m comfortable saying there’s probably some vitamin C to boot.

You can buy own here for about $3 for 2 ounces. Steep it for about 6 minutes on the first infusion, probably more like 8 in the second.

Tea Party Tuesday: Charleston Breakfast

On account of ALL MY TEA being in storage while I seek a more permanent living arrangement, I haven’t been able to bring you tea updates each week, which has made me sad. Of all the things Charleston has, a great loose-leaf tea store is not one of them, and thus, I went cold-tur-tea. See what I did there? I’m very funny.

But I’m doing okay because Charleston has a tea culture of its own, and it’s an interesting one: it’s traditionally the only place in America where tea is grown. That’s right: they grow tea on a commercial scale in the Palmetto State and nowhere else in the U.S. of A.*

I know I'm on the record about teabags, but desperate times. Also: these are pretty good.

I know I’m on the record about teabags, but desperate times. If you’re going to do a sachet, the triangular ones are the best by far.

About every single time I talk to a locavore about tea, one of them asks me where they can get “local tea.” Well, you can’t. Ask pretty much any dedicated homesteader, organic farmer, or tea enthusiast and they’ll tell you a story about how they tried to grow tea this one time and so on and so forth and the story goes on for like, an hour, and finally they’re telling you they’d have been better off blowing their noses with the dollar bills they used to buy the seeds/plants/cuttings. Tea is a persnickety thing; it grows in Asia and that’s about it. Any teas from somewhere else are likely herbal teas and….well, briefly, herbal teas are not tea. They are tasty steeped beverages with health benefits, but they don’t have tea leaves in them and thus are not tea. This is akin to how you bake both potatoes and bread and they are both starches and a source of fiber, but a potato is not bread.

For some reason, Charleston’s subtropical, below-sea-level environment gets along well with tea trees, so they’ve been growing the stuff here for about 250 years. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I tried Charleston Tea Plantation’s Charleston Breakfast Tea, since you can’t very well say, “oh, I usually like American teas so this is probably like ______.”

Good news: this tea is right nice. It is very, very robust and is quite caffeinated. It’s a blended tea, and tastes like it’s perhaps a Ceylon/assam mix. The CTP has been using the same plants since colonial times, which is not impressive by old world standards, but is something at which to marvel in America. The Charleston Breakfast speaks to a distinctly American audience; unlike its more far-flung, sometimes delicate cousins, it’s suited to someone who might describe himself as a “coffee person.” Much like global stereotypes of Americans, the Charleston Breakfast is BOLD. FRIENDLY. DEFINITELY IMBUED WITH A STRONG SENSE OF IDENTITY WITH REGARDS TO ITS PLACE OF ORIGIN.

If that sounds like your deal, you can buy 12 pyramidal sachets for $7.50.

Have you tried this one? Do you want to or did I make it sound like your annoying flag-waving uncle? Tried any cool teas since I’ve been away?

 

*there are a couple places growing tea on a tea-ny (been saving these for a few weeks) scale in Washington, Alabama, and Hawaii, but they’ve only existed for a few years and no one is able to really scale it up for more than their own use and that of a few other folks.

Tea Party Tuesday: Glitter and Gold

Fair warning: I know little-to-nothing about this week’s tea. My little sister picked it up at David’s Tea when she was there this fall and brought it home to share.

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THE SPARKLE IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE TEA

Here’s what I know: It’s a Chinese black tea, but exactly what kind, I’m not sure. It’s a souchong, I’m almost certain, but beyond that, I’m just guessing. It has a little bit of orange peel, clove, and vanilla, too. The sparkle comes from little gold balls that look like dragees! In the heat of the water, they melt down and make the tea shimmer. I wish the photo did it justice- it’s dazzling. I don’t usually like gimmicks like this, but I do like shiny stuff, and this is just the right twinkle to quality ratio.

This tea isn’t a slouch- it’s a high-quality black tea, as is evidenced by the uniform-ish size and shape of the leaves and the consistency of the color throughout. It’s rich and bold in the cup, and the added spices and such add just enough zing to make themselves known but not overpower the leaves themselves.

It’s a fun beverage, for sure, but would be best for the winter. It has a flavor profile that reminds me of winter. I’m going to save the rest of the baggie for December, when I can listen to the Nutcracker and sip this by a fire.

If this sounds appealing to you, you can pick up 1.6 ounces/$7.5 at David’s Tea.

Tea Party Tuesday: Delta Mint Sweet Tea

Confession: I’m not nuts about sweet tea. This sounds obvious, but it’s just so sweet. I can manage about two or three glasses of it per annum- any more and I feel like I’m just inviting Type II diabetes into my life.

With that caveat now given (and the weekly tea party announcement that I’m not a doctor), I love love love this tea recipe and this usually makes up about 80% of the sweet tea I consume. I adapted this recipe very liberally from Southern Sideboards, the excellent and tragically out-of-print Junior League of Jackson cookbook.

Sometimes, more is more.

 

Delta Mint Sweet Tea

7 tea bags (the cheap stuff is just fine)

Rind of 3 lemons

20 springs of mint

8 cups boiling water

Juice of 8 lemons

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

8 cups cold water

 

Put the tea bags, lemon rinds, and mint in a vessel that will hold at least a gallon of stuff. Pour the hot water on top and let steep for 10-15 minutes. Use your time wisely and juice the lemons now.

I made a bad mistake and put this in a half-gallon vessel. Don’t be like me.

If you’re concerned about wasting the rinds of those extra 5 lemons, just save the peel and make candied lemon peels with them.

Pick out all those things and dump in the sugar and lemon juice in. Stir until the sugar dissolves totally, then add the cold water. This makes about a gallon.

Okay, unlike most weeks, this is not the part where I tell you what a good thing you’re doing for your body, drinking this tea. Consider this dessert, and believe me when I tell you I cut a huge amount of sugar out of the original recipe. That said, you’re going to drink the whole gallon yourself, so good it is, that it’s safest just to double this recipe from the outset.

Serve over ice, garnish with a lemon wedge and a mint sprig.

This is a great, festive non-alcoholic addition to your Derby party, but it’s also excellent if you Irish it up with a little bit of bourbon.

Tea Party Tuesday: Swamp Sencha

Well, friends, it’s that time of week. Time to turn our attention to our livers. After last night’s shenanigans after the game, the poor dears probably need a detox. Never fear, green tea is here!

Tastes less cloudy than it looks!

Tastes less cloudy than it looks!

Sencha is the crappy tea you get in the teabags that are 100/$3 at the grocery store! The one I’ve brought you today is a much nicer version of that taste you probably already like. It’s a Japanese green tea that is made without grinding the tea leaves at all. It’s got a little caffeine to it, but probably something along the lines of 1/4 of the caffeine a cup of coffee might should have.

Allegedly, this will lower your cholesterol and increase your brain functions (you will suddenly remember that your girlfriend’s favorite flowers are peonies! crossword puzzles will be easy even on Sunday!), and can decrease your risk of certain kinds of cancer. I actually bathe in this stuff every morning.*

You can get the one that I drank this morning for $16/2 ounces. It’s a superior product by far- you don’t have to be an expert to taste the difference between this and the stuff you drank at Benihana,

*not true

Tea Party Tuesday: Bluegrass Mountain

My boss has returned from China, and with him comes a ton of weird, wonderful, rare teas that I am SO EXCITED to share with you. Behold, bluegrass mountain:

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Isn’t it mossy-looking?

Remember how I told you about oolongs? This is one of those, too! It’s got the weird variable caffeine/questionable health benefits, but this one is much greener, and oh.my.god. it is so good. Very delicate, vegetal, and a little clovery, it doesn’t smell like anything when you hold your face over it. It’s so fragile we have to keep it in a freezer case at all times, so it isn’t even available for sale. If you want to come try some, come by my office and I’ll pour you one.

Have you tried any weird teas since last we spoke?