What We're Drinking

Stainless steel tea basket with porcelain saucer.

Stainless steel tea basket with porcelain saucer.

One of the easiest ways to brew tea is with a basket infuser.  This simple brewing device is large enough for the leaves to expand and very easy to clean.

The saucer is made by Erin Louise Clancy in the same style as the Dreamscape tea bowl and incense burner

Infuser: 2.5" Wide opening x 2" Tall 

Saucer: 3" Wide

The most refined and reserved of the leaf-bitten teas of Taiwan.  This Bai Hao has an incredibly floral sweetness.  A rare gem.

Notes of open flowers, citrus, bright soil, and honey.

Bai Hao, Oriental Beauty, is the most revered of the leaf-bitten teas of Taiwan.    With it’s delicate white strands among bronze leaves, the un-brewed tea looks mysterious.  This Bai Hao has an earthy sweetness with a smooth and cooling sensations that is felt in the mouth upon breathing after a sip.

Being from the leaf-bitten category of tea like Gui Fei, Oriental Beauty has a distinct place in the echelon of tea.  The quintessential white strands of leaf bitten tea are a product of the healing process the plant undergoes after being bitten by cicadas.  This natural biting process is encouraged, and it embodies a natural symbiotic relationship between the cicada, tea plant, farmer, and tea drinker — they all are rewarded by cooperation.  This is not a tea that can be produced on a mass scale with heavily machined and non-organic practices.

Compared to other leaf bitten teas like Gui Fei and some Taiwanese Honey Black teas, Oriental Beauty has marked notes of tangerine peel, earth, mineral water.  It is made using the Qing Xin Da Pan varietal, which is the highest quality used for Oriental Beauty.  The preparation of this tea requires a very long oxidation.  Part of the oxidation occurs on the leaf after being bitten, part occurs by rolling and bruising, bringing the leaf to a relatively high 60% oxidation.

Brew Oriental Beauty using 195 degree water with 40 second infusions.  The brew is a lovely copper, and you will have some flexibility with experimentation of brew times. 

Rich, resinous incense with notes of freshly broken cypress needles and camphor.

Rich, resinous incense with notes of freshly broken cypress needles and camphor.

This robust incense made with high resin oil of Japanese cypress feels like a blast of cypress forest, rubbing a handful of cypress scales between your fingers.  Very interesting and unique.  

I encourage experimentation with incense and tea pairing, but I think that Hinoki Cypress goes well with any of the dark and aged oolongs.

15g incense ~ 46x 14cm sticks.  Approximate burn time of one stick ~ 30 minutes.