The final tasting notes are in and published below. Once again, as we have seen in all our previous tastings, the variety of personal experiences with these teas is as varied as the teas themselves. It always leaves us in awe of the human experience when we witness first hand how unique each persons perceptions [...]
A friend presented me
With tender leaves of Oolong tea,
For which I chose a kettle
Of ivory-mounted gold,
A mixing-bowl of snow-white earth.
With its clear bright froth and fragrance,
It was like the nectar of Immortals.
The first bowl washed the cobwebs from my mind -
The whole world seemed to sparkle.
A second cleansed my spirit
Like purifying showers of rain,
A third [...]
Our apologies to all, but we made an editorial decision and felt we shouldn’t bump the Friday post 2 weeks in a row. As a result, the final tasting notes will be absolutely, definitely, most assuredly and without a doubt published on Monday. The silver lining here is that if there are any tasting stragglers [...]
After receiving advice last June - and then again in November - to purchase a small traveling tea set to take to speech tournaments and other tea-free events, I finally broke down and purchased a tea set. It contains the gaiwan, the pouring pitcher, six tiny cups, and a handy tweezer . . . all [...]
As we find ourselves in the throes of the holiday season, it’s easy also to find ourselves rushed and stressed out. I was at the post office this week and had to wait 30 minutes on line for my turn. Everyone was grumbling, frustrated and angry.
I don’t think this is what our most [...]
Occasionally there were “fiery discharges,” about as dangerous as ritual Chinese firecrackers. Once an opium ship had finished her business at Lintin Island and set sail on the return voyage, mandarin junks would sometimes set out in hot pursuit. Your more mischievous “country firm” captain would slow down at once, [...]
Make this lovely cake to enjoy with your afternoon cuppa over the holidays!
This light and moist cake is not too sweet and has a refreshing green tea fragrance. The frosting uses cream cheese but has enough sweetness to mask the sour taste. The matcha (green tea) powder gives it a delicate green hue. This cake [...]
We do not have everyone’s tasting notes yet, so we are postponing their publication until next week. If you haven’t completed your tasting, please do so as soon as possible and publish your notes as comments on this post from last week.
We look forward to reading everyones detailed comments about these wonderful teas and [...]
It seems to me that I have spent a large fraction of my existence longing to ski. Since childhood, I had imagined it to be nothing less than exhilarating, earthbound soaring. Poetry in motion. When I finally did start to ski—just last year at the age of 34—I was not disappointed. I was [...]
Long ago and far away, but in this same galaxy, when I was just getting into wine and wine culture, I had a million questions about why certain aspects of wine were supposed to be so important, especially since at the time it didn’t seem so important to me. After all, if it was such [...]
