Organic Bai Mu Dan

Name: Organic Bai Mu Dan 

Type: White Tea

Purveyor: You, Me and Tea

Preparation: One teaspoon steeped in about eight ounces of 180-degree water for 4:30, sipped plain

Bai mudan means "white peony" in Chinese. The Chinese have other words for "peony" in addition to mudan, among them fuguihua ("flower of riches and honor") and huawang ("king of the flowers"). We might reasonably expect, upon learning this, that if they were to name a tea after this important symbol, they would reserve it for a premium variety. And indeed they have: whereas the other main grade of Chinese white tea, bai hao yinzhen ("white hair silver needle"), is made just from leaf shoots, bai mudan is prepared from shoots with young leaves on them. Bai hao yinzhen is very popular for its lighter, gentler flavors, but bai mudan takes no back seat with its more robust flavor profile, which, because it is robust only relative to white teas, results in a delightful beverage that offers nice, light tasting notes without devolving altogether into a glorified cup of barely flavored water.

The dry leaves of this organic Bai Mu Dan from You, Me and Tea are hazel colored. They are sizeable, and really do not appear terribly withered or curled up. The leaves smell very much of citrus - sweet citrus - maybe with the slightest wisp of white table grapes. They brew into a light, gentle, sprightly beverage that shakes about playfully as the vessel gets moved around. It is not at all unlike the color of a white peach.

The aroma is sweet and malty, smooth, with clear notes of citrus and melon, along with a side of very mild tannins. The first thing noticed upon sipping it is the light body, followed immediately by the delightful citrus and the practical absence of tannins. The beverage is not brisk, but one can discern that if there were a few more tannins about, then it would indeed be brisk, and that would not be such a bad thing. After a few sips, one notices a maltiness beginning to poke its way about, sneaking up from the back of the palate. It never overpowers, but with each sip it becomes felt further and further up the mouth, until soon malt is forming an underlying context in which all of the other tasting notes, heretofore independently frolicking about, are now playing together.

Thinking about it for far longer than anyone with something useful to do ought to spend thinking about it, I have found that this organic Bai Mu Dan bears a vague resemblance to a first flush Darjeeling tea.

In fidelity to the traditions of elegance and beauty that brought this tea about and have tended to its continuing prosperity, the tea has a lovely finish that rewards those who explore it most thoroughly: florals emerge for the first time, and form a lovely scene on the palate in which, if one waits just a moment or two extra, light notes of citrus and melon pass through with a breezy flourish.

Despite being lighter and more energetic than traditional tea-time teas, which tend to be deeper, smoother, calmer, and more thoughtful, thusly lending themselves to relaxation and quiet contemplation, this Bai Mu Dan is recommended more for the afternoon than for the morning. It is caffeinated and will work just fine for a chemical wakening agent, yes. However, its personality is much better suited for someone who is already about the day. The Bai Mu Dan is playful, energetic, almost cute in its childlike get-up-and-go. To get the most out of it, one should approach it already awake, in good humor, excited at the very thought of unshouldering the burdens of the day and expending the rest of one's energy in sweet recreation. Have an extra few minutes on the way to your kid's baseball game after work? The Bai Mu Dan is eagerly waiting to accompany you along the way. Done with your chores and errands for the weekend and looking forward to yoga class? This BMD just wrote your name on itself, and in your favorite font at that. Come to think of it, morning sipping may work after all: if you are one of those lucky devils who continues to spring out of bed with bountiful verve every single morning, and find yourself having just finished your jog at sunrise and now preparing to tackle the preposterous challenges with which a phalanx of bosses and coworkers has schemed to bombard you before you have even traversed the office parking lot - then a little Bai Mu Dan on the way there is just what the doctor ordered.

Pick some up today, and enjoy.

Jasmine Petal Tea

Name: Jasmine Petal Tea 

Type: Green Tea

Purveyor: Two Leaves Tea Co.

Preparation: One tea bag steeped in about eight ounces of 180-degree water for 3:00 (as recommended), sipped plain

It is hardly a secret that tea is an absorbent product. It absorbs moisture, of course, but more perniciously, it absorbs scents, aromas, flavors, and just about any other such compound, making careful storage of dry leaves an indispensable task for tea drinkers. Anyone who has ever, from a cavalier attitude or simple laziness, just tossed an unsecured bag of tea into the cabinet or (even worse) the 'fridge, knows precisely of what I speak.

Of course, it is not all a bad thing. The good Mr. Richard Rosenfeld, founder and CEO of Two Leaves Tea Co. (formerly Two Leaves and a Bud), is said to take tea that he finds sub-par for drinking, and use it in place of baking soda as an odor absorber in his refrigerator. It works quite the same.

Another, perhaps more appreciable way to put tea's absorbent qualities to good use is to produce scented tea. This nifty category of flavored teas is produced by drying tea leaves among whatever is is that we want the tea to taste like, and letting the scents and flavors get absorbed. Then the tea leaves - and only the tea leaves, not the scent-producers - are gathered and sold.

Scented teas are hardly rare, and comprise a tradition many centuries old going back to China, but all too often these days tea is flavored by throwing it together with other objects and packaging them all together. The flavors become overpowering, the tasting notes and health benefits of the tea become diluted, and even calling the product "tea" becomes rather more a convention of convenience than one of precision, as actual tea may comprise a rather small percentage of what gets brewed.

With scented tea, on the other hand, the flavors are discrete, balanced, in harmony with the tea instead of clashing against it. Two Leaves Tea has done a keen job with Jasmine Petal of scenting green tea with jasmine. By no means should my kind readership just take my word for it: trust some experts. This tea has brought to Two Leaves Tea first place prize at the 2012 North American Tea Championship in the Jasmine Scented Green Tea category of the Packaged Single-Service class (a new class in the competition). Very nice!

The tea brews into a strong, yellow beverage - not fluorescent, but not pale or translucent, either; just a deep, rich hue of yellow. In the aroma, jasmine opens like a lotus as it ascends into the nose. There are slight - very slight - fruity notes as well. The aroma is rich, but discreet. Also, smooth.

Most people who have tasted jasmine are familiar with its occasional tendency towards astringency, but this jasmine here, on the contrary, is quite sweet. Some malt underlies the flavor, but comes off more as a textural note than as a tasting note. As the sips go on, the green tea's own notes come out from the woodwork: leafy, sweet, slightly tannic. But the jasmine maintains the spotlight, right through to the finish. Conveniently for this flavor combination, the tea is medium-bodied and very smooth, even silky.

The flavors really do blend well together. The green tea notes make for an excellent platform on which the jasmine sits high - elegant; solid yet supple; strong yet gentle.

The Jasmine Petal tea works for breakfast inasmuch as it is caffeinated, but it would be most ideally suited for the afternoon. The rich flavors and easy smoothness make for an excellent vessel by which to return oneself to a state of calm, focus, and clarity after one of those busy days in which, between the mind and the body, each seems to be more wound up than the other.

Enjoy.

Organic Tamayokucha

Origin: China

Type: Green Tea

Style: Tamayokucha

Purveyor: Two Leaves and a Bud

Preparation: One bag steeped in about eight ounces of boiling water for 3:00 (as recommended), sipped plain

Here is an interesting specimen: Chinese-grown leaves prepared in a traditional Japanese style. Tamayokucha (also known as tamaryokucha, which altered syllable one would think would alter the entire word) can be processed either via pan-firing or via steaming, and Two Leaves and a Bud made a good choice in the latter. Pan-firing brings out a more vegetal essence in the tea, and while this example certainly has some of those characteristics, it also, because of the steaming, was able to keep plenty of space for sweetness, tannins, and just plain roominess.

The color of the brewed tea is light yellow, rich, translucent, and full of character, not unlike a pigment that might be used in a stained glass window. The aroma is sweet - not honey-like, nor sugary, nor fruity, but sweet. There is also an undertone to the aroma, more of a texture than a scent, really, which gives it a sort of earthy feel, in the same way that one can feel the air in a woodland before and after a rain differently than one can feel it in other settings. (This is surely magnified many times over in pan-fired varieties.) Perhaps the best approximation - and it is only that - of this unique combination of sweetness and texture in the aroma is a steaming-hot mug of green tea ice cream.

This tamayokucha tastes delicate, light, flavorful, pure, with a touch of briskness (surprisingly), and nice tannins (which are at optimal levels). Sweetness is there but not overpowering. The fine-tuned combination of all of those factors yields a delicious brew that really tastes like green tea ought to taste; truly an excellent example of the category.

As per its dynamic character, this tea can serve equally well as a morning get-me-going potion, an object around which to unwind in the afternoon, or (for those unaffected by caffeine) something to make one cozy of an evening. Enjoy.

Organic Jade Cloud Green Tea

Origin: China

Type: Green Tea

Style: Jade Cloud

Purveyor: The Spice & Tea Exchange

Preparation: One teaspoon steeped in about eight ounces of boiling water for 2:30, sipped plain

I suppose it is only right to open with a disclaimer about labeling this tea as organic: the pouch in which my sample of this tea was packaged at The Spice & Tea Exchange's Newport, Rhode Island, store does not say anything about being organic. However, its website does declare that the Jade Cloud Green Tea is organic. While labels can be old or printed erroneously, websites are easily correctable and updateable. So, I tend to presume that in the event of a discrepancy, the website should be given the benefit of the doubt. But again, a disclaimer is only fair for my kind patrons.

In any event, the Jade Cloud green tea is exquisite. Whatever label the Spice & Tea Exchange puts on it, that soon becomes of quite little interest in the presence of such a charismatic beverage. The dry leaves are, aptly, of a dark jade color, withered down but without curling into the leaf equivalent of the fetal position, as many other teas are wont to do. These Jade Cloud leaves are long, elegant, curvy, almost supple looking from a slight distance. And when getting a sense of their aroma, I was greeted not with a statement but with a question: can an aroma be matte? I do not mean dampened; the fruity tones are wonderfully vibrant. But there is a certain quality to them, almost like a gloss-over except decidedly not glossy - perhaps we can call it a haze-over. It is slight, and gives the aroma (which also includes an undertone of nuttiness) great texture, and in my mind's eye, when I sniff these leaves, that texture is quite distinctly matte. There is no other way to explain it.

That would normally be plenty of character for a tea, but in the case of the Jade Cloud here, we are just warming up - literally, in fact, as the water was boiling to brew the tea as I pondered the dry leaves. When brewed, the tea emerges very light, almost delicate in color. It is pale yellow. The nuttiness comes out much more in the aroma when brewed, and in fact becomes the predominant note. There is also just a touch of maltiness and fruit beneath it all. Could that maltiness be the manifestation of the matte quality that I found in the dry leaves? Could it all really have been just what malt smells like before being brewed? How intriguing.

When sipped the tea immediately shows itself to be quite comforting and cozy, key qualities this time of year. The flavor is subtle; not too tannic, not too malty, just right. The package, which mentions a chestnut flavor, is proven correct on that count. The tea is full bodied, even, and evidently glad to please. There is a bit of fruitness to the finish.

The Jade Cloud Green Tea has plenty of personality, but unlike many beverages brimming with character, it does not heave it at us in a frantic effort to boast of glitz and glam. Rather, it welcomes in anyone who would enter, and explores its own depths with us, sharing the adventure at our own pace. Such keen reserve makes it most ideal as an afternoon tea. In fact, I look forward to another cup of it this afternoon, and encourage everyone else to partake as well.

China Keemun Tea

Origin: Anhui, China

Type: Black Tea

Purveyor: McNulty's

Preparation: One teaspoon steeped in about eight ounces of boiling water for three minutes, sipped plain

Of the various tales surrounding the origin of Keemun tea, the most ubiquitous is also, perhaps, the most likely. A failed government bureaucrat set out to earn his fortune in the private sector (alright, that part is unlikely) with tea. He learned to make black tea in Fujian province and brought the skill back home to Anhui province, where only green tea had been made up to that point. Having quite the knack for his craft, out hero found a great degree of success, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Indeed, Keemun is often an ingredient in English Breakfast Tea, with those blends that do include it being generally more expensive. So successful is this tea, in fact, that it virtually always appears in those omnipresent lists of "Ten Famous China Teas" (no single list is definitive), even though it just came about less than a century and a half ago in a large country renowned since ancient times for dozens of different high-quality teas.

I set out to solve the riddle of its success. This was expressly not difficult - one cup, and the mystery vanished.

The dry leaves I picked up from McNulty's are the color of carob seeds. They are small, mostly straight, and twisted so tight that if I did not know any better I would assume that they were solid twigs instead of flat leaves rolled up. Their aroma is mainly vanilla, with some florals - sweet, sweet florals.

The brewed tea is of a caramel hue and has such visual texture that one would think that a few spoons of honey were already mixed in. The aroma is similar to that of the dry leaves. Some malt also appears, but sweet florals predominate. The taste, much like the sight, is enough to perpetuate the illusion that a plain cup of tea includes a great amount of honey. But now, though the sweetness is so strong, it is joined by other strong elements as well: acidity, tannins, briskness. There is a moderate degree of malt, at least enough to support the other notes, which is important because the body is medium - not weak or thin by any means, but still dwarfed by all of the flavor elements.

And yet this Keemun is not a grab-you-by-the-mouth-and-kick-you-around kind of beverage. It shows its strength but uses it gently. Next time I intent to brew it for only 2:45, and am confident that that will even it out the right amount. Three minutes just let the flavor get a little too big; we are left with gentle giants that occasionally bump shoulders by mistake. But they are still beautiful, playful, even thoughtful, with plenty of instinct for grace (if not quite plenty of room, in my particular cup). They are good for either waking up or calming down; drink it in the morning or afternoon.

On the way down, the Keemun settles back to sweet florals, releasing them with a full body at the back of the mouth. We are brought to the classic question that accompanies all finishes: is it goodbye or a forecast of hello? In this case, definitely both.

Organic Hairpoint Green Tea

Origin: China

Type: Green Tea

Style: Hairpoint

Purveyor: McNulty's

Preparation: One teaspoon steeped in about eight ounces of boiling water for 2:45, sipped plain

Of all the tea varieties, green tea is my favorite. It has the perfect balance of flavor, tannins, and body. It is healthy, delicious, and good for any occasion. The organic Hairpoint from McNulty’s is a great specimen; it tastes and feels the way a green tea ought to.

The dry leaves are a curious rendition of green. The closest hue that comes to mind is a sea green, but having endured, as tea leaves often do, a substantial extent of physical strain (steaming, rolling, drying), many of the leaves have either deepened or lightened in shade. The have not balled up, but rather twisted and curled themselves, simply unable to withstand the stress of their treatment remaining straight. Still, wrinkled and gnarled though they are, one can see that these were (and remain, where it counts), lush, healthy leaves with much to offer. Even their aroma betrays the quality of the brew to be made with them: a hint of malt, just a tad of salinity (grown near the sea, perhaps), and all of it underlined with sweetness.

When brewed, the color of the liquid is a delicate yellow with plenty of green tinge – lemongrass, one might say. The aroma is a malty sweetness, not quite that of green tea ice cream, but not far from it either. Medium-bodied, the tea is tannic, as a green tea should be. There is the slightest iota of citrus around the edges – unless that is just some more sweetness from the aroma mixing with the tannins. As green teas go, this Hairpoint is a little on the brisk and malty side. But then, it casts some lovely floral notes back to the palate as a surprise farewell token before plunging down the throat.

This is the first organic green tea that I have sipped. Whereas I certainly look forward to trying the rest of them, I am already so satisfied as to convert to this Hairpoint as my standard green tea for now. And I am glad to recommend the same to my kind readers.