This week’s trip to my Tea Pub was one where I order a
pot of tea (I’m always looking for a new tea to try and write about)
and then pull out a packet of one of my own treasured tea’s
for my tea server friends to try. (These employees are super mega educated about tea!)
I ordered this Darjeeling and sat at the tall bar watching several
of my friendly servers take the last of my sample packet of Summer Tieguanyin and gradually pour all 18 steepings.
It’s funny to watch the whole tea serving and drinking from a bar stool. The Gaiwan was ready and the pouring began.
Eyes rolled around and primordial sounds arose as my friends enjoyed
the exceptional Oolong tea. It was amusing (I know I laughed).
My tea was more interesting and delicious than I expected also.
Harvested after the monsoon season, this darjeeling is a ‘no flush’…because it’s at the very end of picking. It has no muscat flavor, no astringency or acidity.
For an hour or so, my tea friends and I chattered on about what was making this tea so sweet? We ended up talking about beer, then grains and grain sugars and the closest flavor to what we were tasting in the tea was Grape Nuts.
Yes Grape Nuts cereal, which has a barley sugar that tastes good. (One other person said there was some kind of stone fruit but we could never decide on that. INCONCLUSIVE!)
I drank a whole pot of tea. Then I asked for a refill.
(Looking for stone fruit)
An odd thing happened with the second pot.
The leaves smelled soapy. Not bad soap, not Irish Spring. More like the musky warm soap scent left on a man’s skin, very light and pleasant.
(Well OK then, who just woke up?!)
The tea didn’t taste like soap but like Bergamot. Strange.
As the tea cooled, the soapy scent and Bergamot flavor drifted away as if they were never there at all.
I am such a fortunate person to have a place like this to go and have a good time, taste tea and share the tea I have. What a blessing. Without this place, I would have far less contact with people face to face. This is why I hope the tea culture in North America grows. For the tea we all love…sure, but for more places like my tea pub (Happy Lucky’s and in Boulder Ku Cha) to exist for hospitality.
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjBX1Mjf Finally found a picture of the place!
