I spent the day today thinking about Beowulf’s funeral and this tea has helped me. In case you are wondering, the topic for tomorrow’s seminars is Beowulf and we shall be reading the last couple of dozen lines of the poem. It will be hardcore grammar for a large chunk of the seminars but there needs to be time to talk about the text too. It should be exciting, because there is a lot that can be said about just this tiny chunk of the poem. Anyway, this rather lively tea helped keep me focused on the preparation. I hope my students appreciate my effort!
I bought a sample of it from Yunnan Sourcing a while back and finally got around to opening it today. I’m glad I did. The dry leaves are predominantly dark green, the cake split easily into its component parts and I had a grassy smelling pile of largish leaves very soon after opening the packet. I put my usual 8g in a 170ml Yixing pot (green ben shan clay) and brewed away. Several steepings later I was still stuck for how to describe this tea. That seems to be the way of things for me lately. Is this the onset of senility some thirty years or so too early? The tea is sweet and grassy with quite a bite to it. It bounces around in my mouth, never letting me get complacent about it. Just when I think it has mellowed, it jumps up again and gives me a kick. I am really enjoying it and am particularly pleased that YS sells such large samples.
