Any Tea Drinkers Here?
I got out of Mainland China before the big coffee craze hit so I've always prefer tea to coffee (except in the morning - 2 shots of generic espresso + 1 cup of soy milk makes for a good pick me up).
My preferred drink of Huangshan maofeng (a relatively inexpensive green tea) surreptitiously raided from my parents' stash. The far better known longjing tea is not worth buying - the good stuff is good (though no staying power - you only get one good brew from them and I can get three decent brews from maofeng) but very hard to get, and there are imitators everywhere. The best green tea, called "white tea" in American vernacular, is actually called be lu chun - it's almost impossible (do you have a close friend who is also a member of the Chinese politburo?) to get genuine bi lu chun nowadays - I had some about twelve years ago - very fine fragrance and good staying power.
Woo long might be better suited to the Western palate. Taiwan produces some very fine woo long tea with a great fragrance, good body and a hint of sweetness. China's Fujian province also produces a lot of woo long but I find even the best lacks the sweetness and depth of Taiwan woo long.
If you don't have Chinese cadres as friends, I'd recommend Ten Ren shops. Their selection is not as fresh as what you can get in China, and the prices are quite a bit higher, but still quite drinkable. Particularly impressive are the jasmine tea balls that expand to reveal flowers and tied together tea leaves - not economical for everyday consumption, but very impressive presentation if your backwoodsy relatives come for a visit.
Trader Joe's has a pretty decent jasmine tea that I chug when my parents' green tea supply runs low. I drink Earl Gray when I'm away from home - Earl Gray is basically the same idea as jasmine tea - flavor mediocre tea with a strong fragrance and get instant body. Tea snobs turn their noses away from such chicanery, but I find these tea quite yummy.
One thing that really bothers me about non-Asian attitude towards green teadrinking is that non-Asians people claim to do it for health reasons. Yuck! I don't know who spread that mime but that person (ergh, marketing executive) should be taken out and shot. Green tea should be savored, or at least enjoyed, on its own merits. The idea of ignorant people who go out and buy crappy green tea for vague health reasons bothers me. Those people should just go to GNC and buy some capsules.
Also -- Japanese green tea sucks. I've tried the "good" stuff and I've tried the bag stuff - they all taste off and sludgy to me. And no! This is not some anti-Japanese biase. I have the greatest admiration for the Japanese in many areas, but their tea sucks.
posted by astrid @ 2:43 PM
7 Comments:
Ten Ren is not bad. I have some of their tea bags at work. Yes, I have woo long.
TOLurker,
Do feel free to create a separate thread on English teas.
You probably had some inferior "longjing" tea, true longjing is lightly fermented so there should be no grassy notes at all. I've encountered some truly undrinkable "longjing" over the years that I used to cook tea eggs. Good longjing should not taste off and be appealing from your first sip - I appreciate the delicacy but it's a very expensive "okay" drink.
Overall, I do prefer maofeng because it provides the best bang for the buck. There's some decent maofeng type (first or second picking, unfermented) teas in Anhui, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi.
Your white tea is not my "white tea". There's a lot of "white tea" coming out - I've had some good ones on occasion. I must admit, I've avoided buying "white tea" type ever since I got stung by some very poor quality knockoff bi lu chun (that other people are constantly insisting aren't so bad, even though the tea tasted OFF and burnt). White teas are so delicate that it's easy to goof up production process, so I usually stick with the cheaper loose green teas. I've never tried the varieties you mentioned...if I ever head for Hong Kong, I'll keep an eye out for them. Never heard of bolei but had some teguanyin - good but I definitely prefer Taiwan's woo long teas to Mainland China's production. I think it has more to do with processing than with the raw materials.
Where does your uncle buy his tea from?
I like Jasmine pearl tea too, the good stuff is very strong and appealing. But I believe the snotty tea drinkers still consider even the best jasmine tea to be inferior to good green or woo long tea.
Now here's a question I am very interested in having answered - is there a North American source for those delicious woo long flavored preserved ume plums?
Astrid,
SFWoman here, I'll sign up for an account in a bit. I love green teas, even the macha teas. I also love black teas, particularly the rose flavored tea from Sri Lanka and Marriage Freres (a French tea company) makes a tea called Marco Polo that is very vanilla-y and floral and fruity.
We have a Hong Kong style tea house here, Imperial Tea House, that has a lot of very nice teas. The prices vary, but some are extremely expensive. I don't know what makes a tea really amazing, however.
I do know that I use cheap tea to make iced tea. Very good quality tea seems to make cloudy iced tea. My father's side of the family is southern, they drink iced tea (or is it ice tea?) instead of water.
drinking tea is actually healthier than drinking water .. according to a study that was conducted a month back .. i forgot what was the name of it.
SFWoman and Requiem and Nabeel, welcome to this humble blog. :-)
Nabeel,
I think part of the reason why drinking tea is healthier is the way we consume tea, warm and in small sips, while sitting down...unless the study compared bottled water to bottled tea...
SFWoman,
I use regular Lipton's or Twinings for ice tea and they always taste fine to me. Black tea is good for ice tea while green tea is often tastes off when cold. (I can't comprehend how Tazo does so much business on cloudy sweetened green tea - yuck!)
I've never tried a rose flavored tea before (there is a rosebud tea that's great for constipation, for some bizarre reason, but doesn't taste like roses), but I keep a bottle of rosewater (approx. $2/12 oz. at halal grocery stores) for gurgling and occasionally for flavoring my drinking water.
requiem,
Tea is an acquired taste, but often times, you might simply be encountering superior packaging masquerading as superior product. It is whatever you enjoy. I like Trader Joe's branded teas, most have a good fragrance and body, and they're actually slightly cheaper than mass market teas like Celestial Seasonings.
I like Lipton sun tea and ice tea too. The generic Lipton tea is pretty good and makes a good alternative to water. Even if they're sweetened, they're sweeted with table sugar and not high fructose corn syrup like canned sodas.
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