The New Year.

Always use fresh water for every new pot of tea.

Even if there is water left in the kettle from the pot before, this is not the time to worry about waste. Allow yourself to pour it down the drain and wish it well. The afternoon pot needs to be made. It demands new water from the facet. The oxygen is fresh. Opportunity roiling. Breakfast is past. Evening is yet to come. For now revel in the brisk boiling of this new cup.

Happy New Year.

Lauren.

The haiku version:

Use fresh water for
ev'ry new pot of tea and
Opportunity.

Makaibari

So this tea is something that could only come from Asia. I would love to try it, but at $400.00 per kg, it's a bit outside what I would consider a necessary expenditure. The next most expensive tea that I know of is the Castleton Moonlight (Darjeeling), and it's half the price of the Makaibari. Just to put this into perspective; the Castleton Moonlight transported to me to a different dimension when I tried it. Buddhists talk about being able to achieve a brief moment of enlightenment when you sneeze, or during orgasm, because your mind is truly unfettered in these moments. A taste of the Castleton Moonlight almost pushes it's way into that realm; AND IT'S HALF THE PRICE OF THE MAKAIBARI! There's a price on the home page that says it's $1,600.00 per kg, but they offer an online purchase for $400.00/kg. The sixteen hundred might just be about bragging rights.

So anyway, I haven't had the opportunity to try it yet. I'll include a link to the Makaibari estates home page later on, but for now, I'll give you a little info; The estate has been passed down from rajah, to rajah for four generations, and the current owner, Rajah Banerjee has created an entire ecosystem on the estate. Instead of just growing one crop, Banerjee has diversified the flora, and fauna to create an efficient ecosystem. There's tigers, and panthers there. Enough said. This place should be in a James Bond movie.

Oh, and also, the tea is only picked by young girls, under a full moon. Poke around the website for a bit and see what it's all aboutwww.makaibari.com. The estate is outside of a town called Kurseong, which is on the sketchy mountain road to Darjeeling from New Jalpaiguri. Kurseong is considered part of the Darjeeling region as far as tea production is concerned, so Makaibari would be a Darjeeling. Apparently it's the most expensive tea in the world, but I'm going to guess that someone in Japan is selling a rare tea for a similar price.

So if anyone decides to make a purchase of the Makaibari, let me know about it. Maybe we can work something out.

Lapsang Souchong

This is the right time of year to talk about Lapsang Souchong. This tea was made for sitting next to a fire in cold weather. Outside of a few African teas, it's unlikely that you'll find a more husky, robust black tea.

Souchong is a Chinese tea that gets it's smoky flavor from being smoked over a pine fire. The story is that during the Qing era, the passing of armies would delay the drying of the tea in the Wuyi hills, so the workers would speed up the drying process by drying it over a fire. Hard to say why a passing army would delay tea from drying, but there it is.

I've also heard that the tea was originally dried too close to fish that was being smoked. Lapsang Souchong was produced in an area that had a substantial fishing industry.

Isn't it interesting how all these teas have their little stories about how they came to be.

Well, I think as far a Lapsang Souchong is concerned; you're either going to love it, or hate it. It's pretty strong. Personally, I like it a lot. There really isn't any sort of a nuanced description that I can offer for this tea, because it pretty much just tastes like smoky tea. There's a difference between some of the different varieties of Lapsang Souchong, and you can certainly find something of a higher quality if you're willing to pay for it.

So that's it. A little bit about Lapsang Souchong. I think maybe I should start a blog about Kung Fu movies, because that's what I feel like writing about now.

Visit www.himalayanqueentea.com for all your Darjeeling tea needs.

Grand Keemun

I've been drinking an excessive amount of Darjeeling tea lately, so I've had to make some changes. The last few days I've been drinking Grand Keemun instead. Darjeeling's are rarely taken with milk, and Grand Keemun does just fine with it, so my entire morning has become something different entirely.

Grand Keemun is possibly the most popular Chinese black tea among westerners. Some of the words commonly used to describe Grand Keemun are earthy, smoky, full bodied, or woody. Basically, it's a fairly dark, breakfast tea. Like most Chinese black teas, it manages to remain smooth, and vaguely delicate despite it's dark character. Once you try it, it's fairly clear why Grand Keemun is such a popular tea. It's really good, but it's not so fancy that you have pay attention to it. Very few teas lack an earthy-ness, or a vegetative quality so Grand Keemun's general character is not so unique. Regardless, it's worth seeking it out. I like that you can take it with milk, or without, and it's still a good experience. I've become quite a tea snob lately, so I'm probably not giving this more "common" tea it's due. In fact, it's not entirely common. You could serve Grand Keemun amongst any company, and still consider yourself to be a snooty person.

Keemun comes from Quimen County of Huangshan City, in Anhui province. There are a number of varieties of Keemuns produced in this region; some better than others. Keemun is also one of the main ingredients in English Breakfast blends.

Personally, I consider it to be a strong, yet smooth, black tea, that I take with milk, unless I happen to be out of milk, in which case I am happy to drink it with-out.

You can find Grand Keemun at any decent tea shop, and you can get away with overbrewing it a bit. This is a great everyday breakfast tea.

The above picture was snagged from Tea Chat, a site run by Adagio teas. It's probably a Keemun Mao Feng, or some other high quality Keemun. Typically the loose tea leaves are a little smaller, and a little darker than in the picture. You can see the dark color in the brewed tea.

So these are some underlit pictures of tea that I took. I set up the glass with tea in it, on a piece of milk plexi, with a light underneath it.

I was hoping that I could use these for my website (www.himalayanqueentea.com), but they really didn't do a very good job of displaying the colors of the tea. they're kind of cool on their own, but I don't know what to do with this idea now.

The top two images are with a stemless wine glass, and the bottom
two images are with a double walled glass mug, by Bodum.

I'm welcoming myself back.

It looks like I haven't posted on this blog since October! Well that's just plain unacceptable. I have excuses, but I'm totally over that, so I'll just proceed as if nothing ever happened.

I finally have www.himalayanqueentea.com up and running in a state that I can accept. There are still some improvements that need to be made, but it's pretty good.

I spent the day photographing four new teas from the Autumn flush in Darjeeling. I'll post them on the Himalayan Queen Tea sit tomorrow.

The tea pictures above are of the Castleton (Estates) Exclusive, Autumnal Flush offerings, and the other one is of my little photostudio. It works pretty well, and in my next post I'm going to show some pictures of a few little experiments I did.

So then!! It's good to be back. I'll try to keep up with this a little better.