Tuesday 17 December 2013

Sencha Sakura




Sencha Sakura







Welcome to readers from Finland and Liberia





Fortune Cookie


誰が、私は私の茶室でお茶を飲みながら午前とき、私は私が私の唇にボウルを持ち上げるのこの瞬間が永遠自体が時間と空間を超えていることで、その宇宙全体を飲み込むいことを否定するでしょうか?

Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space? ~ D.T. Suzuki




Sencha Sakura



Sakura is the ubiquitous flowering cherry tree planted in Japanese parks, along streets and within commons and yards. During late March through May, Sakura blooms across Japan. The Hanami festival celebrates the coming of the spring season and is the time to take a stroll and view the blooming cherry trees. The cherry blossom symbolises feminine beauty, the feminine principle and love in the language of herbs. Cherry blossoms, with their short blooming times, are believed to represent the transient nature of life.

Sencha is a high quality green tea grown in Japan. It is steamed briefly and rolled, shaped and dried into the distinctive thin cylinder shapes. Since it is not roasted like Chinese green teas this tea has a more vegetal, almost grass-like taste and aroma.





There is a pure form of cherry tea that involves only cherry blossom and no green tea leaves. In this tea, Sakuraya, the petals are actually pickled in plum vinegar and salt and the product subsequently dried. 





Green tea was first brought to Japan by Myoan Eisai, a Buddhist priest who developed the 
Rinzai Zen school from the Chinese form of Buddhism.

Japan grows other kinds of tea and produces roasted tea but the country is best known for its green tea. The best Japanese green is said to be that from the Yame region of Fukuoka and the Uji region of Kyoto. The so-called Uji area has been producing Ujicha (Uji tea) for four hundred years and predates the prefectural system. Uji is now a combination of the border regions of Shiga, Nara, Kyoto and Mie prefectures. Soraku district in Kyoto is one of the many tea-producing districts. Shizuoka prefecture is the most productive producing fully 40% of Japan’s raw tea leaves.





Sencha sakura is quite a beautiful tea. To the eye and on the palate. The flavour is naturally sweet and extremely calming and quite deeply pleasurable. Purists baulk at the notion of tea with any flavouring but I do not have any problem drinking this tea. The aroma is wonderful and soothing. The strength is there and the quality of flavour of the leaves still strident beneath the subtle sweetness and delicate fragrance.



Sencha has a distinctive cylindrical or needle like appearance which is a result of the drying and rolling process used in the production of sencha tea.


A tea field in the Kyoto region



For an in-depth view of Japanese green tea and its cultivars visit Ricardo Caicedo's site below:





If you like travel see Singing Birds sister site GuerillaZ below.





Today I use a glass teapot modelled on the Chinese style. Now I can see the tea colour at all times including the short period of initial steeping. The tea requires only 1 - 2 minutes to steep. Ensure the water is around 80 degrees fahrenheit. The leaves can be used for another wash but with less water and a less distinct flavour. 



An historic image of the tea ceremony in Japan.









I think 2014 will be the year of the tea ceremony for me; I plan to partake in Vietnam, China, in Japan and with some persistence Seoul, South Korea and Pyongyang, North Korea.



Happy tea drinking! 



Cheerio.






Monday 9 December 2013

Char from The Nilgiris




Welcome to readers from Mexico

Welcome to readers from Brunei - helo and sama


The Nilgiris



Fortune Cookie

如果一個男人是衝動的,往回走慢。

If a man is impulsive, back away slowly.









Map of the Indian Tea Regions



The Nilgiri region is partly in Kerala and partly Tamil Nadu. That is, in the south of India. It is the most beautiful part of India in my view though of course there's a discussion to be had there.


Palms at Samudra beach, Kerala

I stayed here for four months. The rest of India just isn't quite the same. It's easy to see why the Indians call Kerala "Gods Country".


The badge of Nilgiri tea products



If you like travel see Singing Bird's sister site GuerillaZ below.



Nilgiri tea can be a thing of some considerable distinction. The pot of tea served up at the Old Courtyard Hotel in Fort Kochi is an example of that distinction. This was a smooth cup of tea taken English style with milk and sugar. It was a loose tea called "Korahkundah" shipped from the mainland.


Korakundah Loose Tea



Elephants Break into a Nilgiri tea plantation

Elephants are not popular with many people. They are considered more dangerous than tigers. When they trumpet everyone runs for cover. There's nothing like that experience. Several tons of angry elephant is something special to behold. The power resonating from the beast is palpable.

*

The first Nilgiri tea I tried, back in 2009, came from a tea factory that shall remain nameless. I steeped it but metaphorically these elephants had trampled it into the red Keralan dust. That tea remains, to this day, the least palatable I have ever tasted. An unfortunate experience. I have never discovered quite how they could have made it taste like that. I have wondered if it was tea at all. Even the cheapest tea bags are better. In the past Nilgiri tea has suffered from a poor reputation associated with it's erstwhile reliance on sales to the former USSR. Soviet buyers had little regard for quality. It was a freakish experience. That was in 2009.


Drinking tea to the sound of classical Indian music in the Old Courtyard Hotel.

It sounds something like this:



The tea is driven down the mountains of the western Ghats where Nilgiri tea is grown and out to the port of Ernakulam-Kochi or shipped up the coast to Mumbai and then Delhi.

This tea was entirely different. Often consumed with milk or lemon this black tea was of another calibre.


My mother sheltering in The Old Courtyard Hotel, Fort Cochin

While in Fort Cochin, a ridiculously pretty island off the coast, the hotelier at The Old Courtyard served up the Korakundah tea. To buy our own we had to get a ferry and a bus to reach the tea shop in the Jewish quarter on the mainland. If you've been to Ernakulam you know how desperately hot an experience that is. Sunblind streets mixed with heavy traffic and wild rickshaw drivers. An hour and ten minute journey to the shop (2 miles). The tea was excellent. Smooth. Bracing. Enough to make birdsong sound sweeter.

In November 2006 a Nilgiri tea achieved "Top Honours" and fetched a world record price of $600 per kg. This was at the first ever tea auction held in Las Vegas. A machine-sorted, lower-cost variety of high quality tea is a semi-full leaf variety known as Broken Orange Pekoe.



Cheerio for now