Month: September 2016
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A Kanchan View Darjeeling Pairing
The Kanchan View tea estate in Darjeeling has a rough history. The garden was first established in the 1880s, where it first went by the name “Rungneet”. At the peak of its hundred-plus-year production, the 250-acre garden accounted for at least 100,000 kilos of tea a year. Now? It only does about ten percent of…
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Reading the Coffee Leaves
In the spring of 2013, I tried a tisane made from the dried leaves of a Hawaiian coffee plant. And I wasn’t a fan. The flavor was not overly offensive, just . . . herbal. And nutty. Nutty-herbal. Okay, on “Internet” paper that doesn’t sound too terrible or unappetizing, but it wasn’t very palatable, either.…
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A Totem Tea Story
The definition of the word “totem” is thus: “A natural object or animal believed by a particular society to have spiritual significance and adopted by it as an emblem.” It is derived from the Native American language, Ojibwe; the word, dodaem. The concept, however, is not limited to just Native American cultures and religious practices.…
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Japanese Black Tea . . . from Brazil
It may be a surprise to a lot of people, but Brazil used to produce a lot of tea. As early as 1812, even. The ugly truth of it was, though, most of those old plantations were dependent on slave labor. When slavery was abolished in 1888 . . . tea production collapsed. Enter the…
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Summer Time Tea Montage
It’s officially the first day of September. The outside temperature has dropped twenty degrees. Skies are gray, and big-ass raindrops are falling. Yep, summer time is just about over. And I couldn’t be happier. Not that I bear summer any ill will in general, and not that this summer was bad, but—y’see?—I’m a fall kid…