Author: lazyliteratus
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An Ivan Chai Diary
At the beginning of May (of 2020), I received a box from Moychay . . . A blogger friend saw the write-up I did on Ivan Chai a couple of months prior, and recommended I get in contact with this Russian-based vendor. Apparently, they had a whole slew of Ivan Chai products, highlighting the many…
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Tea in Star Wars
Episode 1 The Rise of the Steam The kettle boils! A tea geek, locked in his room during quarantine, casually watched an episode of some Star Wars cartoon, and—lo!—a tea pot appeared into view. At first, he thought it was a mere happenstance, and didn’t think that tea played a part in the lore. He…
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Biography of a Bing Cha
I’ve often expressed my ambivalence to the tea category that is puerh. Sometimes, though, a story about it demands my attention. And most of those times, the story isn’t even mine. Even stranger still? A few of those stories focus on the puerh itself, and the journey it went through. This is one such story.
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Heralding the Rose of Wuyi
This is Dan. Dan’s a pretty solid dude, and a darn good friend. Dan is also married to my matcha dealer. Dan’s a lucky sonuva- . . . I’m getting off-topic already, aren’t I? Let’s start over.
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Tea Love in the Time of COVID
Strange times we’re living in, huh?
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The Fairhope Tea Plantation
As I’ve said many times, it often takes a mere photograph to grab my attention, and to remind me of something I’ve neglected. For instace, this one. This was posted in August by blogger compatriot (and all-around great guy) Eric of One Man’s Tea Journey. In the spring of 2019, he paid a visit to…
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The Age of Honey Orchid
If there’s one kind of oolong that has the most fantastical origin story, it’s Dan Cong. A name that translates as “single bush or tree”. The story of this tea has its roots in the last days of the Southern Song dynasty. Around 1279 C.E., Zhao Bing (or Song Di Bing)—the final child emperor—had fled…
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Why I Talk About Indian Teas . . . A Lot
There’s a question I always get from fellow tea heads, and it’s one that has increased in frequency over the last couple of years: “So, what’s the deal with Indian teas?” Or some permutation of that. I’m not sure when it happened, but I became known (peripherally) in a few tea circles as the “Indian…
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Caffeine and Crassicolumna
In late 2018, various media outlets were all a-buzz about a new (old) discovery. An as-of-yet uncategorized decaffeinated tea plant in Fujian province, China. Some of the articles exaggerated the claim; others got some of the science wrong completely. Put succinctly: a long-forgotten cultivar had mutated. How does that happen? Well, as most tea botany…
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The Legend of Ivan Chai
A couple of years ago, I tried a unique herbal “tea” from Latvia. It was called “Rosebay Willowherb”. The sample was sent to me by a now-defunct company, and what intrigued me most was the processing method. While the purple flowers of the plant were dried in the typical tisane manner, the leaves were almost…