Whiskey Smoked Tea – The Tea-Totaler Trilogy, Part 3
This is a parable about poor impulse control. I was having a conversation with Mizuba Tea’s Lauren Purvis about experiments regarding matcha, smoke and wine. She asked me if I’d seen a recent article posted by The Japanese Tea Sommelier. I’d heard of this blogger before, but hadn’t had a chance to visit his site, yet. Tea For Me Please had featured him on her blog once. The blogger himself was a certified tea sommelier – originally hailing from France, now living in Japan – that both wrote about Japanese teas and helped source them for the company, Thes du Japon.
Florent Weugue – The Japanese Tea Sommelier
I gave the blog a looksy upon her suggestion. The article she had pointed out was about a Japanese black tea (kocha) that’d been smoked over chips of whiskey barrel oak. I read every description of it with rapt attention. Black tea . . . from Japan . . . smoked over whiskey oak. What was this magical stuff, and why didn’t I have it?!
Mere minutes after reading it, I bought it. Then messaged Lauren and blamed her for “making” me do it. The package arrived a couple of weeks later.
The leaves looked like brown chips and flakes shaved off spent firewood, and smelled kind of like it, too. However, instead of just possessing the scent of hickory and campfire – like Lapsangs of yesterbrew – this had new elements to it. I was a whiskey drinker at one time, and I know peat moss when I smell it. And it was there – subtle, but there. There was also a tremendously woody bend to the aroma, much like an oak-smoked oolong I tried from Assam.
Instructions said to brew this for only one minute with boiled water to start, and then progress upward with further infusions. I did exactly that. Japanese teas – green or otherwise – were known to be touchy.
At only a minute, the liquor brewed bright red, but I was surprised at how light it still was – like an under-brewed Keemun, in appearance. The aroma was anything but light, imparting an oak-smoked tendril of awesome up my nostrils like a manly handshake. It was like my nose was wearing its own smoking jacket in the private room of a whiskey bar, wearing a monocle.
Further infusions with added time also deepened in flavor. Drinking it was like upping a workout regimen, adding more weights or an extra incline. Each sip was like a power squat. I think my mouth now has muscles. The smokiest was the final Western-style infusion. Any subtlety this had pretty much vanished after two minutes; straight ashen pipe tobacco. A very well-deserved addition to the smoked tea pantheon.
To the point where I’m now spreading the gospel of this process to other tea makers I know – to see if their impulse control is as poor as mine.
Epilogue
That concludes this little series on teetotaling with tea. So far, it’s been six months since “going dry” from actual alcohol. And, as you (fair reader) can clearly see . . . with teas like these, who needs missing hubcaps and dead brain cells.
I’m totally okay to drive.