Lots of exclamation marks above, huh? Well, check out these photos and see why.
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| (Even the dog was like, 'What the hell is that? Is that for me?') |
I wanted to start the morning with something totally new, and this is, at least in visual terms, just the thing to fulfill that wish of mine. After opening the usual brightly colored vacuum packed bag I found this little paper-wrapped square. Wrapped in a layer of four neat folds, I felt quite giddy about the care and precision of the thing.
Wasn't presented like any tea I had seen before. I mean, can you even find the tea in this picture?
Ok, here it is in case I had flummoxed you and you thought perhaps that enormous gaiwan or cup was the actual tea packet. Like you couldn't tell, right? Sorry.
This is a lovely oolong, reminds me of an Oriental beauty, rich broth, easy to drink, not too demanding of ones attention, not overly complex, just a good, sweet, honey-hued oolong.
I used the entire little packet in a large gaiwan of 250ml, rinsed a few times(the rinses were tasty too!) and am now on the fourth steep. My cup-eth overflow-eth, or rather my gaiwan is totally loaded to the brim with this increasingly expanding and whopping ten grams of leaves, rich in color, amazing of scent on the wet leaves and clearly a tea I can brew for a long time, especially using the insane amount I did, all day and perhaps into tomorrow as well.
Using this amount of tea was all by intent. Well, if 'all by intent' means I was not about to break the magical little cube in half and I also wanted something I could make a fairly decent 'mug' of tea out of as I want to drink in gulps and not dainty little sips today. (See
prior post about my old punk self waking up, she isn't much of a tiny-cup-gongfu-sipper, she wants to explode her mouth with a lot of heat, flavor and spicy fun. Gads. Who knows where this desire born out of boredom and a long holiday week will take me, but I am going to drink this Water Lily oolong 'til I kill it and then go looking through my stash for something else new, some intense ass-kicking puerh perhaps or another mind blowing Rui Gui Wu-Yi oolong, a rock-n-roll, buzz-inducing tea that makes me move my middle-aged silly butt if not around the world, than at least around the bungalow as I await the next delivery of yet
another new tea experience already on its way to me from around the globe! In fact today might be the day a very special,
recommended Da Hong Pao finally arrives from
Four Seasons Tea. If the tea is half as good as the literally moving artwork on their website I am indeed in for a real treat.
And to end this rambling article let's get back to the tea at hand, one more little peek at the tea that started it all this morning, the square chunk of YUM that is Water Lily from Zhang Ping village in Fujian using high quality Shui Xian leaves. Lovely. And appreciated.
