Living Tea’s Soujourn! And a quick thought from Bodhidharma!

If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both.

Bodhidharma

Wuyi teas capture the ideal growing conditions of the region, surrounded by massive granite cliffs, rivers, and waterfalls. Masterfully hand-processed in the century-old traditional method, the ancient processing brings out the true spirit of Wuyi Mountain, an area with the perfect terroir for this special tea. Sojourn goes through four rounds of roasting with alternating indoor and outdoor drying. The flavor is smooth, rich, sweet, and maintains a pleasant hui gan, or cooling sensation in the aftertaste. With a slight astringency and great patience, this unusual tea offers a complex experience that is perfect for a warm summer afternoon.

The above rings mighty true for me! It is 90f in Louisville, KY at midnight and I am outside having a session with this unusual Oolong which I am dedicating to Living Tea!

Uh Oh! I just fell in love again….

TEAVIVRE  and with this sample, (a generous 7 grams of which I used just 3). This is a Taiwan ‘Monkey-Picked ( Ma Liu Mie) Tie Guan Yin’ origin being Lishan Mountain with the following summation:

Summary

Origin:	Lishan Mountain, Taichung, Taiwan
Season:	Spring Tea
Harvest Date:	May 18, 2022
Dry Leaf:	Rolled to semi-ball shape
Aroma:	Toasty and aromatic with a slight floral aroma
Liquor:	Bright golden in color
Taste:	Smooth, baked flavor and sweet fruity notes of peach,pleasant fragrance and sweet aftertaste
Tea Bush:	C. sinensis cv. Tieguanyin
Tea Garden:	Qibang Tea Garden
Caffeine:	Moderate caffeine (less than 20% of a cup of coffee)
Storage:	Store in airtight, opaque packaging; keep refrigerated
Shelf Life:	24 Months

 Now I must write briefly here and then Google like heck trying to track down this exact tea if not at TeaVivre, then with another vendor, preferably shipping from stateside. Kids, this is a very good tea and I may just be in an extremely good mood the rest of the day thanks to this session and I doubly love it when the tea says ‘monkey picked’ because it sparks my imagination, I am loving this tea, and I’m only three steps in. The rinse was delicious. Almost a little peppery. 

Tightly rolled and opening up fast on the third steep. Water at 195f and falling with each steep.

I wish I had an outlet here on my back porch to keep the kettle hot. Do you think I’m making a mistake by letting the temperature fall? Text me and let me know!

This sample is from the lovely people at TeaVivre .I just bought a nice quality and decently priced 180ml Jian Shui pot to replace, after three long years, my other Jian Shui which is no longer a teapot but part of an art installation about impermanence and the transient nature of all things. (Yes, I broke it.)

Off to search this tea online and perhaps explore Lishans specifically! Of course, my first visit will be to teavivre.com to buy it from the vendors who sent it to me in the first place. Keep your Beginner’s Mind like me, never KNOWING, always learning. Always becoming one with the tea.

Once again, my hat is off and my bow is deep to this 1998 raw basket Liu Bao.

 I will keep this short as I’ve written about this already and very recently. I had forgotten that I had written about it, and just saw it when I was looking at my recent blog posts. But no matter, this tea deserves a little extra praise. I have a pretty decent aged tea collection, but nothing I like as much as this. It hits all the places in my throat, my brain and my Qi to make me relaxed, alert and ready to live fully, forever if possible.

Every single time I drink it, I remember the first time I ever had it. I remember what I was wearing, what room I was in and in which of the dozens of houses we had rented in California over the years.

So my thoughts are as follows. Wet Autumn sidewalk, damp earth forest trail, camphor, and the soil in which mushrooms sprout densely at the base of some ancient tree.

I like LiuBao far better than any Shu I’ve ever had, hands down and my digestive system highly agrees!

Find some at yunnansourcing.com or contact me for a in-person session. (Yes, in KY. Needless to say I will most likely not be creating any GongFu Cha sessions for anyone other than myself and local friends any time soon!)