First tastes of the Chicago Tea Garden

Right around resolution time early this month, several friends mentioned their desire to explore tea a bit more. Mind you, these are each hardcore coffee addicts. One of these was my friend and gym buddy Kevin, so I invited him and his partner over for a tea tasting to see if we could find something that appealed to his bean-stained palette.

On a lovely afternoon-evening, we poured through eight teas, keeping to the blacks and whites he's thus far found to his liking. (Green tea is a hard first step for many folks. More on that in a later discussion perhaps.) Successful blacks included a favorite Dian Hong (love me some China breakfast!) and my old stand-by, TG's basic Keemun. Kevin also took to another pillar in my cabinet, TG's South India White. Richard, to my delight, even fell in love with the acquired taste of pu-erh, which I wasn't expecting from a newbie.

But the "oh my Gods" were uttered after sipping two new teas — teas that were half of my urge to host a tasting, just to have a formal excuse to steep them. I've mentioned earlier the upcoming venture of fellow Chicago tea blogger Tony Gebely, who's about to launch his own tea company, the Chicago Tea Garden (the site's not quite ready yet, but mark that link). He sent out some samples as an official "here I come" — they came in plain brown boxes with a wonderful stamp on the outside reading, "Your Tea Is Here!" — and they're, as expected, amazing teas. Both samples come from the collection of revered tea taster and buyer David Lee Hoffman (subject of "All in This Tea"). Gebely says Hoffman has been between assignments recently, during which time he's amassed his own stockpile of his favorite stuff. It's this treasure trove Gebely and his partner, Erin Murphy, are plumbing for much of the Chicago Tea Garden's offerings.

We tasted the Golden Li Buo, a Yunnan black tea that's one of the prettiest I've seen. Golden is no catchy name; the tea in the canister looks like rolled squash blossoms, tight spirals of dusty yellow and brown. The resulting brew deserves a string of superlatives. It's creamy, for certain, but with a brisk closure to it. There's a lot of vanilla. I had made some lemon scones as part of our tasting spread, and the tea made the otherwise subtle lemon absolutely explode in the mouth. The color is golden, too, lightening from dark amber to butterscotch as it's resteeped. Ab fab, and I will be pestering my banker and poor Tony to keep me supplied.

Also sampled was CTG's "competition grade" Tie Guan Yin, a particularly fine version of the fabled oolong. On first short steeps, this was a remarkably subtle but engaging tea. A clear, light-green liquor tastes exactly like honeysuckle. Talk about tasting summer in the middle of winter! I scribbled "buttery" as a note, too, but my memory chastises me for that somehow. Very floral, and those notes only expand as the tea resteeps and as it cools. A knockout in any competition, no doubt.

Good luck, Tony! Though with teas like these, you won't need it.

A local confab, and the path to the middle way

Here's the thing about tea (one of a thousand): You meet such nice people.

Last weekend, three other Chicago-based tea bloggers — Lainie, Steven and Tony — graciously included me in an afternoon confab. Just four tea lovers sharing a few pinches of kick-ass and some scoops of OMG. The table was strewn with food and cups and packages and tea ware. We drank some great tea. I made note of the Antlers twig tea from Pearl (full-bodied infusion from the stems, still getting better by the third infusion), the Lu Shan Yun Wu green tea from Dream About Tea (vibrant green tea with zest and go-get-'em) and a Song Zhong Shan No. 4 from Tea Habitat, the kind of tea that makes you realize how deep this rabbit hole really goes.

Then there were the eye-openers from Tony, he of the soon-to-be-launched Chicago Tea Garden company. The lucky son-of-a-what was fresh back from an excursion in and around San Francisco, hoisting teacups with people like David Lee Hoffman (as well as Les Blank, who made the documentary about him) and others. The guy brings out what looks like a rotten pumpkin left over from Halloween — a small, black gourd with fat ribs and a hole on the top. It's a pummelo fruit — or it was 15 years ago, when it was hollowed out and jammed full of pu-erh. Now the tea is scraped out with a chisel, and the resulting dirt (really, it looked like compost ... and I suppose it actually is) was funneled into a pot. The brew: like drinking fresh rainwater runoff from holy ground — holy ground with an orange grove.

Good stuff, yum yum. Worth mentioning, I suppose, by a still-starry-eyed tea novice like myself. I don't want to ruin the relaxing get-together by writing about it each time it should occur. But I left thinking: here are three experienced, extremely knowledgeable tea lovers, each of them talented tea reviewers. We were gathered in the name of tea, and we can each talk about tea in our own ways. We do. My way, I hope, will be to write about something slightly more than what's cupped, if that's possible. I love tea, but I love even more what happens in the presence of tea. Because of it, as an excuse for it, in spite of it, who knows — on Saturday I simply enjoyed meeting three interesting people and indulging in treats and conversation on a wintry afternoon, probably more than the taste of the tea itself (though even attempting to slice the experience into matters of degrees strays from what I'm after in this tea-blogging experiment). There's the experience of the senses, but — fantastic as that can be — that's not enough to explain the magic of this beverage and its humble conquering of the world, of humanity, one person at a time. There are personal and social phenomena wafting from each pot like wisps of dream steam, and that's what I'm after. I don't mean to go guru on you. I'm not meditating on the spirituality of tea. I'm after the humanity of it. I'm steering for the middle way, as it were. I just want to enjoy the moments, tea moments. And notice them. Maybe celebrate them, but at the very least be thankful.

Just some thoughts on what the hell I'm doing here. At least I'm trying to figure that out ...

When is a tea party not a tea party?

The Chicago Tribune published a story this week that I love for a couple of reasons. First, it leads with an anecdote from Tony Gebely, who just launched the Chicago Tea Garden (some details here). Secondly, it gets at the heart of a real quandary for most tea lovers right now. That is: We have tea parties, but we may not be Tea Partiers.

Purveyors of fine tea and tea enthusiasts in general find themselves steeped in a linguistic shift, their beloved beverage now associated with a conservative political movement routinely praised or pilloried on talk radio and cable news shows. The tea party movement's name, a reference to the tax protests that led to the Revolutionary War, has nothing, really, to do with tea. But that doesn't seem to matter.

Doesn't matter to them. Matters to those of us who care a little something about tea. I'm fending off more jokes about it these days. "Oh, you like tea? Does that mean you're a crazy Republican?" Ha ha. I've also had to adjust my online news alerts and a few RSS feeds. A simple Google news alert for "tea" now turns up nothing but articles by pundits trying to make sense of whether or not these boobs have any impact and announcements of gatherings in which they whine a lot but provide no concrete alternative political strategies. (I now search for "tea -party" to filter out most of the politics.) The second post on this blog, almost a year ago, addressed the confusion. And it has only gotten worse.

One thing's for certain, I think. If these people drank more tea, or any, they'd calm down and see things much more clearly.

Sipping a cup of king-grade Tie Guan Yin tea in his Naperville shop, Robertson, the tea importer, took a politically neutral stance on the movement. He did, however, wonder whether tea party members might be calmer if they drank something better than tea made with the cheap tea bags they hoist at protests and mail off to politicians.

"I worry that they're drinking bad tea," Robertson said. "They don't know how to relax. If you just sit back and have a good cup of tea and talk, things tend to work out."

UPDATE: Oh, get this. Now some frustrated liberals are trying to counter the Tea Party folks by creating ... wait for it ... the Coffee Party. Leave our beverages out of this, please!

ANOTHER UPDATE: This story angle is catching on. AP tackled it now, quoting Steepster folks and more. Read it here.

Tea and tobacco — smokin'!

(awesome pic by Tony)

It really is a lot like tea. I keep mine in a hardwood box handed down to me by my father. It's got a nice jar I put the leaves in to keep them fresh. Like tea, the more the whole leaf is cut and dried, the less flavorful and more bitter it becomes. And I prefer the flavor of the plain leaf — no added aromatics required.

I'm speaking of tobacco, specifically for pipes. I was a cigarette smoker as a youth, but let it go easily. Cigars make me queasy. Good quality pipe tobacco, though, ideally paired with a comfy chair and a glass of port (gawd, I am such an old man) is a heavenly moment.

Recently, one of our fellow Chicago-based tea bloggers wrote to us: "I was drinking some pu-erh the other day, and noticed that, again, I had likened a pu-erh to tobacco. It occurred to me that it might be fun to have a tobacconist taste pu-erh and tell us what he or she thought." Last Saturday, three of us met at Iwan Ries tobacco shop, the oldest family business in Chicago, hunkered down in a conference room with certified tobacconist Ron Carroll and swapped pu-erhs and pipes.

The pu-erh came from Tony Gebely of the Chicago Tea Garden, big bell-shaped discs of old and recent tea, one of which was called "camouflage" pu-erh because the two shades of green whorled around the cake looked like camo gear.

Ron was game: He and his wife had discovered real tea years ago during some extensive travel in China. "I've often joked that when they outlaw tobacco, I'll pursue the 'other leaf.'" he said. Ron also supplied a tin of great tobacco — from the Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club Selection, a variety appropriately called Samovar. The label describes it saying, "Warm, spiritually satisfying, this dark, full Oriental Mixture is redolent with exotic Syrian Latakia. Soothing a sa cup of rich Russian tea."

And it was. Once we got a few pipes smoldering, the pu-erhs had to sweat to compete with the flavors and scents. But the coupling was not bad, especially with the final aged tea (I think it was a 1990), which really opened up and waltzed around the tongue with the hardcore smoke taste. A great afternoon, and a very butch tea party.

Tony (left), the tea guy smokes a pipe,
and Ron (right), the tobacconist pinches some tea.

RIP Chicago Tea Garden

Sad to report that the Chicago Tea Garden — a fine business by superb people supplying a delicious line of quality teas — has announced its end. Begun three years ago by blogger Tony Gebely, CTG has purveyed some of my favorite teas, often raved about here, including Zealong (a unique South Pacific oolong) and a fabulous Golden Li Buo from David Lee Hoffman's stock.

The only good news out of this is that he's having a clearance sale, starting at 30 percent off. Check the site now before it's all gone.

Lay off the Hoff, man!

Speaking of David Lee Hoffman, the great contemporary tea explorer has run into a kerfuffle with his California neighbors. Despite residing in live-and-let-live Marin County, Hoffman's compound uses some innovative recycling techniques for his waste (garden and human) involving worms. Folks are concerned about the possible runoff.

“I wanted to show that there are distinctive nonpolluting ways to live on the planet,” Hoffman explained to The New York Times recently over tea and chapatis made from his heirloom wheat. “In my mind, I thought I could demonstrate to the county that these systems work. ... I did what I felt was right. My love of the planet is greater than my fear of the law.”

You can voice your support for Hoffman's endeavors by signing this petition, encouraging the county to work with him instead of against him. Read more at Hoffman's site.

Hoffman's Phoenix Collection has supplied some great teas to the Chicago Tea Garden, which just announced its impending closing, and his life's work in dealing tea (read a good summary here) is the subject of a fine Les Blank documentary, "All in This Tea," which is still available as a streaming offering on Netflix.

Teas from down under and to the right

I've mentioned before my fascination with Portugal — which I'll be getting back to shortly — but my other bucket-list country to visit is New Zealand. No, I was never a huge fan of the "Lord of the Rings" films; the breathtaking New Zealand landscapes Peter Jackson presented on screen helped me suffer through those plodding stories. I'm intrigued by the culture, the laid-back population, the beauty. Now, I'm intrigued by the tea.


This summer, the Chicago Tea Garden became the first U.S. company to offer Zealong, the first Chinese oolong grown in New Zealand. The distant island nation has what seems to be ideal tea-growing climate — mountainous, temperate, relatively unspoiled — so it's a wonder no one thought of trying this there before the 1990s. I finally tried some recently, and it's pretty great. The flavors aren't that complex or showy; what grabs you is the fresh floral aroma and light, clean flavor — a really simple, yellow liquor. I cupped it with food and lost it a bit. On its own, it's a delight, a calm and comforting companion. Bonus: Zealong is grown naturally, no chemicals. Double bonus: It resteeps beautifully, and gets fruitier.

While we're fascinated with that here, Kiwis in the last several weeks have been digging Twinings' latest creation, New Zealand Breakfast Tea. The new blend is the result of a contest in which New Zealanders were asked to create a blend that represented their taste. A fellow named Andrew Fenemor won, and his suggestion was fine-tuned by Twinings for this new offering. Doesn't appear, though, that it's made of tea grown in New Zealand.

The kettle is cool, long boil the kettle

Dearest readers: Months since my last entry, and I should apologize. But I won't. In fact, I'll stop doing that. A blog's a blog, and only the professionals with paychecks keep it up. For the rest of us: life happens, the tea goes cold. We put the kettle back to boiling, we resteep the good stuff. The circle of life, etc. etc. etc.

Suffice to say, I'm a grad student, I'm busy. I'll step this back — no more illusions of weekly posting, which has resulted in diluting the quality of content in the last year or so — and I'll write when I can. I'll write when I have something good. Don't want to shut it down, by any means. Just let the kettle cool.

In the meantime, enjoy some of my greatest hits:

I've visited so many great shops around the country — in Tulsa, in Texas, in Iowa, in Los Angeles, throughout Chicago (Nada, Big Jones, Julius Meinl, Billy Corgan's place, and the amazing Green Teaist, plus endless trips to Dream About Tea and Tea Gschwendner), and a lovely new one here in north San Diego County — as well as some spiffy shops around the world: London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, even Buenos Aires.

Speaking of travel: I posted and posted and posted and posted and posted and posted from my star-studded London tea trip, and also posted and posted and published and followed up about my tea trip to Hawaii.

I've blended tea into my work life as a pop music critic — talking tea with Morrissey, Billy Corgan, and Brendan Benson — and mixed it in with my personal life as a lush — making highballs, toddies, and cocktails. I've even blathered about my garden, including my tea plant.

I've written a lot about tea writing, from Laura Childs' delightful mystery novels (and some others'), plus moments with Kakuzo, Douglas Adams, Barbery, Chekhov, Burroughs, Neal Stephenson, my friend Mark Brown, and, of course, Proust. Not to mention the occasional great tea book or two or three. That's not "weak tea"; it's more than "a pinch for the pot."

We've shared some tranquil tea moments — learning to do nothing, learning not to see, learning to stop multitasking — and paying more attention to the big, hairy now.

And, of course, all those songs. Someday a mix shall come.

Charting the processes of tea types

I can't believe I've never run across something like this before. I've read a thousand explanations of the differing steps applied to the production of tea's various types — white is hardly processed at all, green a little more, oolong after that and so on — but I've never encountered a simple chart showing the differences. Damn handy, and it was recently drafted and posted by Chicago Tea Garden owner and World of Tea blogger Tony Gebely. The type is tiny; click for a larger image ...

Read more about it here.

Billy Corgan opens tea house

In my day gig, I published a piece this week about Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan — who today opens his own tea salon, Madame Zuzu's Tea House, in a northern Chicago suburb (announced late last year).

Corgan's on hand today, greeting customers and playing his 1930s Bosendorfer piano throughout the afternoon. He's hoping to create a real mixing, conversational atmosphere in the place, booking not only fellow musicians but guest speakers of every stripe. Earlier this summer, he told me he'd like the place to be "a more casual hang, a place where you could come see a guru or a rabbi talk."

The nice thing is, it's not really a celebrity vanity project. Corgan's not exactly that kind of guy. He's a genuine tea person — claims to have never had a sip of coffee ("I always hated the smell," he says) — and he himself is buying the teas for the shop.

A typical suburban kid who thought all tea was Lipton, his band hit big in the ’90s and he traveled the world — thus sampling great teas in their many native lands.

This week, he related to me a sublime tea moment that cemented his conviction to fulfill the dream of opening this shop: "I was staying at the Savoy Hotel in London, and they have this classic English tea area under a garden dome. I was ordering a pot of rose petal tea. I'm in this historic hotel drinking this incredibly pleasurable tea — it's the small things in life. It stopped time for those few minutes."

Tasting: Himalayan teas

The tasting last night that produced the trembling ramble below was a fine sampling of Himalayan teas — from eastern Nepal and the fringes of Darjeeling — at Tea Gschwendner's flagship Chicago shop. Tea sommelier (c'mon, how great a gig is that?) Sam Ritchey led us through the foothills, which he visited a few months ago, when the tea we were drinking was just being plucked from the bushes.

Of the slew of first- and second-flush teas he trotted out, three accomplished some surprising kicking of my ass:

Manjhee Valley — We'd tried a couple of first-flush Darjeelings that weren't bad — one of which, the Soom, had a pretty sly cool, minty grin on its face — but they were opening acts for this lil' world-music band. Crazy-light, almost green in the cup, it slips in on buttery skates and then throws bunches of flowers — orangey, peachy flowers — at you. By the time it finishes, it tastes like the pavement smells after a light summer rain. Complex and full with a big ol' body.

Sikkim Temi — A new addition to their collection, this second-flush beauty got the loudest oohs and ahhs in our tasting group of eight. Begging their pardon, this certainly promises a rose garden: big, sturdy floral tastes come at you like kudzu, then a bone-dry finish. Quite unique.

Meghalaya Lakyrsiew — Possibly the most unique and surprising tea I've tasted in a couple of years, this second-flusher was served with chocolate at the end — which was either brilliant or redundant. It's like a cup of chocolate tea. Really buttery and spicy on the nose and first taste, then big, dark cocoa flavors, all packed into a charcoal briquet. Three or four distinct waves of flavors, an they mellow and blend as the cup cools a bit. This was snappy, sultry, maybe even a little naughty.

I left with a hundred grams of the Manjhee Valley, plus my ol' stand-by, the TG China Keemun. And, truly, I had a helluva time getting to sleep.