One moment, please

I've been on another European tea excursion, gallivanting through the ports of the Baltic Sea. (The previous few posts have been a cleverly pre-scheduled ruse.) By the time you read this, I'll be making more room in the tea cubby for whatever I've picked up in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, St. Petersburg and more. Some strong stuff, no doubt. Details to come shortly ...

Afternoon tea break

Just sharing my tea break with you,
with a cup of Argo green by the Chicago River.

How do you hold a moonbeam in your cup?

When I was a house dweller, as opposed to my current condo life, I gardened more extensively. At some point I noticed the lunar planting tables in the Farmer's Almanac. Hokum, surely — but I tried it. I didn't keep detailed records (I'm more a scatter-and-cocktail kind of planter), but the year I planted and harvested according to the moon cycles was noticeably more bountiful than the year before.

I mention this only because I've begun seeing this kind of discussion revived in the world of wine. The UK Guardian, for instance, recently had this story about whether the phases of the moon affect not just how a vine will grow but how the wine itself will taste on certain days. According to a lunar calendar devised by Maria Thun, there are so-called "fruit" days and "root" days – those days in the lunar calendar when water and saps rise or fall.

"I was sceptical at first, but then had a eureka moment," says Jo Aherne, winemaker at Marks & Spencer. "Our wines showed beautifully at a press tasting one day and far less well the next. We couldn't understand it. The wines were all favourites of ours and the bottles were all from the same case. Someone checked the calendar and we found that the first day had been a fruit day, when the wines were expressive, exuberant and aromatic, and the second a root day, when they were closed, tannic and earthy. Further rather unscientific tests have confirmed our view."

I've hunted for information about other beverages, including tea, and come up short. Is there a tide in the cup?

Tea before Glastonbury?

Given all the twists on afternoon tea I recently explored in London, it figures I was too early for a new one — although this sounds a bit cutesy for even my rock ’n’ roll tastes.

The Metropolitan there has a new themed tea: Fes-Tea-Val De-Light. The dreadful PR copy promises a way "to experience the famous summer festivals in London without getting stuck in the bloody English rain (and mud)" ... by having tea at their hotel. What makes it so rockin', I hear you cry? "Glastonbury mud pies," "healthy cookies shaped like Wellies and umbrellas" and "cupcakes adorned with guitars and tents." Not to be outdone by the gin tea or the whiskey tea, the Metro throws in a little tequila here, too.

British summer music festival season starts soon: Glastonbury is June 23-27.

Waking up with you in my cup

Holy cow, I just read this poem and was knocked over ...

"Green Tea" by Dale Ritterbusch

There is this tea
I have sometimes,
Pan Long Ying Hao,
so tightly curled
it looks like tiny roots
gnarled, a greenish-gray.
When it steeps, it opens
the way you woke this morning,
stretching, your hands behind
your head, back arched,
toes pointing, a smile steeped
in ceremony, a celebration,
the reaching of your arms.

Now that's what some tea masters mean when they rinse the first steep and call it "waking up the tea"!

Doilies for dudes

One word in tea culture strikes fear in the hearts of many: doilies.

But here's an artist who's trying to butch them up a bit. Dig Nathan Vincent's manly doilies ...







... and see more here.

I want a little cayenne in my bowl

Just finished reading a biography of the late singer Nina Simone, Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone, which was tumultuous indeed. No one could crawl inside a song the way Nina could and stretch it out into something new and arresting. The book chronicles her rise, coast and slow crumbling, with her barking at the audience all along. Good read.

Near the end, this anecdote about a curious preparation of tea:

Michael ... worried that a difficult moment was getting worse. "Then I started gushing about how much I loved her music over the years and what a great honor it would be to make music with her." Michael knew he had rescued himself when Nina offered him some of her tea. He graciously took it and immediately choked. Nina had a special concoction that called for lemon and cayenne pepper. "Oh, please, cayenne that could kill us — enough cayenne that if you took a sip you really couldn't breathe for a few minutes. I was sweating, my head was on fire, and I thought I'm going to die from drinking tea."

Big Jones is kind of a big deal

Photo from Grub St.

I had a wonderful photo of my own to go here, of a gorgeous cup of Iron Goddess of Mercy tea next to a plate of beautiful beignets. Alas, my iPhone-to-iPhoto transfers sometimes freeze up and eat my photos. Macs never crash, but the software does. Grrrr.

The purpose of the photo was to entice you, fellow Chicagoans or summer tourists, to visit the Big Jones restaurant in Andersonville. The coastal Southern cooking is scrumptious — their Tuesday night fried chicken special earned it high praise in Bon Appetit — and the red velvet cake made with beets and cocoa is absolutely stunning. We visited for brunch last weekend, and I was once again bowled over by the chow. Catfish for breakfast? Hey, I tried it, on a bed of cheese grits with eggs to order. In a word: momma!

But why I mention them here is because they have a great tea menu (actually, that link is old, the selection we just saw at the restaurant is better). Their sign and advertising includes "tea time" next to "brunch," "dinner" and "cocktails" (hit those four bases and it's a home run, eh?), and there are a dozen excellent teas, from the previously mentioned Iron Goddess to a surprising pu-erh, supplied by Numi. Really, how many basic, genre restaurants have pu-erh on the menu?! Originally, one of the managers said during our brunch, the place hoped to use tea as a late-afternoon attraction — not as an official afternoon tea, but just something to join a late-day, pre-cocktail nosh. It's a Southern place, so the teas can be made iced, of course.

(Also, given the oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf, according to this story even Big Jones' seafood supply has been affected.)

Tuesday tea tunes: Press 'pause'

As I will be (a) a wee bit busy in the next couple of weeks and (b) looking for a decent new embeddable music service, if they still exist, the weekly Tuesday Tea Tunes feature will press the pause button for the month of June. Have no fear, it'll be back, in one form or another.

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.

Tuesday tea tunes: Dream about tea

The rendez-vous described in Blondie's "Dreaming" begins with a cuppa:

You asked me what's my pleasure, a movie or a measure?
I'll have a cup of tea and tell you of my dreaming ...

Tuesday tea tunes: Tea for the loneliest number

London: Tea shopping, and Postcard Teas

OK, final London post. Thanks for your patience. I saved my favorite for the last ...

London's loaded with quality tea shops. Many people will steer you toward Harrod's. Ignore them. The place is a nightmare, crammed with tourists, with no maps or guides to help orient you. (The only reason to investigate their tea offerings is that they sell the fantastic TWG blends; but just buy them online and spare yourself the claustrophobia.) If you must do the British department store thing, go to Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly. It's roomier, calmer and the sales people are friendly and helpful. They have a more impressive tea selection, and the first-flush darjeeling I bought there is delicious stuff. I'm also told they present a splendid afternoon tea.

Tea canisters at Fortnum & Mason

For serious tea lovers, I insist one shop be at the top of any London itinerary: Postcard Teas. I visited this airy spot on Jane Pettigrew's recommendation. It's tucked away on a quiet, tiny block called Dering Street just off the shopping bustle of Oxford and New Bond.

The owner, Tim d'Offay, has traveled the world for 15 years, imported tea for 11 years and had Postcard Teas open for five. Postcard Teas, get it? "In one sense, these teas are the postcards I send from around the world," he said. The labels of each tea he sells are designed to look like postcards — the 50-gram postcard bags allegedly can be written on like postcards and sent legally through the mails — with each cancel stamp listing the tea's origin.

And d'Offay is big on origin. "We seem to be pushing tea like wine now, but how can we, really?" he said. "There's such poor labeling, with no information on the estate or the maker. On a bottle of wine you get the type of grape, the name of the maker, the vineyard, and at least its location. Tea often has none of that information." Having sourced all of the tea he sells (except the Vietnam offering), d'Offay is particular about this point, which he continues on his new blog, launched just last week:

For over a decade we have traveled to work with small scale traditional tea producers and crafts people across Asia. These artisans are true experts and the keepers of their local tea knowledge and heritage. At a time when tea is internationally appreciated like never before, we believe these often silent heroes of the tea world have much to tell us about their culture’s past, present, and future. The site is called Single Estate Tea because we wanted to help spread their knowledge and campaign for all good tea to have proper provenance starting with the maker’s or estate’s name.

I visited Postcard Teas on a sunny Saturday morning. Tim was leading two young men through a tea tasting. His assistant, Sarah, made me a cup of tea — his own blend, Mayfair Breakfast, named for the central London neighborhood and a nice strong blend of stout but well-behaved blacks — while I wandered the basement-level gallery, looking at Tim's tidy displays of small teapots and large discs of pu-erh. When the tasting wrapped up, Tim clearly was not tired of talking tea, and I suspect this rarely occurs. We tasted more tea (the Yunnan Red Cloud is a sultry, cocoa-y thing — a summer pluck from a bush whose first pick makes pu-erh), and as Tim pours cups of tea he hands you photos of the people who made the tea, of the trees it came from, of the workers who processed it. He talks about what machine-processing methods still qualify a tea to be labeled "handcrafted," and he gets pretty fussy about the application of the word "rare." He plans to follow these threads on the new blog, bringing the people who make the tea into the light for the people who drink it.

London: A voluptuous banquet

Now I ask you: Is this what you want to see over a cup of tea?

The strangest afternoon tea experience I had in London was at the Volupté Lounge, a self-described "decadent little supper club" hidden away near Chancery Lane. Over afternoon tea, guests are treated to a 1930s-style burlesque show. Dolores Delight belts show tunes (and I mean belts 'em, which is stunning given the tight corset she's wearing). Millie Dollar emerges in stunning gowns and then emerges from the stunning gowns, down to her pasties and tattoos. Various performers present visual tableaux and interpretive dances (like the butterfly, above). And through it all you get a traditional afternoon tea menu of sandwiches and scones and such. Like I said, strange.

Why anyone would want burlesque (a) in England, where the locals' reserved character doesn't exactly generate the desired whoops and catcalls, or (b) over tea eludes me. Zoe Fletcher, who created the program, answers, "Well, that's me. I like to have a gossipy tea with my friends, and I love burlesque, so it just fit." The fit is questionable. You'd think this would be an attraction for men, but judging by my Saturday afternoon visit you'd be wrong. I was one of three, each of us in female company (thanks again, Sarah! — she took the photo above and provided the best definition for the afternoon: "Burlesque is just stripping for girls who went to Sarah Lawrence"). There were, however, three "hen do's" — that's a British term for bachelorette parties. London gals go all out for these things: coordinated dresses, balloons, oppressive penis accessories (whistles, straws, etc.) and everyone wears a sash. Young women with marriage on their minds ... watching sassy women strut their stuff and shake their goodies. The applause, as you might imagine, was tepid. But the place has been open since 2006. Go figure.

The tea experience is not great. To deliver a full program, they drag out the presentation for nearly three hours, bringing each course in between performances. So the tea gets cold, and you're consistently hungry. Oddly enough, though, this place served the best scones of all the afternoon teas I enjoyed in London: crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, real scones!

Volutpé does its thing for dinner, cocktails, theme parties, etc. I suspect the burlesque is much more fun then.

London: Chatting with Stephen Twining

My first encounter with Stephen Twining was indirect. A colleague visited Epcot Center and chanced upon Twining signing autographs; he sent me a signed tea cup. When I met with Twining a couple of weeks ago during my exploration of London tea, he was fresh off a plane from Singapore. He'd been glad-handing business associates there and tea farmers in Java. This is what Twining does. He's a 10th generation member of the family business, but he doesn't run the company. Associated British Foods handles that. ("I wouldn't have gotten into the family business if I'd thought I had to run it," he says.) Twining's title is "director of corporate relations," meaning he doffs his very British smile and talks up his company's product, whether he's talking to growers in the gardens or drinkers at the mall.

"My job is to teach people about this marvelous gift of nature," Twining says. "Whether I'm speaking on television or one at a time at places like Epcot, I'll get to them."

Twining delivers the company line, no doubt about it. But he's a font of historical data and anecdotes, as well as current tea trends and business predictions.

He spoke with me about Twinings' blending process. "Our products are blended, so that if you like our Darjeeling, that's how you like it. We provide that constancy." That means that a cup of Twinings darjeeling poured right now, yesterday and tomorrow will have the same color, the same leaf size and the same taste. This is accomplished by phenomenal skill. The flavor of tea coming from the farms can change week to week, so blenders and tasters select teas from a variety of locations and keep mixing them so that all those factors reach the same balance in every tin of tea. It's the goal of the industrial age: everything is manufactured the same.

Trends that Twinings is following: the company has just expanded its green teas and its range of chais. (They just added a Brazilian tea. Not great reviews thus far.) And he thinks the flavored blacks are the way ahead. "New drinkers, we find, are coming to the flavored. It's the old human factor. 'Mum and Dad drank classic teas; I've heard tea is good for me, but I want to do my own thing.' So the new generation is getting into flavors and greens. It remains to be seen if they'll then graduate to the classics." Fruit flavors, too, he said, add sweetness without sugar. "I preach the gospel of no sugar in tea," Twining said. "There's no right or wrong way, I just think sugar in tea is barbaric. It's like putting a blanket over a beautiful sculpture. So much effort goes into the growing and processing of this wonderful product, but when you add sugar you only taste the sugar."

Our chat took place in the Twinings shop in London's Strand. As you walk along the street looking for Twinings, it's a bit of a surprise when you find it — because it's a tiny, tiny shop. That's because in 1967 the company moved its headquarters into the suburbs (to Hampshire), part of a mass exodus of industry at the behest of the city council, which wanted to reduce the number of "heavy lorries" in the city. The London shop is the site of Thomas Twining's original coffeehouse, where he began offering tea as a way to make his spot stand out.

Here's Stephen explaining the backstory behind a painting of Thomas ...

Celebrity tea lover: Jake Gyllenhaal

You couldn't drag me to see the silly-looking "Prince of Persia" video game about to hit movie theaters, but Jake Gyllenhaal is still a cutie and in this video he discusses shampoo and conditioner — over tea in a lovely private room somewhere, with some killer sweets on the table ...



There's a nice tea moment at the end, where Jake indicates he's a tea lover. Then the bimbo interviewer, of course, asks him what kind of mate he's looking for, to which he replies, "Just someone to sit and have a nice cup of tea with." Aw.

Tea with honey stings like a bee

Here's a great anecdote just relayed to me by one of the Sun-Times photographers, John H. White: Many years ago he was flying to a training camp in Pennsylvania, and Muhammad Ali was sitting next to him on the plane. The Champ was eating his breakfast — he used two forks, one in each hand — and drinking his orange juice. John ordered some tea, and when it arrived he began to shake out his sugar packet. The Champ stopped him.

"You shouldn't put sugar in your tea," Ali said. "Spoils the tatse, and it's bad for you. You should only put honey in your tea."

Since then, on the Champ's advice, John's done just that, when he sweetens his tea at all. And you should do likewise, lest Mr. Clay gives you the beatdown.

Tuesday tea tunes: 'For the Price of a Cup of Tea'

Jolly, jaunty, maybe even cheeky. Belle & Sebastian, ladies and gentlemen ...

Free music - For The Price Of A Cup Of Tea

N.B.: It appears that every music service I turn to for the purpose of embedding songs and samples on this blog eventually disappears. Blip.fm stopped allowing embeding, imeem went under and now Lala has been bought out by Apple, which is killing it. So, Tuesday Tea Tunes fans, please bear with another round of shopping for music services. And if you have any to recommend, by all means.

London: Gin and tea with Jane Pettigrew

Afternoon tea requires good tea, good food, a lovely setting and, ideally, charming company. A cocktail doesn't hurt, either. Last Friday, during my exploration of afternoon teas in London, I hit the bullseye with all five.

The Palm Court of London's Langham Hotel (seriously, are all these rooms called the Palm Court?) claims to be the birthplace of the very tradition of afternoon tea. So you might expect a staid, stuffy and somber affair weighed down by history. Not here. The Langham's Palm Court is a crisp, bright room with unexpectedly modern flourishes, from the understuffed chairs to the pianist slipping in Elton John and Coldplay tunes.



My guest for tea that day was Jane Pettigrew, the name in books about tea, particularly in her native Britain. Together we sampled the Langham's special twist on afternoon tea, the G & Tea.

It's a menu based on the flavors of a gin and tonic, which is what you get first, expertly mixed and in a nice tall glass. Then comes the tea, based on the botanicals of Beefeater 24; it's a green tea base with added juniper berries, coriander, lemon peel and other whole ingredients. The result is a strange but enticing tea, kind of musty and musky, the juniper slightly overpowering the taste of the actual tea. It's very light, and it's tasty with the food.

During our conversation, Pettigrew began a litany that I would hear repeated throughout London, one that accuses most Britons of knowing little about tea — despite how much of it they drink. "If you stop the average person in London, most of them have nothing to say about tea," she said. "If you mention white tea, they think you mean black tea with milk in it. Tea has been ignored and abused in this country for centuries, turned into something unrecognizable from its natural wonders by the big packers, the Tetleys and PG Tips and such." France, Pettigrew says, is the European tea mecca now. "We're very lazy about food and drink, with all the fast food. Marks & Spencer's main business is ready-made meals. We don't cook. In France, people's palates are still important, and more finely tuned. They cook, they take longer with the experience. So now that tea has found them — a country suited to the fine hues of wines — it's really taken hold. And it's a broader palate of teas in Paris. Here, our connection to tea started from the empire in India: black teas. In France, the historic connections are more in Indo-China and Vietnam, so they are open to a greater variety of teas."

The Langham tea menu offers quite a variety, though, including British-grown teas from the Tregothnan estate near Cornwall, as well as a choice yellow tea and a cooked pu-erh. We opted for a second pot of the Jing Ceylon, which was good company for the desserts, including ginger cookies and a far-out Cointreau-orange cream cake with a chocolate dome. One other nice thing about the Langham service: the edibles are presented on the classic three-tiered trays, but these are on floor stands. They meet level to the table, so there's more room on the table surface. Nice touch.

Pettigrew overflows with information and suggestions of other tea spots. One of them turned out to be the best place I visited in all of London. More to come ...

(I also later followed up on an earlier recommendation of hers, from an article in World Tea News: a bustling restaurant called Royal China in Queensway at the NW corner of Hyde Park. Before eating possibly the most tender chicken I've ever had, the waitress asked me what kind of tea I would like: "Jasmine, fine or strong?" Turns out their "fine" tea is a lovely, woody Taiwanese oolong. The "strong" tea is a black tea, though the waitress called it "red.")

Green Teaist opens a second location

Just a little news: When I last visited the Green Teaist — the intriguing shop north of Chicago — last summer, the owner was considering options to open other locations around the country. It's finally happened. A second Green Teaist opens May 20 in Beverly Hills. You lucky Angelenos.