Tuesday tea tunes: 'Would you care for some tea?'

I've been meaning to use this as a Tuesday tune for a long while now, though it's another stretch. A huge fan of the Chameleons UK, this slight rarity of theirs, "Things I Wish I'd Said," describes a tense tea between two gents — they knew each other in childhood, and the narrator has a few choice things he'd like to say to the visitor. But when the narrator is alone again with his thoughts and his unsaid invective, he seems to rethink his position.

Teaku No. 9

Black tea, blacker night
This tea moment's about work —
I'll sleep when I'm dead

Tea in Portugal: From the aisles of the isles

My quest for some tea from the Azores — the Atlantic islands due west of Portugal, and governed by that once pioneering tea country — was finally rewarded a few months ago. After striking out in my attempts to contact the actual tea producers on the islands, Lucia, a t2 reader at a university in Rome, shared with me a couple of samples of the teas she had purchased locally (thanks again!). I'm just now getting around to trying them.

The chance to sample them was rewarding; the actual taste, not so much. I knew from reading about them that Azores tea was not quality. The only tea grown as a commodity crop in Europe, it's cranked out for high production. The cha verde, green tea, from Gorreana, is pretty awful. The dry cut/shredded leaf is dusty and dirty, though it smells lovely and grassy; the brew looks dreadful, murky, like dishwater; the murky brownish tea has little flavor to speak of. Bummer.


Gorreana's orange pekoe (left) has much more going for it. This dry leaf was tightly rolled and twiggy, much more handsome. The resulting liquor is a beautiful amber color, with a warm, peaty scent. The taste is ... OK, nothing to sing about, a plain black tea. As the New York Times wrote in 1879, "The flavor of the infusion [is] by no means to be despised." I would agree with the back-handed compliment.

Postscript: A short while ago, I interviewed Hamilton Leithauser, lead singer for the band the Walkmen. Their latest album is called "Lisbon" (and lordy it's good, great retro sounds in the studio plus Hamilton's warm, wheezy ways with his voice). "We went there twice while recording the record," he told me, speaking of Lisbon. "Titling the record that just made sense in our minds. It's such a unique place, so incredible looking. It has its own feel, like nowhere else in the world. It's sort of out of the way, without the big museums and stuff to draw tourists. ... It felt like us, like someplace we could understand. It has its own feel. It's sort of out of the way. There aren't museums, etc., that draw you in like other places. The way it's laid out — it's built on a valley that leads down to the ocean. It's just this big swath of tile, little streets and beautiful buildings — nothing grand, just small joys. The whole city is built for cafe culture, with outdoor terraces all looking over the downtown on all sides. Great views wherever you go. I don't remember drinking tea there, but I could see it happening, on all those terraces. Good port, though. This special dish there is a nasty salty cod — it's gross, so salty you can't believe they eat it."

Tuesday tea tunes: Polly want some tea?

A minor classic, here's "Polly Put the Kettle On" by contemporary old-timey group Kitty, Daisy & Lewis ...

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.

More tea cocktail news

1. The well-to-do foodies and mixologists are playing with pu-erh. I've recently been saving the cold leftovers from pu-erh pots and adding them to my occasional evening whiskey. Awesome. The Sun-Times food blog had this story recently about tea cocktails (featuring more from Rare Tea Cellar's Rod Markus). After lots of golly-wow about expensive pu-erh, it closes with this delectable recipe:

Peter Vestinos' Pu-Erh Cocktail
1.5 ounces Oronoco rum
1 ounce Blood Orange Pu-Erh Tea (brewed double strength)
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce apple cider (reduced by half on stove)
1/4 ounce simple syrup (sugar melted in an equal portion of water)
Shake and strain into a snifter and float a fresh basil leaf.

2. Last night, we toasted the arrival of fall weather — and the departure of summer's flavors — with the last summer cocktail. Usually, I enjoy Zen green tea liqueur simply over ice with a squeeze of lemon, but I saw an ad for it recently that included a simple cocktail ... which also matched the dregs in my bar last night: 2 parts Zen, 2 parts vodka, fresh orange juice. So long, summer.

3. I've had this link lying around for weeks to Tea Guy's post about UV's Sweet Green Tea Vodka. How many sweet tea vodkas are there now? Lots, but they're all black-based. Sweet green tea vodka, well, is pretty much what I mixed last night.

Why add milk to tea? A historical question

This is not the world's 14,593rd blog post about the merits or crimes of adding milk to tea, whether it should be added first or last, etc. This is an attempt to assemble a bit of historic fact about the reasons this custom started in the first place. I was piqued by an article in the current edition of Tea Time magazine, a discussion of tea cups and their many charms, which mentioned the following while running down the history of this crucial vessel:

But porcelain had its drawbacks, as well. Mme de La Sabliére, a French hostess of an influential literary salon during the 17th century, is often credited with being among the first to add milk to tea. The practice began by pouring milk into the cup before filling it with the hot tea. While tempering the tea in this manner made handling more comfortable, Mme La Sabliére was actually seeking to prevent cracking or breaking the porcelain.

That reason for adding milk was a new one on me. I've always heard this discussed as a matter of taste — originally reported by a different madame, Mme de Sévigné, who wrote a letter commonly cited as one of (never definitive) the first mentions of adding milk to tea. She frequently wrote about tea, among her gossipy details of the Sun King's court, once citing our other madame's custom: "Madame de la Sablière took her tea with milk, as she told me the other day, because it was to her taste."

Every other mention of adding milk to tea that I've ever read approaches it from that perspective, of taste, which frankly always struck me oddly (even though tea's Asian origins have a long history with dairy products, often from animals other than cows, namely butter). Jane Pettigrew and Bruce Richardson's New Tea Companion still features a page about "Milk in Tea," suggesting in the section's first sentence that the custom "perhaps developed because milk and cream were found to soften the slightly bitter taste of tea." In their earlier version of the book, however, The Tea Companion, published just a year before in 2004, they at least addressed the other possibility by way of questioning what the initial motives might have been, adding, "Or was a little milk poured into the Chinese tea bowls used in the 17th and 18th centuries before the hot tea in order to reduce the risk of shattering the fine porcelain?" For the second edition, they excised this thought. (They also added that Ms. Sabliére was alone in her taste for this combination, that it didn't catch on in France before that country moved squarely into the coffee camp.)

Victor Mair and Erling Hoh's great True History of Tea gives similar credit to our French madame, but states no particular motivation:

While milk tea was drunk by the Manchu officials that the Europeans would have encountered, and the Dutchman Johann Nieuhoff had been offered tea with milk at a banquet in Canton in 1655, the honor of introducing the custom to Europe is traditionally ascribed to Madame de la Sabliére, who in 1680 served tea with milk at her famous Paris salon ...

Their discussion of this, however, comes two paragraphs after exploring the development of porcelain, "with its translucent fragility."

As someone who's had that experience — I once poured boiling water into a large glass infusion jar, to sterilize it, and watched the bottom quickly crack and crash into the sink — I can see how the practical matter would drive the custom rather than the questionable taste involved. Just found this curious. If anyone has other primary sources of information on this, do tell.

Tuesday tea tunes: Visions of China (and Japan)

Via a chain of events too long to go into, I recently rediscovered one of my favorite bands, plumbing the depths of my collection. The band: Japan. In the late ’70s, they provided much of the foundation on which Duran Duran, the final Roxy Music albums and most of the other New Romantics were built. And despite their name they sang a lot about China. So here's "Visions of China" for you tea-drinking Sinophiles ...

Careful! Contents may be hot

Happy Friday. This absolutely cracked me up.

Tuesday tea tunes: Tea means peace

I love this weary little tune about a romantic quarrel — "Harvard Hands" by the Foxymorons — simply because the singer knows how to make things all better, announcing mid-song, "Baby I can end this fight / A cup of tea will make it right."

All in all, it's just another (teacup) in the wall

More cool tea design — Teacup Tiles. Nice purely as accents but also functional. Store teaware in the cup, hang keys or freshly cut herbs off the hook.

[ via Teaspoons and Petals ]

Today's pu-erh moment, aerial view

Just a photo of today's pu-erh moment, with my yixing pot in its silk cozy.

Tuesday tea tunes: The sounds of Ceylon

A tea pal once joked that the lyrics to Simon & Garfunkel's classic "Bridge Over Troubled Water" should have been: "Ceylon, silver girl ..." With that idea planted, enjoy the tune anew, and may the water in your kettle never be troubled ...

Tea = mc2

Yesterday, as I gazed out the sunroom window, I finished the last of some Grey Dragon oolong. I'm not one to filter my cups, so mine had developed some lovely leafy sediment. As I set the cup on the table and watched the leaves stir, then sink, then settle neatly in the bottom of the cup, I remembered Einstein's tea leaf paradox. Why do they always settle in the center? Einstein figured it out.

For kicks, I grabbed my copy of Tea Leaf Reading and had a go. Oolong's not the best tea to read, especially with leaves this large. I thought mine looked like letters, actually: a T and an I. Letters, so says the highland seer, signify news. Well, T.I. did just get sent back to jail ...

Nifty tea mug for tea bag users

I love good tea design, and the folks at Yanko rarely disappoint. Dig this handy mug — with a notch for the tea bag string (keeps the tag from slipping into the tea) plus a hollow, shallow bottom under the mug and over the saucer (thus the name, the Tea Coffin) for stashing the bag once the tea has brewed ...



Check out the whole page of photos, which includes a few shots of a nifty kettle/carafe. Available in December.

When it comes to kettles, I've gone electric

I have retired my tea kettle.

My acoustic one, anyway. I've gone electric.

I'd grown weary of the stove top, particularly since I recently packed my tea cabinet with some good oolongs. The gas fire boils the water just fine, but how to reach 190 degrees? I tried it from both sides. I stuck a thermometer in the kettle's whistle-hole, and watched and watched and ... doh! I always got distracted and missed the 190 mark. Or I'd bring it to full boil, then use an iPhone app to time the cool-down. But those are always estimates, never precise.

So after reading this story in Wired a couple of months ago, I went fishing for electric kettles. Wired tested four and picked the Cuisinart PerfecTemp Cordless Programmable Kettle. After my own research, their decision sounded great. I pounced. And it's awesome.




The Cuisinart kettle is magnificent for all these reasons:

• It's blazing fast. I've had to alter my whole teatime prep schedule around it, since I'm used to waiting and waiting for the stove.
• It brings water to six preset temperatures: 160 (delicate), 175 (green), 185 (white), 190 (oolong), 200 (french press) and boiling (black). It seems to be remarkably accurate.
• It holds the selected temperature for 30 minutes. This is a dream. It keeps the water hot while you do other things. Also, if you're hosting a tasting, you can move quickly from tea to tea without waiting so long for the kettle.
• Super simple to use, with illuminated buttons and an illuminated window for measuring water amount.
• And it's not bad looking on the countertop. Nicely designed.

Wired noted one drawback: "Tough to get your hand inside for a good scrubbing." The lid is prohibitive. But, using filtered water, I haven't had much to worry about yet.

And, of course, I do miss the music. But I can whistle my own tune.

Tuesday tea tunes: 3 little maids from the tea field

Just as great song emerged from the cotton field workers of the southern United States, songs were created in the old tea fields, too. Here's a Japanese one called "Cha-Tsumi" (Tea Picking) that finds the singer imploring fellow pickers: "Pick all you can, young maids, for if you / do not, we Japanese will have no tea!"

The Hottle is nottle a good idea

Gaze upon this instrument of torture, fellow tea lovers, and band together with me to eradicate this scourge from our dining and tea-sipping experience!

Tell me I'm not alone. Tell me you hate these things, too — the small, bulbous glass carafes used in restaurants and particularly hotels to deliver refills and (shudder) tea and coffee. Do you know what's called? Restaurant supply stores label it a Hottle, a mutant combo bottle that allegedly keeps liquids hot. The ribbed, black plastic neck allows you to pour hot liquids without scalding. No doubt it's easier to wash than a teapot.

I'm just on a tear because a lovely new restaurant has opened in our 'hood, and they use Hottles to serve tea. They might be convenient in the kitchen, but they're pretty horrible for tea service. You have to cram a bag down that plastic gullet, and stir it in. The glass doesn't keep the water hot at all. Pouring from that wide mouth results in dribbling every single time, poured slowly or quickly. I'm going to have to speak to the owners, give them some better suggestions. I'm just going to have to be that guy.

But, as a recent T Ching post says, I'm willing to demand better tea service! Who's with me?

Tuesday tea tunes: Tea with a supergroup

Like Pioneers is a good new band built from several old ones. The Bound Stems, Chin Up Chin Up, the Narrator and others — these were acclaimed Chicago bands. Now members from each of them have come together as Like Pioneers. The debut album, "Piecemeal," is a rewarding batch of thoughtful pop-rock.

For today's track, "Teakettles, No. 1," click here to listen and/or download. It's a moody tune driven by a plucky pump organ.

CSI: Darjeeling

We love Laura Childs' teashop murder mysteries here at t2. While those stories are bloody good fun, it seems a cup of tea sometimes is found at real-life crime scenes. Here's a round-up of recent incidents where things boiled over ...

A British woman becomes annoyed with her companion, so she puts bleach in his tea. She was jailed on a charge of "maliciously administering a poison or noxious thing with intent to injure, aggrieve or annoy." The man is standing by her.

This man was arrested for chucking his cup of tea at his wife.

British prisoners may have poisoned the tea of two guards.

Enjoying your tea at a shop near a busy street? Maybe don't sit next to the window.

Two women stole several cases of bottled iced tea from a convenience store, then (oops) hit an elderly man with their car while trying to make their getaway.

I know you have to get all that food to the wedding, but why don't you stop for some tea first. Atta boy. ... Uh oh, someone stole your catering van!

We hear about people being scalded by to-go coffee all the time. This to-go tea sent a toddler to the burn center.

This is an oldie, but I'll link it again: A woman shot in the head makes tea for the police when they arrive.