Mid 1970 Bao Zhong

11/11/2011, posted by Cha in journal,tea

It  has been a long time since I posted on my English blog. I think this has been the longest pause I took  here. Yet I haven’t stopped blogging. On the Romanian version  I post almost weekly. I also have a twitter account where I often post almost any tea I drink. If you are not a twitter fan, you may want to check my facebook profile or my google plus one. So please stay in contact there if you want.

It has been a very busy period.  In this period, I was gone for almost one month in Barcelona, where I met the wonderful people at Tetereria,  a teashop that will have it’s own post here soon,  I  got married  and celebrated my birthday not so long ago.

To sum all this I opened a old tea purchased from Stephane.  A baozhong from Wenshan, Taiwan. This tea is older even than all the puerhs I had so far.  Mid 1970. A great teacher but a very easy to brew tea.

You can really feel the age of the tea, but in a very different way than for a puerh tea. The taste and aroma are also very complex and the liquor, almost like a cream. The aftertaste stays really a long time.  The tea left a deep impression on me.

1999 CNNP Zong Cha

17/06/2011, posted by Cha in journal

This is one of the teas that has been part of my puerh learning process. I don’t remember it clearly,  because such a long time has passed since then, but I had the photos in a draft for a while now.

The tea itself it is not as important as the process. For every tea that I wrote there are probably 10 for which I didn’t.  All the teas have shaped me into what I am today . All the teas that I have tried formed  some kind of knowledge which is only a basis for further learning. That knowledge is not a scholastic knowledge. It is a practical one.  I know what to expect and how to handle a tea when I see it, or at least, I have a general idea. Learning never stops.

Thinking over shou, I do believe that shou puerh is the most easy category to learn from.  Much more forgiving than any other tea ,  with the biggest key factor being high temperature.

Now I am more focused on oolongs, and I have  pouring , proportion as  key factors.  What I find it most important for all the teas is to drink them at the right moment. Drink it at a wrong time a day, and it doesn’t show all it’s potential. For example, great teas at home become poor teas at the office , and leftovers from home , become great tea at the office.

How do I brew shu puerh using a gaiwan

31/03/2011, posted by Cha in journal,video

This is part of the Blog Carnival of Association of Tea Bloggers hosted this month by  Cinnabar .

The following video says it all.  Some prefer not to touch the tea,  but I find that the liquor releases much sooner if I ‘loosen’ the tea  prior brewing. Do give me your feedback .

Time

05/03/2011, posted by Cha in journal

I was pretty busy in the last period so my post frequency dropped a bit. However,  my tea sessions did not. No matter how busy I am, I take my time for tea.

I noticed my focus on tea sessions actually increases when I have a busy schedule.

The Oolong Year

20/01/2011, posted by Cha in journal

Practice. A lot of practice. That is how I understand gong fu (kung fu). This year I will focus on learning more about oolongs. I have two fine taiwanese teas that I use to prepare myself before emerging into the samples I have acquired (a lot of them, the oldest from 1970).

Pouring over oolongs is hard. Very hard. I have tons of area I want to improve. I wonder if I am the only one (or among the few) who constantly tells himself :  You need to improve.

Oh, how I wish I would have somebody to learn from. I hope I will catch some tricks when I’ll visit Hong Kong or next year, in my tea trip to Taiwan. Until then,  solitary practice, research and then practice again.

The pics bellow are from some of my practice sessions.

Greeting the new year

08/01/2011, posted by Cha in journal

The pics bellow are from the first tea setup from this year. I was really tired at that point, in the previous day I traveled almost 20 hours.  I required something not so light to restore my senses.  I chosed  my 2000 Yiwu sheng puerh, a cake that was very unforgiving to me at some point in the past.

As I setup my tea table,  I realized that almost each item has a story now and a particular significance.  I brewed from a cake that served me as a teacher and now it’s a great companion.  I used a teapot that found it’s way to the right tea and taught me the value of the right teapot.  I used my first Cha Bu.  The Cha Bu and the cups connect me to a blog which influenced me the most.  The tea pitcher also comes from a local shop which had it’s own role. All the items now have a story and a meaning.   They help me to realize how things connect.

I started the year with a setup that reflected many things from my personal history.  I hope the future will bring me many more experiences that will help me to grow.

In a way of another every blog listed here, every person reading my blog, everyone who likes or dislikes me, everyone has helped me to grow. Thank you all.

No words

04/12/2010, posted by Cha in journal

Breaking a puerh cake

28/11/2010, posted by Cha in journal,video

I decided to break this cake in half , then store half in a earthen ware and half in it’s (almost) original form. I’ll check in time the differences between those two.

This was my oldest cake of shu puerh.  The knife I used is not your regular puerh knife. It’s actually a somehow more dangerous item. I also like knives and I have quite a set at my home.  The bladed weapon passion comes from my martial arts passion.    If you would think that tea defines me, you are wrong. In my journey of defining myself, tea is one of the tools. Same as martial arts.  My blog is called chadao not because I’m an expert, but because I am a scholar.  I honestly want to learn more about tea,  every day. But in the sane way.

I sadly see so many (western) people taking tea for what (I believe ) is not.  Drinking a cup of tea will not make you understand zen, or tao or anything . Trying to make your best cup of tea for several decades may do that. And it will probably happen with a cup of tea.  That is kung fu.   If one drinks tea for a year or two and starts to understand the universe, I would called that person tea possessed.  I think that it’s important to learn, but it’s also important to take away the mysticism.

Oh , but let’s get back to the video. If you have any other suggestions about breaking the cake or storing the puerh, don’t hesitate to tell me.

Cha Bu

20/11/2010, posted by Cha in journal

I picked the habbit of using a Cha Bu from Teamasters , a blog which has a big influence on me. It’s one of my most important source of  information, especially because I share the same philosophy on tea as Stephane, although I still have much to learn.  Still , even if I share the same philosophy, I now realize that my spirit of tea making is a bit different,  perhaps due to my martial arts background. (  I will talk about this when I will be ready to explain it with words .)

As I probably said in earlier post, a Cha Bu is much more versatile then a tea tray.  You can be much more creative and you can reflect your mood/feelings/spirit with ease by having the possibility to create almost unique setups according to the situation. A Cha Bu is easier to store than a tea tray  and you can easily make your own .  Having more than one Cha Bu gives you many possibilities. I would say, at some point, a Cha Bu becomes a must.

Besides creativity, I feel (as Stephane said on it’s blog) that I become more focused on the tea itself once I started to use a Cha Bu.  This is mostly because you will not have the luxury to spill water all over once you start to use it.  But there is always some excess of water, and for that, a teaboat is used in conjunction with a large bowl that stores the water used to wash the teapot and cups. When brewing with a gaiwan, the extra bowl is not always necessary.

Of course, good results can be obtained without a Cha Bu at all like in the previous examples.

With or without a Cha Bu , I find that not using a tea tray is very liberating.  However, that doesn’t mean I stopped using tea trays.  I am now somehow amused as I see a past version of me who imagined that a tea tray is a mandatory item to comfortably brew gong fu.

Why do I write about tea?

01/11/2010, posted by Cha in journal

This is part of the Blog Carnival of Association of Tea Bloggers hosted by Jason at Walker Tea Review.

There are at least 3 main reasons for which I write about tea:

• Feedback
• Sharing
• Connecting

Feedback

I write many of my posts in the hope that some of you who are quite experienced in this tea field will give me your feedback. From time to time I do receive feedback. For example I received valuable feedback on my latest video.  ( I will post the feedback at some point)

Sharing

In my country, there are very few who know about Chinese Tea. Many ‘respectable’ tea company sell fake tea or low quality tea. On another aspect, even with a good quality tea , few have any ideea what to do with it. I am trying to share my knowledge so that other can learn what I did.

Connecting

I have met many great people, from which I learned a lot via vis blog or other social services. I found people who will help me in Hong Kong for example and people who will help me plan a tea trip in Taiwan. It seems love for tea opens many doors..

Of course, these are only the main reasons. As with everything, nothing stays the same, so this post is available only now, I don’t know why I will write about tea next year or if I will still write about tea.  However, at any point, this blog will document my journey on the way of tea. That’s why the blog is called Cha Dao.