My dearest friend Harry and I have sat and mumbled nonesense over many a pot of tea during our friendship. Sometimes hungover, sometimes telling risque jokes, more often than not slagging off the quality of the tea or the dispicable faux pas made in the ritualistic preparation of said tea.
We are tea snobs. I think I am to blame for Harry's snobery. However I couldn't be happier about this.
His ability to write so eloquently, I have no involvement with, thats all his genius there.
Go on, have a read...
My First Formosa Oolong
Thursday, September 08, 2011
On a searingly hot day in July I walked to my favourite lunch stop, a fantastic Thai place off City Road, to grab a quick Pad Siew and a Jasmine tea. The tea was bagged, but it was organic, so I wasn't about to complain too fiercely. Moreover, the food was so good, and fast, and cheap, that I could just about forgive sub standard tea…just about.
This lunch had become routine over the past few weeks as I made sure to milk the expenses allowance at my internship on Paul Street, writing film reviews and imagining myself quite the conductor of taste - lofty thoughts of film execs screaming "GET HARRIS ON SIDE AND IT'S A FIFTY MILLION OPENING WEEKEND GUARANTEED" subsided soon after the internship ended, after which time I've since learned that the company have "considerably revised" their expenses policy.
On this particular day, however, my routine was altered somewhat, as I was handed a bag of Oolong tea instead of Jasmine, and assured I would like it. He'd been right about the Congee I'd had for breakfast the previous morning, I had every reason to trust him about this.
Unconvinced. That's how I felt after my first sip of Oolong - again organic but, again, teabagged. It was certainly refreshing, but not entirely pleasant; sort of earthy, with a hint of coffee and a decidedly bitter aftertaste, and also far, far too hot. I kept the teabag and decided to take it to my friend Miranda, my font of tea knowledge, my tattooed, pierced fearless companion - one of those people who treats everything from a post-it note to an evening outfit, as if it were a work of art.
Miranda enjoys gutsy, powerful tea: smoky Lapsang Souchongs and dark, beguiling Pu Erh that smells as if it has been excavated from a nearby cave. When she took a hold of the bag of damp, grainy Oolong a grimace came over her face, and she quickly and calmly disposed of it, looking thoroughly ashamed. She pulled a glass jar of dark, gnarled, mangled leaves from her cupboard and set about brewing a pot of this so-called Formosa Oolong Superior Top Fancy - something with that many superlatives surely has to be compensating for something, surely?
The first thing I noticed was the colour. The man in the Thai place had told me Oolong is sometimes referred to as Blue Tea, and the brew he gave me was indeed bordering on a dark navy, so it didn't seem too big a stretch. However, the darkness of the leaves Miranda had so carefully spooned into the pot belied the light yellowish tint the water took on after two or three minutes, and the taste was similarly different…in fact, it was entirely different…in fact, it wasn't even on the same map as what I'd previously been exposed too - I now understood Miranda's grimace. Like an incredible wine, the flavour of the tea kept changing and developing as time passed: the first brew was fruity, like ripe pears and apples; the second was sweet and biscuity, the third refreshing and comforting, all the while containing a beautiful, warm, roasted note. We went through another two pots as the afternoon rolled into the evening, eventually combining Oolong leaves with Lapsang and Keemun to blend a rudimentary Russian Caravan - perhaps too smoky in hindsight, but not bad for a first attempt.
I remember thinking this tea was pleasingly puzzling, and to this day I still can't quite get my head around it. All descriptions I attempt seem to pale in comparison to the actual experience, and every new experience conjures a new kind of synaesthesia. Perhaps it would be best for to say that Oolong, lying somewhere between black and green, occasionally dark and warming, occasionally light and refreshing, is always a pleasant kind of mystery, and we could all do with a little mystery in our lives. It's sometimes nice not to know what's coming next.
Follow Harry's thoughts at www.camelliasteahouse.com/blog
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