Spring 2017
what's inside 03
Editor's Note
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Tea-riffic Summer Skin Rachel Rachana Carter
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How to Taste Tea Like a Pro Nicole Martin Rethinking Tea Categories Geoffrey Norman
Recommended Reading
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From the Blog
editor's note
Hi there, tea lovers! Spring is here and that means new teas for us all tea enjoy. Whether it's shincha or 1st flush Darjeeling, there is a lot to look forward to this time of year. Pre-Qingming Dragonwell is in my cup as I put together the latest edition of Tea fo Me Please Quarterly Just a few days ago the winners of the 2017 World Tea Awards were announced. I was honored to be nominated in not one but two categories; Best Tea Blog, and Best Social Media Campaign. Although I didn't win, I can't thank you all enough for all of the support that you have given me and my tea endeavors over the years. It means more than I could ever tell you! As always, this journal is community driven. I'd love to hear your questions and feedback. Submissions for future issues are welcome from everyone. Whether you are a tea enthusiast or seasoned vendor, we all have something to share that others can learn from.
Nicole Martin
TEA-RIFFIC SUMMER SKIN BY RACHEL RACHANA CARTER If you're anything like me you may be dreading swimsuit and shorts weather. Winters in Chicago
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get pretty cold and rather dry. As such, my skin takes a terrible beating. No matter how hard I try to keep on top of things, Mother Nature always seems to have other plans. However, being the type that never seems to give up I continue to fight and rise to the challenge. It is my intention to create skincare products that have real, few, and simple ingredients. On top of using external products that encourage healthy looking skin, I also would like to add the importance of healthy eating and exercise. A combination of all three will help you achieve the ultimate in healthy looking skin. Of course, the benefits would go far beyond just skincare.
With warm weather now more consistently present I have taken a hard look at skin nourishing ingredients to prepare my skin for the onslaught of sun and fun. After various experiments, I have created a rather simple DIY recipe that will both help scrub away dead skin and leave your arms and legs feeling moisturized.
Just a quick declaimer. Please verify all the ingredients listed will not cause any medical concerns for you. If you feel compelled I encourage you to talk with your doctor. I have often tested each individual ingredient on my skin for reactions. If you would like to do the same it would be at your discretion.
Finally, once you make your own salt scrub I would recommend you use it as your final step during your shower on both your arms and legs. I do not recommend using this on your face. Enjoy and get ready for touchable, tea-rrific skin.
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BLACK TEA
Salt Scrub *Makes enough for about 5 showers *Not for facial use *Check ingredients for potential allergic reactions
Ingredients 2tbs- Finely Ground Pink Himalayan Sea Salt 1tbs- Finely Ground Black Tea (CTC) 1tbs- Refined Coconut Oil 1tsp-Jojoba Oil or Avocado Oil 5 Drops - Rose Essential Oil (Can substitute with lavender, sweet orange, or peppermint.) *Use essential oils sparingly. Use in excess can cause skin irritation and may require medical attention. Never make direct skin contact with essential oils.
Directions: Note, as a general personal rule I opt for the least processed ingredients. I will often reach for organic ingredients and those that have been cold pressed. The idea is that you will hopefully be able to absorb the best and most amount of skin loving vitamins and other various benefits during the process.
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First, start with a clean container and lid. I recommend a glass container like a Ball Jar. Start with the sea salt and next add in the tea. Mix that up with a small wire whisk or fork. Add your coconut oil and jojoba oil, gently mix it all until combined well. Finally, add your essential oil. Start slow and don't use in excess. Mix everything once more. You're all done. Now the fun part, test your scrub and enjoy. Your skin will thank you for treating it so well. The combination of sea salt and especially the tea will allow for maximum skin exfoliation the oils will leave your skin feeling soft and silky.
Have a “tea-rrific” and “skin-tastic” summer!
Rachel is a long time tea addict, foodie, and wine enthusiast. Along with all her passions at the core, she is a huge health and fitness advocate. Plus a bit of a geek and as crafty as can be.
Check out here blog at http://www.iheartteas.com
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HOW TO TASTE TEA LIKE A PRO BY NICOLE MARTIN
I often get emails from people who tell me that they enjoy reading my tea reviews but they could never truly appreciate tea themselves. That simply isn't true. Being able to evaluate what you are tasting is a learned skill. While some people might be born "super tasters", the vast majority of us need to put in the work to train our palates. This is a lesson that I learned many moons ago while working in customer service for a wine retailer. I love white wine but really struggled when it came to tasting reds. I was a total newbie and because of that, my palate had not been trained in the same way as my professional colleagues who had studied for years. Even if you've never had a particular type of tea before, a lot can be determined just by relying on your senses. Take detailed notes and trust your instincts. This is the method that I usually use when reviewing a tea. Step 1 - Look at the Dry Leaves Before you taste anything, you'll want to thoroughly check out the appearance of your tea. What do the leaves look like? Are they broken or mostly whole? Do you see a lot of tender buds? Step 2 - Aroma of the Dry Leaves Can you detect any aromas from the dry leaves? This part is often the hardest. Try preheating a gaiwan (or another brewing vessel) with hot water and then pour the water out. Add your leaves and give it a few gentle shakes. The heat helps to release the aromatic compounds in the tea.
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Step 3 - Brew the Tea It's important to follow the directions that the vendor provided, especially when you are just starting out. If you don't have directions to go off of, try looking up a similar tea online to get a baseline for where your parameters should be. Don't forget to give the wet leaves a whiff too. Step 4 - Observe the Liquor What does the brewed tea look like? What color is it? Is it clear or muddy in appearance? Are there any aromas apparent? Do they echo the dry leaf or did something new pop up? Using an aroma cup can help to focus your senses if you're having difficulty with this step. Step 5 - Taste the Tea At long last, you get to taste the tea. Don't forget to slurp! It might feel a bit rude but slurping actually makes you a more effective taster by getting the tea to every part of your mouth. Swish the tea around a bit in your mouth as well. Professional tasters spit out their tea but that is because they are tasting hundreds of samples at a time. First, you'll want to focus on the mouthfeel. Does the tea feel thin or is it thick and syrupy? Are you feeling the puckering sensation that is caused by astringency? The taste of tea can be quite complex. Some aromas will hit you right away while others might linger in the finish. Breath out across your tongue after your sip can help it easier to pick up those ending flavor notes. How does the tea make you feel?  Do you feel grounded or does the sheng puerh you had make you feel tea drink? That might seem a bit hippy-dippy but how tea makes us feel is an important part of the experience. It's most important to remember that there is no wrong answer to what you might taste in a tea. We all experience things differently. One person's fresh grass clippings is another person's timothy hay. Give tasting tea with friends a try. It's fascinating to share notes and see what others experience when drinking the same tea.
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RETHINKING TEA CATEGORIES BY GEOFFREY NORMAN
Editor’s Note: This is merely a thought exercise by the author. The opinions reflected in the below do not reflect the opinions of Tea For Me Please . . . or this editor, for that matter. Seriously, I just work here, guys.
A thought has occurred to me over the years. No one has come to a clear consensus as to what the proper tea categories are. The general consensus is that there are six: dark tea, black tea, wulong, green tea, yellow tea, and white tea. However, some say that yellow tea isn’t its own category (even though it clearly is). Others also carry the stance that dark tea shouldn’t include sheng (raw) puerh. Others still believe puerh should be its own category. Hell, even some international trade laws only recognize two tea categories. So, this got me thinking . . . If I were the end-all/say-all authority on tea lexicography, how would I divvy up the different tea types? What would my breakdown look like? Well, in order to answer that question, I must breakdown (and in some cases, outright destroy) existing trends. This might over-complicate the issue, and over-simplify other things. But this is my write-up . . . and I’l l do what I want. So, here we go: *dons helmet* The Way of White Tea As I recently learned, if one were to go by the strictest definition, there are two criteria for white tea to be truly “white tea”. The tea had to be made from Da Ye and/or Da Bai tea trees, and it had to be from Fujian province, China. Everything else is . . . something else. That means, white teas from India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, and even other parts of China are right out. They don’t meet the two requirements of the type. Well, in my humble opinion . . .
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You lost this battle, Fujian. White tea styles have been appraised, appreciated and appropriated by other countries for decades, now. If the province wanted to make the tea type truly proprietary, folks would’v e needed to step up in the first few years. The tea type is too ubiquitous, now. Time to move on. More oxidized white teas, however . . . ? The Wulong Dilemma Like white tea, for a tea to be truly considered wulong (“black dragon”) tea, two criteria have to be met. The tea had to be partially-to-mid-oxidized, and the oxidation had to be halted through a shaqing (“kill-green”) process—arresting the enzymatic browning of the leaves. Aside from China, Taiwan, and parts of Indonesia, only one of these requirements is met. In India and Nepal, “oolongs” are semi-oxidized . . . and that’s it. The browning of the leaves is halted, not through pan-frying, but rather through an application of heat. This process does not qualify as a kill-green step because the chlorophyll die-off isn’t immediately arrested. And it shows in the color (and taste) of the leaf. Therefore, the wulong moniker shouldn’t apply. Well, I have a compromise.
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For years, wulong has gone by the transliteral perversion: “oolong”. Someone down the line decided two “o”-s sounded soooo much better than a “wu”. They were wrong. Soooo wrong. But there’s still a way to keep the “oooo” and the “wu” in play, simultaneously. True wulongs can still be called as such. Whereas semi-oxidized teas can carry the oolong moniker. There. Simple. Everyone wins. Now, onto something more contentious. The “Dark Tea” Debacle Heicha (dark tea) has become the blanket category for any tea that’s undergone some sort of fermentation. That totally makes sense because it is one of the oldest processes for teas in existence. The only fermented tea type that doesn’t fall comfortably in this category is puerh. Why? Well, two words: wet-piling.
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Puerh falls into two camps, sheng (raw) and shou (cooked/ripe). One is the original process; it ages naturally. Whereas the latter undergoes a leaf wet-piling process to hasten the aging process—a method inspired by other heicha. Some say sheng puerh can (and should) be considered heicha because fermentation does eventually occur. Which . . . might be true, but no one knows for certain. The evidence surrounding sheng puerh’s fermentation process over time is shaky, at best. Some folks—more educated than myself—believe that no real fermentation actually occurs. But rather, the leaves undergo a slower, more controlled oxidation, due to its unusual processing methods. (Shorter kill-green, sun-drying, steaming, pressing, etc.) In other words, the jury’s still out, and that’s an exploration for an entirely different write-up. But there’s a way to sidestep the issue entirely. If dark tea is characterized by inclusion of a provable fermentation process, then only include those teas. Put more succinctly: if the leaves have been wet-piled in any sort of manner, or had their aging hastened—by moisture, heat or bacterial cultures/molds—they’r e heicha. Anything that hasn’t undergone that process, they’r e their own thing. Shou puerh falls in this category, sheng doesn’t . But that’s not the end of the whole sheng debate . . . To Sheng or Not to Sheng If sheng puerh isn’t heicha, then what is it?
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Honestly, I dunno. Perhaps, it should be considered its own thing, but that leads to an even bigger problem. Puerh can’t be considered puerh unless it hails from Yunnan province, China. Champagne rules apply here. The moniker is region-specific. Unlike with white tea, the Yunnanese established early on that puerh was their thing. Anyone else doing so was an impostor. Small problem, though. Other regions produce sheng puerh-style teas as well. That and they’v e been doing it for as long as Yunnan province—particularly indigenous tribes in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and even India. What type of tea were they producing if it wasn’t puerh? I have a compromise for that, too.
Sheng Cha should be its own category. If puerh is a regionally specific sub-category, sheng should be the blanket category for the various teas that adhere to its unique process. Therefore, it doesn’t step on the toes of Yunnan sovereignty, while still maintaining its own individuality based upon its method and make. In Cup-clusion Put simply, there should be eight tea categories: Heicha, Sheng Cha, Black Tea, Wulong, Oolong, Green Tea, Yellow Tea, and White Tea.
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But what about phalap? Or ddeok-cha?
...Shut up.
Geoffrey Norman is a writer with a debatably healthy obsession with tea. That and the stories around them. He's made it his mission in life to track down unique teas, unique tea growing regions, epic tea stories, and interesting tea people behind those stories. You can find more of Geoff's writing on his blog, Steep Stories of the Lazy Literatus, at: http://wwww.steepstories.com
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Recommended Reading The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane - Lisa See
Tea-inspired fiction is not something that I come across often but this one is definitely a must read. It tells the story of a young girl who lives Nannuo Mountain. Puerh is an intimate part of her family's culture and the author did a great job of researching Yunnan.
Tea: A User's Guide by Tony Gebely
The October 2016 issue of Tea for Me Please Quarterly featured an excerpt from this book. In case you missed it, I highly recommend picking up a copy. Tony breaks down the basics of tea in a nerdy yet easy to digest way.
A Tea Lover's Travel Diary by Jason C.S. Chen
Those of us who can't travel to origin must live vicariously through the experiences of others. This book features in-depth information and breathtaking photos from Guangdong and Anxi.
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From the
Blog
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