Afternoon Tea Recipes, High Tea Recipes, English/American High Tea, Tea party Tea Etiquette In order for one not to spill the hot liquid onto oneself, the proper way to hold the vessel of a cup with no handle is to place one’s thumb at the six o'clock position and one’s index and middle fingers at the twelve o'clock position, while gently raising one’s pinkie up for balance. Tea cups with a handle are held by placing one’s fingers to the front and back of the handle with one’s pinkie up again allows balance. Pinkie up does mean straight up in the air, but slightly tilted. It is not an affectation, but a graceful way to avoid spills. Never loop your fingers through the handle, nor grasp the vessel bowl with the palm of your hand. Do not stir your tea, with your tea spoon, in sweeping circular motions. Milk is served with tea, not cream. When serving lemon with tea, lemon slices are preferable, not wedges.
Order and enjoy unique Yixing teapots and Green, Oolong, and Herbal tea at the Boulder Dushanbe TeaHouse Basic Tea Terminology Pronunciation Guide Tea names transliterated from the Chinese can be confusing, and lead to many different ideas on pronunciation. David Duckler, founder of Verdant Tea, is also a translator of Chinese fiction and poetry, and names teas according to the principles of translation. First and foremost, the goal is to communicate the same feeling and and information that a Chinese speaker would understand when hearing the name of a tea. Sometimes, a tea’s name is clearly tied to a literal meaning that must be explained. For example, if a sheng pu’er’s name indicated that it was stone pressed, or wild arbor, that is important information to convey in English. However, some tea names are related to a place or company, like Yongming, that can not be easily translated, or is not perceived in its literal meaning. This is where Pinyin comes in. We thought a short guide on how to pronounce tea terminology using Pinyin would be helpful. Now to the consonants. z: close to our “z” sound but a bit softer. sheng: (sh’uhng)
LUPICIA Fresh Tea Pages On White Tea Recently, I posted a A Challenge: What Are The 10 Most Useful Web Pages On White Tea?. In this post I demonstrated how the pages that come up in a google search for "white tea" are not all high-quality, carefully-maintained websites and articles, and I challenged people to come up with what results they personally would prefer, in their ideal world, to come up. This post shows my ranking. My (admittedly biased) ranking: I want to say ahead of time that this ranking is far from perfect, and there are undoubtedly a lot of good sites omitted from this list. This list is skewed by my own bias of tea companies and websites which I have happened upon largely through chance, and it's also skewed by my own tastes and preferences (which, in white teas, tend towards sampling pure white teas from unusual regions). White Tea on Wikipedia - This page is far from perfect, but I still think it is the best search result to return in the first position. Please publish your list:
About Chinese Tea How Chinese Style Tea is Produced: Processing the Five Major Chinese Tea Types White Tea: White teas are essentially unprocessed. The tea leaves are simply picked and air dried. Different combinations of sunlight and or low heat are sometimes used to aid the drying process if weather conditions are not optimal at the time of harvest. White teas like Silver Needles are composed entirely of the young buds that are covered in tiny hairs from the tea plants, while Pai Mu Tan style white teas have some buds in them but are composed mainly of large more developed tea leaves. Green Tea: Chinese style green teas involve a little bit more processing than their white counterparts. Withering: The green tea leaves are picked and withered slightly either in the sun, in a heated space, or just at room temperature until the leaves lose about 20% of their moisture content. Oolong Tea: From a processing standpoint oolongs are somewhere between green and black teas.
Romanization of Chinese Tea Names Buying, selling, writing, and talking about Chinese tea in the English language can be rather complicated and confusing, owing to uncertainty about the names of teas. The Chinese language is unfamiliar and alien-sounding to most English speakers, although the base-level of cultural awareness of the Chinese language among the general U.S. population has increased dramatically in recent years. One thing that complicates the naming and spelling of teas is the use of different systems of Romanization. Romanization is the translating of names from one language into the characters of the Roman alphabet, the alphabet used in English and many other Western languages. Wade-Giles Romanization: Wade-Giles Romanization is an old system for transcribing Chinese characters that was developed by Sir Thomas Francis Wade, a British Diplomat, during the mid 19th century. Pinyin Romanization: Barriers to Adopting Pinyin for Tea Names: How do I handle romanization? What do you think?
Pu'er by Appearance This is the permanent residence of a post I made on 22 May 2011. It references this post where I asked people to guess what teas were what based on their appearance. The post details the difference in appearance and taste of young sheng pu'er, young shu pu'er, wet stored aged sheng pu'er, dry stored aged sheng pu'er, and wet stored aged shu pu'er. Before I begin what is a long post, let me say that of the 9 guesses I received, we had a winner! Dry Leaf Appearance As the guessing game results imply, tea leaf appearances can be deceiving. Young sheng leaves are green, often shiny, and have visible fur on the tips and even the larger leaves. Dry stored sheng ranges in color from greenish brown (10 to approx. 15 years) to medium brown (15+ years) to medium dark brown (25+ years, if you can find it! Wet stored sheng is medium to dark brown, often with a golden brown tinge. Young shu is dark gray-brown to gray-black, highlighted with golden bud tips if any are in the blend.
Tea Harvest Calendar Throughout the year, the relative positions of the sun and the earth can be expressed by 24 solar terms. Dates marking these 24 solar terms stay almost the same year by year on the international calendar. The 24 solar term marks directed a lot of agricultural activities in traditional society of China, including tea cultivation. On this Tea Harvest Calendar, the harvest dates of various teas are sorted in temporal order based on the solar terms they belong to. More information about the 24 solar terms can be found on this webpage of Hong Kong government: (Name translations of the solar terms are slightly different between this Tea Harvest Calendar and above webpage.) Tea harvest dates vary slightly from year to year. This Tea Harvest Calendar includes names of the 24 solar terms in English and Chinese, their dates on the international calendar, and harvest times of some well-known Chinese teas. 24 Solar Terms and Tea Time 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.