THE ART OF TEA
BEAUTIFUL TEA LEAVES & BLOSSOMS
As we celebrate the beauty of leaves this week, as they change all around us, rotating through their vibrant color phases and life cycles, the chill in the air tempts us to consider the beauty of tea leaves.
We checked out a few exceptional tea purveyors in search of extraordinary tea leaves.
Bird Pick Tea & Herb, based in California, makes incredible hand-crafted tea mocktails at their tea shops. But they ship some beautiful loose leaf teas and exotics anywhere you need them.
Teapigs, based in the UK, make unique and under-appreciated teas more accessible and more fun.
Imperial Tea Court features imported competition-grade, hand-harvested, fine loose-leaf teas. Top chefs consider owner Roy Fong is referred to as "The Godfather of Tea."
Rare Tea Cellar, in Chicago, sells unusual teas in their Tea of the Month Club. They also sell to top restaurants, such as Grant Achatz’s Alinea.
Steven Smith Teamaker, in Portland, Oregon, makes everything by hand -- hand sorting, sifting, blending and packing each tea. Enter your carton’s batch number on their website to learn about the origin of each tea ingredient.
We steep a pot of delicate Blooming Tea to fortify us against the demands of the Autumn afternoon and assemble a collection of the most beautiful tea plantations and the most beautiful and rare teas to enjoy. Prepare to get cozy. Prepare to have all of your senses summoned and pleased. Check them out below.
We love to indulge in Blooming Teas. Sometimes called “Flower Tea,” these artisan teas are crafted by gathering and hand-tying teas leaves into balls, which, when steeped in hot water, bloom into lush translucent blossoms. They are a delight to see. The aroma is divine. And the taste is delicately complex.
They are made of long tender “spring-picked” high-grade white tea leaves, handsewn -- sometimes together with real flowers.
Black Chrysanthemum: This unique tea is made from long black tea leaves hand-tied together around a chrysanthemum flower. It steeps up smooth with a sweet floral note.
When the outer leaves of this Yellow Flower Burst Tea Flower swell open to reveal, they uncover inner layers of Pale Yellow and Chrysanthemum flowers.
Each of these beautiful Immortal Peach Hand Tied Jasmine Green Flowers unfurls to further reveal a red clover flower.
While Chrysanthemums are the most popular Blooming Tea flowers, red clover, jasmine, globe amaranth, and lily blossoms are also used for traditional Blooming Teas.
Sometimes the Blooming Flower Teas are embellished with more layers of flavor, like the light fruity essence of Strawberry Misaki Blooming Tea from Teavana.
Use a glass vessel when you drink Blooming Teas so you can see them in their full regalia as they open up. If you are careful, you can even enjoy them in a wine goblet.
From Silver Needle White, to Dragon Well, treat yourself to some of the rarest of teas.
The rare downy leaves of Silver Needle White Tea, reserved for the Chinese Imperial family for many centuries, is only harvested two days each year.
The leaves steep to produce a delicate, almost silky sip.
Dragon Well or Longjing tea is a rare pan-roasted green tea grown just outside the Longjing Village near Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province,China.
She Qian Dragon Well comes from Tianmu Mountain in Zhejiang, China.
For those who prefer the taste of Spring breeze, She Qian Dragon Well wins over Ming Qian because it is picked earlier than Ming Qian and the leaves are of much higher grade.
The delicacy, complexity and nuance of exceptional teas can soak into your memory and trigger total sensory recall of your experiences in drinking them. As Fuchsia Dunlop shares in “Memories of Hangzhou.” (see below)
“On my last day in Hangzhou, a friend arrived at my hotel with some of that most precious of commodities – new season West Lake Longjing (Dragon Well) tea. They were some of the first leaves of the season, so new that they were not yet available on the market. I could lose myself in the scent of these delicate spear-like leaves.”
It is magical: green and gently intoxicating, reminiscent of fresh pistachios. Back in London, their aroma is even more thrilling, because it takes me back in an instant to the shores of the West Lake, to its soft contours of willow and peach, to the sound of the waters lapping.
At home in London, I infuse the leaves in some hand-painted tea bowls (gai wan), the water not too hot, inhale their gentle vapours, and sigh.
Read more about Beautiful Leaves all this week on BeautifulNow. See the World’s Most Beautiful Leaves, Soulful Dogs + Autumn Leaves, Leaves Change Us, You Can Take the Most Beautiful Autumn Photos! and Super Beauty in These Legal Leaves. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
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