Red Circle Tea

The clouds may hover, June gloom can set in, but we’re hosting a tea tasting with all our newest teas from China and we promise you’ll taste the sunshine from spring in every sip! If you have never tried spring teas right after they have been picked, you owe it to yourself to see what all the hype is about. They really are that good!

On the menu will be our sublime First Flush Dragonwell tea from March 28th, and our sea-salt-airy Bi Luo Chun from Golden Mountain, our rich and robust 1984 Red Heart Treasured Oolong and our floral Emperor’s Puzzle Wu Yi tea.

We also have a new collection of Yi Xing Clay tea pots to share. These are works of art that are dedicated to a family of teas – floral oolongs, puerh, smoky reds – and they make every pot of tea you steep taste that much better!

We’ll share pictures of our adventures in Hangzhou and Suzhou where we sourced green tea, Xi Ping and Guangzhou where our oolongs are from, and of course Japan where our newest senchas are from.

Come on over and look for the Red Lantern!

Join us:

Date: Jun. 5, 2010

Time:  12 til 3 PM

Location: 442 Hearst Ave. (between Edna St. and Forester St) SF, CA 94112

Cost: $15 to taste teas on the menu; $5 more to taste private collection teas

Join our mailing list by emailing your address to: sina@redcircletea.com

Thanks!

Sina and Carnie

In 1995 samples of Taiwanese light roasted oolongs -probably from Li Shan or Ali Shan- were brought to Anxi, China. The farmers and processors were curious about this new tea and it’s popularity and were asked to make a tea that would compete with the light roasted flavor of a sweet leafy green oolong with fruit notes and a high floral fragrance. At that time in Anxi all oolong was roasted “Sook Heung”.  Most were roasted 40 – 50%, but some teas destined for the Hong Kong market were roasted as much as 90%. With the introduction of the Chinese version of a Taiwanese tea, “Ting Heung” was born. Ting Heung is the Anxi varietal that is air dried in cool conditions, or air-conditioner dried during the withering process and from that point on can only be roasted 20-30% to become light roast oolong.

Sook Heung is traditional roasting for Anxi oolongs. It means a minimum of 40-50% roasting. Ideally, 50 percent is preferred and I find it lighter than I would expect. There is the 80- 90% roasted tea that is destined for Hong Kong and Singapore, and when that tea arrives in America, most people refer to it as Monkey Picked oolong.  I think the American market is now used to very very lightly roasted Ting Heung tea and extremely dark roasted Hong Kong style Sook Heung tea. I think it surprises most people to find a properly half roasted tea (our Golden Heart was such a tea – unfortunately we’re sold out of that for this year). Since the High mountain tea harvest has not yet begun and we won’t be buying low grown tea, we’ll have to wait to buy this year’s charcoal roasted high mountain Sook Heung spring tea until after the 25th. What we did buy we are really pleased and surprised with. This year while visiting Anxi we chose a 26 year old TKY that has a complete sweetness, none of the sourness you might find in an aged oolong, and both nutty and plumy notes that are incredibly pleasant. It has been kept in Anxi and impeccably stored. It is dark because it’s been re-roasted every few years to remove excess moisture (this process needs to happen less often in Anxi, and more often in HK due to relative humidity.) We think you’ll like this as an alternative to Monkey Picked oolongs, and it has an age to it that lends a depth of character other Monkey Picked teas just don’t have. We also bought a lovely 2009 Hong Kong style oolong that we hope you’ll enjoy at a local restaurant soon! More details on that are coming.

5-8-10

We arrived today and luckily it was not down pouring, but there is a heavy mist that shrouds even the lowest peaks. We met Mr Wong who picked us up at 5 am as we got off the night bus. There are no planes that fly to Xi Ping, and the trains are not direct. He drove us to his house up in the hills of inner Xi Ping on the western peak at 1400m and we had a rest, some tea, and a light breakfast of noodles and pork with broth.  We headed up the mountain at 9 am. We visited the original Anxi oolong bushes and the library where Wong See Yeung used to study. He was a government official from Anxi who first gave the emperor oolong from Xi Ping. Not knowing the name of the tea he called it as beautiful as the goddess Kuan Yin, and as heavy as Iron or Ti, and the emperor liked the name and called the new tea “Ti Kuan Yin”. Thus, modern Anxi oolong entered the lexicon of one of China’s Ten Famous teas.

Farmers are holding out for sunny weather to harvest the high mountain tea and the sun is not cooperating at all. It’s misty, gray and damp, and it’s been raining on and off.  To successfully harvest high mountain tea, the leaves must be damp in the early morning, then when the sun comes out, ideally, those drops of water are absorbed by the leaf before picking  which starts promptly at 9 am, and continues throughout the day until 4 pm. Unlike green tea or white tea, with Ti Kuan Yin oolong, the buds are never picked. If picked and processed, the bud gives a bitter taste.  Good oolong tea should use the first two of the larger leaves, with an ideal amount of stem between each leaf. The length of stem indicates how much growth has occurred.

After processing, that water absorption results in an amazing fragrance when brewing the tea. Without sun, the tea leaves simply cannot be picked, and the clock is ticking for the farmers here, because the plant does not stop growing. Every day the farmer waits, the leaves grow, getting bigger, and eventually if the sun does not come out, they’ll have to pick the to-large-tea any ways and either process poor quality high grown tea, or just compost the leaves; neither is ideal.

Further up the mountain we met with local farmers.  We saw traditional withering of tea leaves resting in baskets, and initial toasting or, the “kill green” processing, as well as secondary wood fired processing. Once a tea is withered, bruised, rolled and toasted to stop the oxidation process this tea is called Mao Cha – raw tea. Later, this tea will be roasted lightly or to a deeper degree depending on the skill of the roaster, and the taste preference of the person purchasing it.  All low grown tea is processed by machine. It lacks the depth to merit the effort of small batch charcoal processing. Larger batches of high grown tea are also processed by machine, but they are custom processed with special temperatures and are processed separately from low grown tea.

In town, everywhere you look, ladies are sitting on tiny stools in a semi-squatting position with a round metal or bamboo tray in front of them that is about 3 feet in diameter holding a moderate sized mountain of tea on one side and they are picking apart the tea and the stem. The tea goes into the pile on the right and the stem goes in their apron to be composted later, or in some cases used as twig-tea. And men are busy continuing the processing steps of roasting tea to the degree they think will sell best in different markets. Light Roast for China and the US, Dark Roast for Hong Kong and Singpore.

Secondary processing for large batches of tea happens in a massive toaster oven on a series of conveyor belts.  To heat the oven and toast the tea, there are three choices a roasting master has to bring out the flavor, and they are electric, propane and wood firing. Electric processing leaves the tea with no aroma and is used when the tea is fragrant enough to keep its flavor, and the roaster is not interested in taking the time to take the tea to the “next step” of bringing out more flavor. Propane has a sulfur smell that is absorbed by the tea and is unpleasant and not commonly used. Wood is expensive, but  only wood charcoal firing gives roasted tea an amazing aroma that complements the tea flavor and brings out all the character and depth a tea has to offer.

60 years ago Mr. Wong’s father, Old Wong, had a convenience store and a plot of land to grow tea on, and almost everyone in Xi Ping had farm land, processed tea or sold tea. Today Mr Wong has grown his father’s secondary business into one of the four largest producing factories in the region, has three homes and two businesses in Guangzhou. He produces two kinds of tea, light roast Ting Heung and dark traditional roast Sook Heung. About 60% of the tea traded around China is Ting Heung, 40% is Sook Heung . Of the tea sold to Hong Kong 95 % is Sook Heung. There’s an interesting history to the development of these two kinds of oolong and a big difference in taste. We’ll delve deeper into those differences in the next post.

There’s a flood of fake tea on the general market. Seriously. You can get just about any tea, any grade from any date. Just ask for it.  “Dragonwell” made from tea from Fujian, (except it tastes rougher and less chestnutty, but it’s hard to tell if you aren’t paying attention) “Bi Lo Chun” can be faked and can come from different counties very far from Suzhou where it originates.  But you really know where your tea is coming from when you get it directly from the farmer in the growing area that it traditionally comes from and that’s just what we did.  Bi Lo Chun comes from Golden Mountain, and Ms Yang and her daughter Miss Yang picked tea the morning we visited with them and Mr Yang showed let us film him while he processed it.  That’s about as authentic as a tea can get!

The wok is heated with propane and Mr Yang knows how high to heat it when he holds his hands over the hot wok and the temperature feels right, about 200 degrees Celsius. No oil is added to the wok, and the tea goes straight in and makes a sizzling sound as it hits the wok. The tea is pulled in and – the best way I can describe this is that the tea is “kneaded” backwards, then fluffed.

Then, the tea is pushed in circles around the wok, and finally, hand rolled. This is very labor intensive and the whole process lasts 45 minutes and produces about 12 ounces of tea.  There is no first and second processing in Bi Lo Chun, the tea is processed all in one go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbIr0ZmveaQ

This tea was from the April 7th  harvest and tasted better than the first batch of tea we tried that was picked the day before. We ate lunch with the Yangs and decided to buy the whole batch we saw processed for a few reasons: it tasted amazing, we are absolutely certain this authentic Bi Lo Chun, and we know it was hand processed by the man whose family grew and picked the tea. We think this a great illustration of one of China’s 10 famous teas and it is certainly a tea you should add your collection to appreciate great Chinese teas. This tea is generally enjoyed at lower temperatures of 160-170, for the 3^rd and 4^th steepings, you can bring your water temperature up to 180 or 190 and do a quick short steeping. Cheers!

The morning sun was a huge relief. The sky was clear and the sun was shining. It was still pretty cold, but no wind, and with 2 pairs of pants on, and the wool socks my mom made for me, I was feeling brave. We hopped on a bus at 8 am and headed out to Lake Tai.

There are at least 3 islands in Lake Tai and we went to the third island, Golden Mountain Island, where the best crops of Bi  Lo Chun grow. The sea air was fresh and salty, the sun was bright and the day grew warm.

We hopped off the bus and met Ms Yang at the main road. We followed her up the road to her tiny village of about a dozen houses.  We walked past her family’s fruit trees of loquat and plums, melons and there were vegetables too:  squash and runner beans. Happy yellow mustard flowers were in full bloom and lush patches of lettuce flagged the road, and if I saw a white rabbit with an Easter basket run through the garden I would not have been surprised. It was that lovely and that idyllic.  Higher up on the mountain, they also farm tea. We set our bags down at her house and took our cameras and hiked up to the top of the mountain.

There were some noticeably different land features in Bi Lo Chun growing area. Pine trees were a new sight for me, and some of the tea plants are shade grown. The air was salty and the ground water we tasted later was calcium rich.

The air was so clean up here, we asked the altitude. Her family’s mountain is 1200 meters, but the highest peak is 3000 meters, and they pick from all over the island.  Here’s the view:

The Bi Lo Chun plants look like they’ve fared better than the Long Jing plants and have far less damage. There was a cold snap in early March, so while the harvest should have started in mid- March, it didn’t start until late March, limiting the amount of pre-Qing Ming tea possible.

Her father offered to let us watch the processing of the tea they picked today. In our next post, we’ll detail Bi Lo Chun Processing.

We finished our business with Ms Lee sooner than we thought and decided to head out to Suzhou, where one of China’s other 10 famous teas grows: Bi Lo Chun, or, Green Snail Spring. Suzhou is about 2-3 hours north of Hangzhou as the crow flies. Of course, this is China, and whatever kind of bird they have here, it not a crow. We actually had to take the train to Shanghai and transfer to Suzhou. That’s like going from San Francisco to Sacramento via Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the infrastructure in China is still – we’ll put it diplomatically – developing. Fortunately, it was the bullet train and it only took 4 hours.

We arrived and were greeted with grey skies, whipping wind, and the staccato voices of “dik-see dik-see dik-see” or taxi in Chinese. We refused because the people calling out are offering unlicensed taxi service. It was absolutely arctic weather in Suzhou and the wind was blowing so hard it was difficult to walk. I’ve never experienced such cold weather in the spring here, and got a feeling for what must have happened in early March, a horrible cold snap. I was in Seattle this winter when it snowed and Suzhou was colder than that. It made me worry about this year’s Bi Lo Chun harvest. We hopped in a green taxi from the street and headed out to our hotel, the Home Inn, the knockoff of Best Western. It was actually pretty nice, for a 2 star Chinese hotel. We went for dinner and had a fantastic bowl of noodle soup with lamb, with a side of lamb short ribs – delicious and warming in this cold. It was nearing 5 pm, so we went back to the hotel to rest for the evening and plan the next day’s adventure to Golden Mountain in Lake Tai.

Red Circle Tea will be serving our newest tea: First Flush Dragonwell at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s 30th Anniversary Party This Sunday!

Tea was the first Chinese Medicine and is used today to bring heat to the body, cool the body and to aid digestion, and to  detoxify.  Come celebrate the 30th anniversary of one of the premier Acupuncture schools on the West Coast and toast them with a cup of tea!

We’ll also be serving our Chrysanthemum tea, and White Peony teas.

Here’s the When and Where:

Sunday, April 18^th,

From 2-5 PM

SF War Memorial Building, 401 Van Ness Ave. (at McAllister)

Upstairs in the Green Room (2^nd floor)

If you visit Long Jing village you can walk around town and see people processing tea in woks – doing their work that needs to be done, but also putting on a show to bring a crowd and sell some tea. Why not, if your family’s house happens to be at the crossroads of one of the busiest tourist areas of northern China?

Master Yip does not live in Long Jing village, he lives down the road quite a ways. He also lives down a side road from a little tract of houses and his processing facility is in the back of his house. You wouldn’t think to find him here, but surprises often come in places where most people don’t look.  He has been processing tea for over 30 years, and he’s one of the best around. He taught us the hand movements involved in processing Long Jing tea. First, the wok is heated to 200+ degrees. He uses an electrical wok, since he learned to process it that way in the 1960’s.  When the wok reaches temperature, some grains of hard oil are placed in the wok and rubbed around with a cloth. When the wok is primed, 100 g of raw tea are placed in the wok and moved around. There are specific steps to processing and the processing happens twice, in Stage 1 and Stage 2. To learn stage one processing it takes 3 years of training. Then, if you’re good, you might be taught stage 2. To learn stage 2 processing, it takes 3 more years.

When Master Yip finally adds the tea to the hot oiled wok, he first he presses it into the bottom of the wok then pulls it up the side of the wok. He “fluffs” the tea, and lets it fall back into the wok. Then, he presses the tea, circles it around the wok and fluffs the tea. This step lasts 20 minutes. After this the tea rests and waits for the second step.

Step 2 processing happens after the tea has rested and cooled. The second step is called the Grind. Master Yip pushes the tea into the bottom of the wok 3 times- push push push- then circles the tea around the wok and pulls it up the side of the wok and flips the tea over and fluffs it. In the last stage, a glove is worn to absorb any excess tea oil and to “polish” the tea.   This is traditional tea processing at it’s best. Here’s a link to a video of traditional Dragonwell tea processing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2TPkc2J4z8

If you live in Hangzhou and register with the government, you are given part of a hectare of land to use. Most people grow tea on their land. When it comes time for harvesting, some people pick their own tea, others hire workers to pick it. We’ve seen Long Jing tea picked early in the day -as early as 4:30 am when the sky is still a deep gray and there is plenty of dew on the leaves. Generally, the tea is picked starting at 6:30 or 7:30 am and through out the day, with a break for lunch. At the end of the day pickers do one of three things. Either they take their tea home to process themselves, or they take it to a covered tea market where they sell their freshly picked leaves to be mixed with other leaves and all together it’s sold as that day’s harvest. Or, they wait until the end of the day and line up to give everything from that particular picking area to the person who owns it, and they are paid for their day’s work. Some tea pickers are migrant workers, starting North, and making their way South during the harvest season. Being a migrant worker in China is common place and while probably not an ideal lifestyle for long, it’s not looked down upon. In fact, it’s a necessity considering the amount of hand picked tea required to make a kilo of dry tea. A migrant worker can earn 40 yuan per day (if you accept accommodation and food from your host) or – 80 yuan per day (if you do not).  That’s a good wage when you can get a bowl of noodles for 4 yuan.  Unlike in Taiwan, the ladies, and they are all women, are not brought breakfast, tea and lunch. It’s also important to note only women pick tea, men do not. Men process tea. We’ll learn Dragonwell tea processing from Master Yip in a minute. (Yip means Leaf in Chinese, and it’s cute to think his name is Master Leaf because he’s a master tea leaf processor!)

It hasn’t snowed this badly or this late in the season to disrupt the harvest in over 60 years. Ms Lee said in her lifetime, this is the first time this has happened. Apparently, it snows a bit every year, around Chinese New Year’s (February 15^th) but when it snows, tea plants are in a dormant stage, and relatively unaffected. To understand why snow affects the spring harvest in such a devastating way, it’s important to understand what’s happening to the tea plant in spring.  What’s so special about the pre-Qing Ming harvest is that as the weather warms in late February early March, and the tea plant slowly awakens from the dormant stage, the tea plant begins to bring in more water through its roots, and begins to circulate liquid in a concerted effort to the emerging buds. As the plant begins to bud, it is releasing all the minerals stored in the root system for the first time using all it’s energy to come back to life. Therefore, the flavor of the first few flushes are the best, offering depth, body and sweetness, a complete spectrum of full flavor. After these harvests, the mineral content is severely depleted making most of the post Qing Ming teas less flavorful, and ultimately, for the last few harvests devoid of a complete flavor.  To try to save the tea plants this year, they covered each row with a plastic blanket and pumped in hot air to bring the temperature up, and keep the plant alive.  It helped fend off some of the worst damage and kept the roots from freezing, but this year’s late snow will affect the harvest for a few years to come.