Red Circle Tea

White, green oolong, red and puerh. Which do you have more of in your collection? I usually have more oolongs, most people have a collection of green teas. But what about red tea? Keemun, Ying de and Red Jade teas all belong to the red tea family, and they couldn’t be more different from each other. While Ying De has cocoa notes with a hint of strawberry, and goes great with milk, Red Jade is an organic Taiwanese tea with notes of cedar and raspberry. Our newest addition is this summer’s Keemun. This is a limited edition top grade (Gift grade Keemun was not produced this year) and this years leaves are whole, not cut. Keemun is also incredibly versatile, it brews an energizing cup of hot tea, or a refreshing and satisfying cup of sweet chilled tea.  Read the blog post below for a description and then come on out to our tea tasting this weekend to try all three red teas side by side.

Come to our tea tasting at  2749 Steiner Street. You can take the 22 and get off at Steiner and Vallejo or look for street parking.  Cost is $15 to taste unlimited number of teas

Tasting is from 12-3pm , you can come for the whole time, or drop in for a few minutes.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Summer 2009 Keemun is here! We were so excited when it arrived, we brewed some up right away. Here are our first impressions of this great tea.
The smell of the dry leaves is sweet and softly fruity, it is not obvious at first how much complexity this tea holds.  By contrast, the washed tea leaves smell bold and smoky, with notes of wood and tea. There are hints of hay and earth and grass still clinging to the leaves; this tea still smells like the farm it came from. Interestingly, the taste of this tea will mellow over time, and “settle” into it’s natural flavor profile in about 30 more days.    The taste of the first brew is light, sweet, refreshing and not at all aggressive. In fact, this is a really ‘gentle’ tea. While some Keemun teas are overpowered by their astringency, this tea offers itself humbly and un-aggressively. It would be easy to assume this tea is thin or not full bodied tea. On the contrary, that is the most astonishing part, that a Keemun this subtle can be so absolutely completely full of body flavor and its sweetness can be so satisfying.

In the brew, there are base notes of wood and smoke and tea.  We learned after reading up on Keemun that this initial smokiness will change into a longan fruit note. Interestingly the more smoke you taste at first, the sweeter the tea later.  And, Keemun looses it’s smokey notes in about 30 days, so when you smell that smoke note, you know you’re tasting the freshest Keemun available. Middle notes are of juicy stone fruit, like peaches and nectarine, and there is a citrus note of yellow fruit (overripe -but not fermented- pineapple?) that is not completely defined yet. Top notes of juicy watermelon linger on the lid of the cooled gaiwan, a clue to the sweetness this tea will hold when the taste settles.

This is a great tea for steeping hot or chilled and we’ll be premiering it at our tea tasting this Saturday.  Check our events page for details and come to our tea tasting to try this fabulous tea!