text • chris rusak

01-03-09

Timing.

When my meditation practice has been off and I approach the return of it’s sanctity, the almost immediate and identifiable product of re-ignition is a sense of the passing of time. I am able to gauge this phenomenon with the brewing of tea. As I poor the hot water over the tea leaves in my gaiwan, and press the start button on my subconscious stopwatch, I also physically set one in reality, conveniently built in to my counter top microwave.

I then leave the kitchen and do whatever it is I am doing in addition to drinking tea.

Tea appreciation is something I think more people should be involved in. Like wine, a single object is taken, processed in many forms and fashions, and the result is a product with exponential possibilities. The appreciation of tea begins with the conscious abandonment of the tea bag. Whether bleached paper or the new style “woven cotton” bag, the real deal is to get yourself a gaiwan, a perfect tea cup, and a variety of loose leaf teas to set your palate with.

A gaiwan is the traditional way to brew tea if we’re talking Chinese tea, and that’s what I’m talking. It’s much like a large tea cup with a cover that is slightly ovular, manufactured as such that it creates a little recession from the lip of the bowl so you can pour out the brew. While I do not know the exact translation for the word “gaiwan,” it may very well mean “breaks easily” as they do, in an almost uncanny fashion. I am on my fifth in less than three years.

A perfect tea cup is one which elevates your experience of drinking tea to level beyond that of the tea itself. Much like a proper wine glass will facilitate the whole appreciation of wine, a great teacup visually triggers joy each morning by sight alone, gleaming “hello” and carrying the ethereal liquor straight to your lips. While I have been through many gaiwans, I am still on my first treasured teacup, a gift from one of my dearest friends who shares the tea gene with me.

A perfect tea cup has no formula, but it is without a handle, and it does provide proper assistance to the senses: a thin lip, like a wine glass, helps direct the tea into the mouth and not the gums; a wide bowl allows for the warm fragrance to permeate the air and stimulate your taste buds first, through your nose. The design, color, and weight play no real role, though I find great joy in the delicacy of hold a nearly weightless ceramic as my chalice.

When talking loose leaf tea, there are many, many purveyors out there. Start by avoiding all corporate big box supermarket chain anonymous fluorescent-lit lino-tile establishments, and don’t try emptying out the tea from a tea bag, either. That dust that is in that teabag is not tea, but dirt and ground stem, flecks of tea leaves that are older than the cardboard box they were packaged in.

Great loose leaf tea is sold, by weight, from a tea shop. If you are near a major metropolis that has a Chinatown, go there. Find a few tea stores and resist the urge to buy anything off the cuff. Get a feel for the people who work there and the general energy of the establishment. As with any tea store, as with any business, few customers are educated about the product they seek. Walk in the store with a little knowledge, and your end product will be gratifying at a three-fold level.

Chinese Tea Rough Guide

You should know that Chinese tea is divided into four essential types:
White
Green
Oolong
Pu-Erh

White tea is the least processed of Chinese tea. It is not steamed or cooked, dried with immediacy, and not fermented. I find white teas to be the naturally sweetest, with flavor profiles that swing into the honey/caramel range.

Green tea is generally steam-cooked or pan-roasted, an action that helps to preserve the green color of the leaves, but in my opinion, also bring out a more “greener” flavor. Still, it’s not uncommon to find elements of popcorn, saline/ocean, or even creme from a good brew. Generally, green teas also lean the most toward bitter flavors (generally, also highest in caffeine, which has a naturally bitter flavor as well.)
Generally, to qualify as a green tea, the leaves must not be oxidized more than 10%, but oxidization is rare.

Oolong tea is the most processed, cooked, steamed, roasted, oxidized, manipulated tea of the three. You can find oolongs that are less processed and less oxidized, highlighting their more floral, fruity flavors (Jade Kuan Yin,) or you can work your way into oolongs that are charcoal fired and oxidized to their capacity where they begin to show flavors like wood, marijuana, chocolate, coconut, dried plum, et cetera (Charcoal Roasted Tung Ting or Tie Lo Han)

Pu-Erh teas fall into the three prior categories, but then go through a stage of fermentation. The leaves can be fermented loose (generally most favorable) or in cakes (often lower-grade with exceptions) and the general rule is that the older the Pu-Erh, the more complex, longer lasting (eight steepings versus four,) and expensive the leaf is. Pu-erh is an advanced tea to get into, with flavors and aromas of basement floor, cheese rind, game, forest, so on and so forth, for a willing palate. I would skip Pu-Erh until you’re ready for a tannic but delightful shock to your senses.

My recommendation:

Set your course with two green teas. You’ll appreciate the clean caffeine jolt as well, not that jaded coffee shock so many people are destitute from. Stick with middle-of-the-road greens and you can’t go wrong. Pick a flat-leaf kind and naturally dried kind, and avoided rolled/monkey-picked for the time being. Never buy “Gunpowder” as it’s just a horrible profit product. Discern the taste between the two and learn what you like. A quarter-pound of each will be more than plenty.

Choose two wildly different oolongs. If you ask your tea merchant for recommendations on which oolongs to choose, I would ask for one lightly oxidized and one with heavy oxidization. You could also ask for two different kinds of oolong (Wuyi, Anxi, Formosa) by region.

And if you dare, ask for Silver Needle and Shou Mei by name, for whites. Silver Needle is a completely ethereal experience, perhaps a tea of it’s own mark. As with most other teas, do not rinse it before brewing, as you will waste away much of it’s beauty. Shou Mei, however, the heartiest of the white teas, deserves a good rinse before your first brew, and will not damage the deep walnut colored, honeyed liquor that is so satisfying.

What you will find in time is that a good cup of tea is meditation. The practice of boiling the water, warming the vessels, pausing to select the tea that will pair with the moment (as wine pairs with food,) and then waiting for the moment of enjoyment. You will reflect as you gently stimulate your senses, waking them up and calming life down, simultaneously.

The ebb and flow of tea drinking and meditation are parallel. Some months I drink only green, and some times I meditate while standing at a bus stop. Then, it will be a rotating wheel of flavors for a few weeks just as meditation becomes a religious, strict twice-daily practice until it becomes not-religious and not-strict.

While the taste of my tea seldom changes, although the foreign perception of a taste I know well is dubiously the sign of illness on the horizon, my perception of the time to brew is most parallel to chaos. As I mentioned, when I am in my meditation practice, I can generally return to the kitchen at the exact moment the tea is ready to be poured. No outside assistance, no watch-on-my-wrist, just knowing. I am usually good to about two seconds. This uncanny, internal measurement of the passing of time is somewhere, only to be had after the exercise of stillness.

Out of practice… well, lets just say I’ve left the apartment for work with tea still brewing.

Drink up, friends. Though time is always running against us, proper tea is always in our favor.