Great Japanese Greens

Today, I tasted two fabulous green teas from Japan. One was the Sencha Master's Pick. the leaves were long and dark green. The liquor was great body. The other was the Gyokuro Heavenly. What a fabulous tea, after drinking it, I had shivers down my back. Great body and lovely sweetness, I enjoyed this tea. Yes these two teas are expensive, but they are great.

Spring 2011 OOlongs

Here is some news about production of some of our favorite teas:

Since early May, the continuous rain fall in Fujian affected tea pluck time, evermore has delayed
2011 new oolong tea crop. Normally, the oolong comes to market at the end of April, but this year,
it will just come out this week.

Morning tea in Darjeeling

My son Emeric and I are drinking some Selimbong first flush done yesterday, awaiting the sunrise. I just heard the siren that marks the start of the day for pickets. Soon we will look at the withered (wilted) tea leaves that will rooked and oxidized then fired (dried) in an oven to make today's DJ of tea. That tea will be labeled Selimbong SFTGFOP1 DJ 16. We had yesterday's
's DJ 15 and it was lovely. Yesterday started by walking down to the Okayti factory on the Nepalese border. We toured it and tasted some teas. Later we visited the grave of Bernd Wulf, father of my fellow traveller , Marcus. Bernd was instrumental in developing the First Flush style of Darjeeling and printing it around the world. It was a lovely place high on a hill overlooking many tea gardens.

Then we went to Seeyok Darjeeling to tour and taste. Then it was down a steep and bumpy road to cross the river and drive up to Selimbong.these are lovely organic gardens. They make great teas. Today we are off to Risheehat.

Travel to the tea gardens

We are getting ready to visit India and China to see what nature and the tea workers have made.

We leave on the 10th to visit Darjeeling, then Assam. Then it is off to Hangzhou to taste some great Chinese green teas and then off to Changsha to see what Hunan has done this year.

I am traveling with my tasting buddies Marcus Wulf and Elvira Cardenas. Also my son, Emeric, who manages our SoHo store will be coming.

Darjeeling is open

There has been labor strife in the mountains of Darjeeling. So, there was none of the First Flush Darjeelings being shipped. Now that seems to have been resolved. So we should have this year's offerings soon. The season, so far, has produced better teas than last year.

Word from Uji

Our friend, TsuYoshi, sent this yesterday:

However, we have a store in Sendai, which is at the very center of the quake, fortunately all of our employees are fine, and Tokyo is affected a lot in the view of the developing chaos..
We will wait for the Nuclear power plant problem cool down, and then I am sure things will be moving once again...I hope.....but, everything is okay at Uji and with Shohokuen. there is not and won't be any problem in producing tea, and that is what we can only do, producing good tea, that's what we are here for.

Word from China

Our friend, Jily, who supplies us our Bi Lo Chun sends this encouraging news:

As the temperature of the weather getting better and better, tea will also be listed in the end of this month.this year tea is better than last year .