Recently in tea people Category

Roy Fong, owner of Imperial Tea Court, has just come out with his long-awaited book, The Great Teas of China. We caught up with Roy to do a multi-part interview, with our first discussion focusing on puerh teas.

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For nearly four thousand years, China kept tea to herself. During the latter part of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), some Buddhist monks from Japan visited their Chan Buddhist counterparts in China, and discovered that drinking ground, whisked green tea (now known as matcha) could be an asset to their concentration and meditation practices as it was for that of the Chinese monks.

Japanese tea ceremony is based on such a meditation with tea, and its practice is meant to support awareness,  and harmony. Why, of all the plants in the world, is tea the one chosen by Chan, Taoist and Zen monks to assist in meditation? I went to the best source I know to find the answer.

"The medicinal properties of tea are extremely significant as to why tea is used as a beverage and for meditation," said Christy Bartlett, head of San Francisco's Urasenke Foundation.

"When tea was drunk in early Buddhist monasteries in China, they drank it for several purposes, and one was that it was considered to be a medicine that prolonged life and helped to keep people healthy. As well, caffeine stimulates and sharpens the senses during meditation or study", said Bartlett (below right, instructing a student in tea ceremony, also known as chado, chanoyu, or the way of tea).
 
"Then, by people gathering together and making tea for one another, it fostered a sense of community.  So in early Buddhist temples those were the associations made to drinking tea," she said.

We know that many plants are stimulants, but tea offers more than just stimulation, which could, by itself, hinder the steadiness and concentration required for good meditation practice. Instead, tea offers a relaxed alertness which aids in contemplation and meditation. Perhaps we can attribute this to tea's high concentration of the amino acid L-theanine --known for its ability to relieve mental and physical stress and to enhance cognition and awareness. Most botanists will tell you that the thousands of combined chemicals found in a single plant cannot be duplicated by another plant (or distilled or fabricated into pill form as a medicine). So what tea offers is a unique concert of chemicals that delivers wakefulness, awareness, relaxation, and perhaps something extra that cannot be named.

Asked about tea ceremony as a ritual, Bartlett was careful to correct the association: "Tea ceremony is not a ritual but a practice, a form.  It's like a score was written for the practice of making tea, and when we sit down, for example, and play a piece of music, which someone else might have written, we don't feel like we are doing a ritual.  When you play music or when you go to a dance performance, there is very little sense in that case of viewing it as a ritual, even though there is a predetermined sequence of gesture and motion through time. So I view tea the same way as that, not as a ritual but as something very simple and something that has a clear form to it."

 Taiwanese teas, particularly oolongs, have a reputation for their fragrance, softness, and unique characteristics.  We came upon a couple of rare Taiwanese oolongs that come from ancient, wild-growing tea trees that were undiscovered until just recently. Bon Teavant's first "Tasting Room" product is a comparative tasting of two such teas that come from the same trees but were processed differently--one as a "white" tea and one as an oolong.  Below you will find a brief (1-minute) interview with David Campbell, owner of Tillerman Tea in Napa, who provided BT with these teas. The full 8-minute interview comes bundled with the teas when you buy them from the Bon Teavant Tasting Room.  You will find it no where else.

Click here to listen to the 1- minute interview with David Campbell of Tillerman Tea on these rare Taiwanese wild teas:

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"A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses." ~ Chinese Proverb

When I come to one of my favorite local tea rooms, Teance, I am sometimes lucky enough to be greeted at the door by Yadollah Moghaddam.  He takes my hands and says "I can't tell you how happy I am to see you. Seeing you here makes me feel so good!"  His kindness is inspiring. Through his bearing, I feel valuable all of a sudden, as if my presence has meaning. He has reminded me of what is good in me with just a few kind words, a gesture, a smile, and a humble graciousness that says "You matter to me." If anything, this is the finest art of tea.

I once asked Yadollah's son, Darius, who also works at Teance, how his father had come to be so kind and gracious. "Practice," said Darius simply, as if to remind me that any of us could become like this if only we could make a small effort each day and with each person we greet.

"Everyone loves my dad," said Darius. "When I go to the bank, or to our favorite Pakistani restaurant or anywhere people know Yadolllah, people say "I love your Dad! Tell him I say hello.  Give him my best!"

Just as making tea is a practice for those who are avid tea lovers, so is kindness a practice for those who want to achieve a certain state of grace. The Dalai Lama stated, "My religion is kindness."  Though tea is not a religion, the act of serving tea with an eye towards making the guest feel welcomed, appreciated and valuable has the same essential goodness at its core and the same desire to serve with selflessness.

I had thought that some people were just born good-natured, but perhaps this is not the only way. Perhaps it can also oneday be me who glows radiantly like Yadollah, who after saying goodbye as he walked me to my car, stood at attention and watched as I drove away.  I watched him too, in my rear view mirror, saw him standing silently and diligently, as if he were my father, my brother or my best friend, saying goodbye for the last time.




"Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness"~ Seneca

Why cook with tea?  With the hundreds of herbs and spices available, you might wonder why someone would focus on tea. Robert Wemischner, chef and author of Cooking with Tea, took some time out from the kitchen to explain. To begin with, "tea has no calories, no sodium, no carbohydrate, no fat, and yet a lot of flavor," says Wemischner. As well, he enthuses, tea transforms the food that is made with it. He uses tea in several ways to cook both sweet and savory dishes.  Whether you use it to smoke meats, create rubs, marinades or sauces, tea is a versatile and exciting ingredient for the adventurous chef.Click to hear our 4 min. interview:

  
"Wu-Wo" tea ceremony is an outdoor tea ceremony, based on the Taiwanese gong-fu style tea brewing method, but embracing all different cultural styles of brewing tea. As many as 1000 people brew tea outdoors for themselves and each other--simultaneously and in silence. If you are interested in viewing or participating in such an event, you will have a rare and outstanding opportunity to do so this weekend.

The12th International Wu-Wo Tea Convention--a bi-annual event usually held in Asia-- is coming to the United States for the first time, next weekend. Hosted by the American Tea Culture Association, the three-day event, from October 16-18, will feature two public outdoor tea ceremonies, each expected to draw upwards of 150 people from around the world, who will be bringing their favorite teas and teaware, and in traditional dress, brew tea for each other outdoors. Tea brewers will be coming from Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, and other areas for this rare, bi-annual convention.
  Teas and tea brewing styles will be as different and diverse as the participants. If you miss this convention, you will likely have to wait another ten years for it to return to the United States.

"The Wu-Wo tea ceremony encourages participants to forget about knowledge, wealth, and appearance and to establish group equality without prejudice," said Betsy Meyer of the American Tea Culture Association.

Listen to this podcast interview with Betsy Meyer on the fun and fascinating wu-wo tea ceremony:
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The wu wo tea ceremony is simple easy to learn.  You simply bring a mat to sit on, a teapot pre-filled with the tea of your choice, a tea serving vessel, four cups, a thermos of hot water, and a tray. There is time to mingle before and after brewing tea, so you can admire each others'  tea ware and enjoy meeting tea lovers from around the world.

   The ceremony originated in Taiwan, where Grand Master Tsai Rong Tsang decided that he would like a more convenient way for modern people to do an outdoor tea ceremony. He discovered that by using a thermos of hot water and placing tea leaves in the pot beforehand,  you can easily take your tea set out on a hike or out to a park. From that outdoor service,  he asked 'Well, why not do it in a group?' and that's how the Wu-Wo tea ceremony and convention was born.

For larger gatherings, tea brewers choose lots to determine their seating, and then brew and serve tea to the three people on their left, while reserving one cup for themselves. Sitting in a circle, the three people to your right will be serving you their tea while you serve your tea to the three people to your left. As such, each person is both host and guest, tea server and tea sipper. At least three steepings are brewed before everyone packs up and goes about their day (or hike). The whole ceremony takes only about 30 minutes.

Many events at the convention require payment, but the Sunday Wu-Wo tea ceremony is open to the public and free of charge. You must register to be a tea brewer at the event, so follow the links in this entry. The Sunday morning (Oct. 18 @ 9 a.m.) event will be held at the Foster City Parks and Recreation Center (650 Shell Drive, Foster City, CA), about 30 minutes south of San Francisco.  Anyone interested in participating must register in advance, and will need a little practice. There will be a practice period on Friday morning, at 10 a.m. at the same location. Listen to the podcast above for information on what to bring with you, and go to www.atcasf.org to pre-register for the ceremony.

Coordinates:
Friday 10/16: 10 a.m. practice session: Pioneer Memorial Park, Mountain View. Contact Betsy Meyer at rabbitz@aol.com to sign up for training and to receive an equipment list.
Saturday 10/17: 9 a.m. Wuwo Ceremony in Memorial Park, Cupertino 
Sunday 10/18: 9 a.m. Wuwo Ceremony at Foster City Parks & Rec Center 650 Shell St., Foster City. This event is free and open to the public.
Please go to the American Tea Culture website for complete information on tea ceremony presentations, dinners, and other events taking place during the convention.

     
The Northwest Tea Festival held last weekend in Seattle was a great success, with nearly 1500 visitors, more than a dozen tea tastings, and special presentations by great tea peeps like James Norwood Pratt, Shuiwen Tai, and "Tea Geek" Michael Coffey.  If you missed the festival this year, be sure to put it on your schedule for October 2011 in Seattle.

If you could walk through a time machine and visit the landscapes and history of tea, it might look like the new exhibition, Steeped in History: The Art of Tea, now on display at UCLA's Fowler Museum until November 29, 2009.

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Tea book author and consultant, Jane Pettigrew, was kind enough to offer her views on new trends in tea at the World Tea Expo in Las Vegas in June 2009. Please click arrow above to hear a short podcast of our interview.

While for centuries western women have enjoyed afternoon tea, men hear the word "tea cup" and think of a dainty porcelain cup covered in flowers.  For this reason alone, a lot of men have been turned off by tea.  This came to my attention when the 14-year-old son of a friend became interested in tea only after being introduced to Chinese tea. He had to be bribed into coming to Chinatown for tea, sporting a pair of dark sunglasses, just in case a friend of his might see him at the teashop.  But then something great happened: the gaiwan appeared. A Chinese man deftly steeped and poured tea from the gaiwan into a serving vessel.  "Cool," the kid said, non-committally.  By the third steeping, he was fully engaged, focused, and fascinated.

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The World Tea Expo, taking place this weekend in Las Vegas, is a fabulous place to meet leaders in the tea industry who set standards for tea as well as those who undertake in-depth research on the subject of tea. The World Tea Expo educational conference is hailed as the most comprehensive education on tea in the world, and its Core Conference Program & Skill Building Workshops are designed to provide a forum for tea experts to share their knowledge.

During one such program, I caught up with Nigel Melican, Managing Director of Teacraft Ltd, who is a scientist as well as a tea man.  He has more than 20 year's experience improving the technology of tea manufacture in over 35 different tea countries and is a consultant to trade experts. Melican has recently undertaken extensive research on tea's carbon footprint, and in his final analysis, he has found that tea has the potential to be an environmental saint rather than sinner when we measure its carbon footprint by a number of criteria (listen to the podcast above for details). But several variables in the domain of the tea drinker herself have a great impact on the environment.

In his research, Melican discovered that the choices of consumers can determine the carbon footprint of the tea they drink. For example, teabag tea has ten times the carbon footprint of loose tea (all other variables being equal). The kind of fuel a tea drinker uses to heat water for tea also has an impact.  Recycling or re-using your tea (as well as its packaging) also improves its carbon footprint.  Used tealeaves can be put to good use to fertilize your houseplants or garden, to clean your home or for skincare.  (Listen to Ito En's Rona Tison in my earlier interview with her on the uses of green tea).  Re-use tea to cook, to clean, and to reduce odors in your home. Composting tea rather than tossing it in the trash will also benefit the earth.  If you don't have a garden, offer your used tealeaves to friends and neighbors who do (they will thank you for it).

All in all, tea does pretty well against other beverages in terms of its carbon footprint, coming in at only 5% of the carbon footprint of bottled beer.

Mr. Melican would like to see mandatory carbon footprint labeling on all food products, a law which is being considered in England and which consumers in the U.S. and around the world can request of their representatives.

Be looking to Bon Teavant for more podcasts and in-depth interviews from the leaders of the tea industry, including Jane Pettigrew on rare teas and Yoon Hee Kim, Korean tea master on her art. 

    

IN A FORMER ECONOMIC COLLAPSE, Franklin Roosevelt, in his famous address to a frightened and ailing nation, said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  I would concur and also add that the most important thing we have to choose is discernment itself. And quality tea is one ofour greatest allies in this endeavor.

Discernment is our most precious renewable natural resource, and this concept should be especially appealing to the artisan tea and foodie crowd who welcome the opportunity to hone their palates. Discernment is the axis upon which our love of tea depends and upon which our survival relies as well.

It is good discernment that will save us as a society. The exact same discernment we use to identify and give value to one tea over another is the same quality we use to make decisions about the direction we choose to go in from now on.  The old ways of selling and buying meaningless and irrelevant products are falling away.  What will remain, one hopes, are the products and services that require the affection of our discernment, and as such, benefit us most profoundly in the present and in the future.

Without discernment, drinking teabag tea covered in pesticides would be just as good as sipping a wild tea handcrafted in the remote ancestral tea regions of China by people whose kin have known and tended these tea plants for generations. Those of us who love artisinal tea--perhaps we can call ourselves the "Slow Tea People"--will know the difference and will do what we can to support and defend good tea (and good food).  We instinctively know that in doing so, we support discernment itself. And discernment is survival.

As such, we support tea shops and tea houses that take the risk of buying and serving slightly more expensive teas that are worth drinking. Some think five dollars for a pot of tea is too dear, but we Slow Tea People consider all that we are drinking when we drink this "expensive" tea. For one, our keen discernment tells us we are drinking not just a beverage but a phenomenon. When we pay five dollars for a good pot of tea, we are also paying for the wisdom and responsibility of the tea farmer as well as an earth-friendly cosmology which informs us of our dependence on the soil, the plants, and the many creatures who share and nourish our planet.

Each time we sip a premium tea, we know we are consuming hundreds of years of craftsmanship and skill, and in so doing, we are supporting farmers who for generations have relied upon their own good discernment to protect, nourish and preserve the land. Our discernment in this case naturally leads us to protecting the land and its thoughtful caretakers, so that it will continue to support us. These tea farmers have an intimate understanding of nature and its rhythms and secrets. Our good discernment tells us this is worth five dollars.  It is our survival.

By drinking artisinal teas, we also naturally move into an elevated state of mind, a state that offers us the benefit of a heightened sense of discernment in all of our daily choices and activities, a state that helps us make good, sound decisions with long lasting constructive effects. In this intimate and direct way, tea also supports our personal discernment, which in turn, helps us to make good decisions within our own lives and relationships.  Tea brings out generosity and goodwill, the hallmarks of successful community and business.

As well, if we are in a tearoom or tea shop that serves premium tea, we are undoubtedly sipping our tea among interesting, thoughtful people. These are good people to be surrounded by during any kind of crisis, precisely because they have good discernment. 

In quality tea rooms, we also find ourselves enfolded in an ambiance imbued with fabulous art, be it teaware, photographs, sculpture, furniture, or paintings. Slow Tea People bring these objets d'art into their lives, because they know the value of beauty and craftsmanship, beyond just the obvious. They recognize and cherish symbols that  suggest humanity has the potential to be a successful endeavor at all. It encourages us, and reminds us that our creativity harbors the possibility of continually raising the bar of our potential.

This is one of the pivotal moments of our species, which demands that we consider what products and services we consume and support. This will happen of itself, without any prodding or pushing, because people are not able to afford everything they want at every moment they want it.  We will have to make hard choices and narrowly edit our selections  The paradigm of the moment can be summed up in a couple of words, perhaps "relevance" and "value".  And it is our discernment that will help us to identify what has relevance and value.  Drinking tea naturally supports excellent decision making because it heightens the quality of our discernment.

As such, we Slow Tea People will keep good tea and visiting quality tea rooms at the top of our list and in the "must have" section of our carefully honed budgets.  It is not that we "deserve it," we rely on it and know that it is a metaphor for our best chance at thriving.

 

OUR COMMUNITIES LOOK TO US for sanctuary, community, compassion, and the opportunity for sharing ideas, dreams, and sorrows during these trying times.  Tea culture is the perfect vehicle for meeting the deeper needs of our friends, family, colleagues, and customers. 

David Hoffman Making Tea ©2009 Jennifer Leigh Sauer

I HAD THE HONOR and pleasure of visiting famed tea master David Lee Hoffman and his wife, Bee, for tea not long ago.  An unsuspecting visitor might be tipped off by directions to David's home and private tea house that (s)he is in for a magical adventure:

"Come up the driveway, past the boat on the lake at right and chicken coop on left.  Pass the bell tower, bear to your right, walking up the brick path that leads to the tea house, and enter through the large steel doors on left. Pass through the stone tunnel below the tea house, up the brick steps, past the worm palace and moat on the left....."

I have suddenly become Dorothy searching for the (tea) wizard in a Chinese/Nepalese version of Oz. I would not be entirely surprised to see the Tin Man or the Scarecrow waving to me at any turn of the brick path.  Whimsical stone sculptures stand erect by half-built "castles" and towers. The brick path brings the visitor over bridges and streams and past ponds and chicken coops.  I wonder when the Lollypop Kids will appear to greet me. "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto," I think to myself bemusedly.

Finally making it to the open air deck of the Chinese-style tea house which faces a panoramic cathedral of old-growth redwood trees, I hear the music of male voices discussing the completion of a Japanese tile roof. "Helloooo???" I chime.  "I'm just coming down from the roof," I hear in response, as David magically flies down from above to welcome me to his kingdom. Neither hidden behind a curtain nor donning a cape, David appears before me.  He is as lovely, rustic, and authentic a character as his magnificent Chinese tea house with its gnarled-wood antique Chinese chairs and festive Nepalese prayer flags. We shake hands, and I return the quiet grin spreading beneath Hoffman's kind and curious gaze. 

David's private tea house, to which guests are welcome by invitation only, is the ultimate place to savor the delights of tea and take in the lavish gifts of the magical redwood forest (not to mention David's inspiring company). But a late autumn chill drives us into David's home, as the tea house, for now, is unheated and open to the elements.  I have brought with me a photographic print as a gift for David and Bee, yet something in me wonders if I should have brought tea. It seemed imprudent at best, and cheeky at worst, to bring tea to someone whose legendary status in the U.S. tea world is dwarfed only by his reputation among Asian tea groupies, who follow him around China to find out which teas he will buy each season. 

We enter David's warm and cozy home, which, like the tea house, faces out to the great  Northern California redwoods. "Did you bring your favorite tea," he asks?  Hawks circle the air.  I shake my head.  "Not this time," I say, feeling a bit sheepish.  I look around the wood-and-glass home to see the lovely gifts of nature David and Bee have collected, as well as some Asian art and writings.  One piece of writing tacked to a beam in the house especially moves me:

              "These three ways

              lead to the heavens:

              asserting the truth,

              not yielding to anger,

              and giving......."

                        ----Dhammapada, verse 224

David is indeed generous, bringing out three different pu-erh teas to taste, one in a bamboo casing, one a cake, and one a loose tea. He steeps the teas in ceramic gaiwans, lining them up, each behind a tasting cup, so we can taste the brews, one after the other.  He pours the rinse water into a three-legged earthen frog, which he loves because of its stability, and it's mirroring of the Chinese belief in the strength of three-pillared bases.

 

"Which tea do you think is the oldest?" he asks me later.  "How do you judge the age of a tea," I ask?  He says there are many factors, each of which can be faked.  Hmmmmm....All of the teas are smooth, and each has a very different and distinctive aroma and flavor.  One is brisk, vegetal, and almost astringent, one is mossy and changes on the tongue, and one is very earthy, the "dirt" taste many associate with pu-erhs.

One tea has a particular depth and, as I decide not to risk flaunting my ignorance, I wait for him to tell me that it is this complex tea which is the oldest.  "Probably around 1992," he says.  "This tea is much darker than the other two," he offers, pointing to a different tea, "so some might guess this to be the oldest tea. But the darkness of the tea doesn't mean its older. It's this other tea here which is the oldest", and he points to the tea in the middle, the mossy one with the personality that keeps growing and shifting with such subtlety.

The afternoon moves forward, the tall trees tossing themselves into a rose sunset.  It is time to go, to let David relax after a long day of working on the roof, which has been in the making for years and years, David says.  We promise to meet again. "Next time, I will bring tea," I add.

"Can you find your way out," David asks? I assure him I can, although within moments of departing, I find myself in a maze of tunnels, trees, streams, and collected things that have not yet found permanent homes.  I click my heels three times.......

Teance in Berekley is a great community forum in the San Francisco Bay Area for tea education.  Last week, students of tea were treated to a Korean tea ceremony performance by Korean tea master, Yoon Hee Kim. While tea was first mentioned in Korea over 5000 years ago, it gained public attention when Buddhist monks used tea in a royal funeral in the seventh century. Korean poets and intellectuals engaged in tea ceremony and gatherings for tea for hundreds of years, but then tea lost its footing through a series of unfortunate events in Korea, including war and occupation by foreign forces.  It was in the 1960s that tea made a comeback in Korea, and then again, it was through Buddhist monks, artists and intellectuals who celebrated its renaissance.

TEA ILLUMINATO, James Norwood Pratt, and his lovely Lady Valerie invited me over to share tea and Evensong this week. Evensong is an enchanting, half-hour, weekday afternoon ritual of music and prayer held at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral onNob Hill. Our mutual love of Camelia sinensis combines well with our shared interest in ritual, prayer, devotion,and music, and creates a magical afternoon that some can only dream of.

To enter Norwood and Valerie's home in North Beach is to discover a temple of tea and culture. The aura of literature and art, with its books, busts, and religious icons, wash over the visitor like fragrant notes of a fine tea.

Norwood is devoted--to tea and more deeply and personally, to his sense of the more subtle structures of the universe with its sky-blue porcelain gods, earth-green teas, and amber-brown, leather-clad beckonings of Goethe. Valerie is a lovely English woman whose gentle and intelligent bearing remind one that femininity is both strong and soft.  With ember-red hair, and a liquid awareness about her blue eyes, Valerie offers perhaps more with her attentive and quiet demeanor as most others do with their many words.

What moves me most about Norwood is not only the depth of his knowledge about tea, history, art and literature, but the depth of his spirit. His Southern manners prevent him from flaunting his sturdy intellect, so it slowly seeps into you like a soft, fine mist. I get the sense that he will meet whatever level of mental faculty is offered by his companion, but his gentle kindness and humility would not permit him to brandish overly rigorous thoughts that might elude or intimidate his guest.

Despite his bearing of refinement, Norwood is also magnificently irreverent. One of my favorite art pieces in Norwood's home is a clay cast bust (made by San Francisco sculptor Harriet Moore) of Norwood himself, sporting a large, floppy English afternoon tea hat which Norwood has apparently placed on its head. Norwood loves to poke fun at himself, and this makes him not only endearing inside his gigantic persona as the country's foremost tea expert, but more approachable as well.

Valerie offers me the best seat in the living room, a red leather, high-backed chair facing the San Francisco Bay with its toy sailboat views. We try our first tea, a 2008 spring harvest Tung Ting oolong, freshly arrived within 24 hours at Red Blossom Tea, and which I brought with me as an offering. Norwood steeps the tea in a lovely white porcelain vessel, custom designed by his friend, Jason Chen, who is the owner of Lu Yu Tea in Bellevue, Washington. The infuser looks like a tall tea cup with an elongated filter. We drink from large white porcelain tea cups, antiques seemingly worn with the ancient sipping of old Chinese tea drinkers. The tea is delicious, and Norwood approves. He is especially pleased, as he has been focusing intently on oolongs for the past six months, he says.  I breathe easier, and the level of revelry between us swirls and rises.

We then try a very special tea, Golden Lily, from Lu Yu Tea. This tea was really spectacular. Just a few kilos of this organically grown and hand-processed tea is made available, and then only to tea maker Jason Chen's closest friends. Apparently Chen owns many hectares of land in the Zhejiang and Fujian provinces of China, where he oversees the growing, harvesting, and processing of his own organic teas. The tea label includes information on the tea's origin, altitude at which it was grown, harvest season, and steeping suggestions--all the information a connoisseur would want to know about a tea (s)he is purchasing. We finish with a lovely Te Kuan Yin, an homage to the goddess Norwood reveres.

"So what makes a great tea, Norwood?", I ask.

"In my opinion, the tea plant is the highest form of vegetation. It is always a combination of heaven, earth, and man -- heaven being everything above ground, earth being the ground and everything below it, and of course, the influence of man relates to the growing, harvesting, processing and brewing of the tea plant. A great tea is made when all three of these factors combine, each at their best and in perfect harmony with each other."

Two hours of discussion and tea evanesce into wisps of fine memories, and we hasten out the door to walk up the hill to Grace Cathedral, which is both grand and graciously welcoming, like my hosts. We sit in chairs on the altar, right by the Grace Men & Boys Choir. Hearing the child voices mingle with adult voices creates a wonderful wand of energy passing over the church. Together, Norwood, Valerie and I sing and pray, voices lifted to the lovely arched ceilings and stained glass masterpieces.

As we leave, Norwood pays respects to a special corner of the cathedral that holds a statue of "Saint" John Donne. "Now this is the kind of saint I can really pray to," says Norwood. "You wouldn't want to trust praying to a saint that was always only good. Donne is the saint of writers and poets," he says with a bemused smile, and gently bows to St. John Donne.

 

LU YU, AUTHOR OF THE FIRST comprehensive book on tea culture (before there was such a concept), was intellectually rigorous, but at the same time, soulful and intuitive.  These are the qualities found in a lot of great tea people today, which is why those of us who love tea are drawn to other tea people as well. 

Lu Yu's understanding of tea was paralleled by his love of nature (the true source of any good cup of tea), from choosing the right plant, the right farming and processing methods, to, finally, using the right kind of water in which to brew the tea.  In his book, The Classic of Tea, Lu Yu distinguishes between several different sources of water to optimize the steeping of tea:

"I would suggest that tea made from mountain streams is best, river water is all right, but well water tea is quite inferior....Never take tea made from water that falls in cascades, gushes from springs, rushes in a torrent or that eddies and surges as if nature were rinsing its mouth."

Lu Yu understood the elements of nature and how they played into the final expression of a good cup of tea. He therefore responded to that understanding with cooperation and respect. What initially seems like a personal preference actually has several layers of universal awareness, expediency, and action behind it.

First, water has its own nature, depending on where it comes from and the particular characteristics of its origin.  Tea made from well water will be inferior to tea that springs from a mountain stream, says Lu Yu.  Why?  Perhaps because mountain water is WILD.  What could be more exotic, intoxicating, memorable, and love-inducing than wild tea made from wild water?  Then there is the tea plant and its leaves.  Are the tea leaves from an ancient tree or a young bush?  Was it grown high on the mountain, near lavendar or jasmine or onions?  What time of day was it harvested? Who processed it and with what tools?  How would a machine-processed tea differ from a tea that is lovingly processed with attention and care by the farmer who harvested it? 

These are the questions asked by true tea people, like Master Yu.  Inside these questions lies at least one basic premise: that all beings and objects possess their own nature, or spirit. The tea, the water, the hoe, the hand that plucks and processes the tea, the wok in which it is roasted, and the container in which it is finally packaged--all of these beings and objects influence the tea, not only because of their material composition, but because of the nature and energy they possess.  Otherwise, why would Lu Yu differentiate between river and mountain stream water, or water that gushes rather than sits quietly in a pool?  Although all water is H2O, not all water is the same in spirit or character. And I don't mean just hard or soft water, chlorinated or fluoridated water, but really the energy and nature of the water's source.

This harkens back to nature-based cosmologies in which believers recognize the inherent and particular spirit imbued in each place, object, and being.  We all know it is there, whether we openly acknowledge this eternal truth or not.  Who has not fallen in love with some very personal place--a forest, a quiet beach, a stretch of land that beckons?  Some mystery falls upon a such a place, and we appreciate it even if we can't put a name on it. 

Everything in this paradigm speaks of the intimate network of nature that is required for good tea--and the tea is very very good because it suggests a path to healthy sustainable living and survival.  Not only physical survival, but spiritual survival--the very inclination to love life itself. We are all made of the same stuff:  water, leaf, hand, sun, wok, Chinese paper with pretty designs.  We know goodness better than we know math. We smell and taste it, we see it, fringing the edges of the quietly smiling tea master, who chooses to process his tea with his bare hands rather than with a machine.  Everything in him speaks of the goodness of tea and life.