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February 20, 2008

Tea - The Journey Begins

I've gone a little tea crazy this week.

It all started off last Friday when I met Paul Rosenberg for tea. A self-proclaimed 'Tea Monk', Paul invited me over for a few cups of tea and to talk about his tea school (a 5 week tea course). I can't remember exactly how I stumbled upon Paul's page, but it was the article in the NY Times about Tea in Portland that convinced me I had to sit down with Paul for tea.

Paul met me at the door of his SE Portland home (he's just off SE Hawthorne, oddly enough near Fat Straw Bubble Tea). When you close your eyes and think 'Tea Monk,' the last image that will pop in your mind is Paul. Originally from the East Coast, Paul has spent many years on his own spiritual voyage, living in yoga ashrams in New England and Oregon. After working at The Tao of Tea in Portland, Paul decided to venture off on his own as a full time tea guru.

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Up the stairs and in the attic of his home, I find finely appointed tea sanctuary, complete with a collection of fine Asian art and artifacts. Paul also sells Asian art, but I was here for tea and never got an art pitch. Actually, I didn't really get any pitch; after a quick tour of his tea sanctuary (including his tea alter including several very old and rare pu-erh) we sat down at a floor-level wooden table and he began to brew tea.

"How did you find your way to tea?" Paul inquires. How did I? I fumble in my response, "Well, I had to give up coffee a few years ago..." As I hear the explanation come out of my mouth I realize it just wasn't right. When exactly did I get bit by the tea bug? Was it the ever-flowing steaming cups of chai that I used to devour when I was younger when my family went out for Indian food? How about those steaming cups of relief that I'd sip to help wash away the deep winter cold? Tea ceremony in Japan? Gongfu oolong at the Tao? All these thoughts ran through my head but my explanation was... coffee.

"What kind of tea do you like?" asks Paul. He's pulled out a tray of more than a dozen tea canisters. Oolong is the first tea I think of - it's the first 'fine' tea that I enjoy and I was sure this answer would pass muster. That was all Paul needed and he was off. Paul went through what seemed like an elaborate and precise ritual with ease, and before I knew it, a small steaming cup of oolong sat before me. From the oolong we moved on to several pu-erhs and before I knew it, several hours and several pots of tea had past.

As we said our goodbyes, I could feel the affects of all that tea. Awake but not wired, warm but from the inside. That and I realized I really had to pee.

That evening I got lost in my Google search for tea. For some unknown reason I found that I was pretty fixated on learning more about the earthy tasting pu-erh. As I continued my search for more information about tea, a local site popped up, Tea Time in Portland. After reading through several weeks of posts I decided to email the blogger and get some tips on tea in Portland. Within hours the site's blogger Adrian responded back with a tome of information about how to get started and where to go.

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The next day I dragged my family out across town to the Fubonn Shopping Center and into a little tea shop inside the center called Serenity Art. If you've ever flirted with the idea of ditching your tea bags and getting more 'into' tea, then Serenity Art is a place you'll want to quickly add to your 'to do' list. With literally hundreds of tea pots, cups and pretty much any and everything you'd ever need to make tea, Serenity Art is tea sensory overload. After an unreasonably long 'which tea pot speaks to me' dilemma, I settled on several pieces of tea ware and brought them to the front counter.

Serenity Art's front counter features a tea table where you can pull up a chair and sample some of the many teas they sell. One of the store's owners quickly fixed me a cup of their oolong (you've got to start with what you know.) The taste was simply mind-blowing. It's like having a fine wine for the first time after deciding to expand beyond just drinking wine coolers. The guy sitting next to me explained that the oolong we were drinking was a seasonal variety that came in limited supply. For a moment I thought it was some sales pitch and looking at the small packets of tea under the '$75 per pound' sign sent me head scratching. Was I really going to pay THAT much for tea?!

Ultimately the joke was on me; after weighing the tea that I was considering buying, the total cost came to just over a trip for a family of four to the local Starbucks for some less than inventive coffee. We headed home and I had the tea kettle fired up and the tea ready to brew in no time - of course, the oolong I had just purchased. I realized that I had taken another step in my 'Tea Journey' that I wasn't going to be able to step back from.

As I put away all my tea ware I realized that one of the pots I had purchased had a little chip in it. Oh well, an excuse to make the trek back to Serenity Art. A few days later I was back in the car. In the meantime I had exchanged several emails with Adrian of Tea Time in Portland, joined the Tea Chat Forum, and brewed several pots of tea. This time around I had a little more idea of what I was looking for. I picked up a Zojirushi Hot Pot, a glass pitcher to decant my tea into, and a few more tea cups. Getting those things was the easy part as I stared at the wall of teas trying to figure out where I was going to start with pu-erh.

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'Where are your pu-erhs?' I asked. The store owner chuckled as he showed me shelf after shelf of different pu-erhs, everything from cakes, caps and loose leaf, and from many different manufacturers and many different dates. Pu-erh is an aged and fermented tea that comes from a very specific area of China (the Yunnan Province) and is considered by many to be 'The Tea Seller's Tea'. Like wine, pu-erhs are horded, collected and aged. There is an entire subculture of people who are fanatical about pu-erhs. 'But where do you start?' I asked. The store owner filled his pot with hot water and poured. 'How about with what I'm drinking!' He poured me a cup and I sipped. Wow! Pu-erh is one of those odd experiences where an initial negative reaction (like 'this tastes like drinking dirt') can lead to an all out obsession (like 'you can taste the dew that was on the leaves'). My experience so far has been on the edge of obsession.

I asked him which pu-erh we were drinking and he pointed to one that was harvested in 1996. Immediately I had the same experience I have with wine - my mind wandered to what was going on in my life when this tea was harvested. It's an amazing experience when something you consume connects you with a time in your life. If I had sticker shock with the oolong I had bought previously, it was double this time. The pu-erh I was drinking was a 1996 Meng Hai selling at a whopping $100 a pound. I decided to take the plunge, asking him to give me enough for a few pots. About an 1/4 of a zipper sandwich bag cost me a total of $7. Pretty amazing when you realize that for the cost of two lattes you can get a small bag of 12 year old fine tea. After showing me exactly how much tea to use, the store owner threw in one last tip, 'You should be able to get seven or eight steepings from that one teaspoon'. It's pretty mind-blowing when you've just poured your ninth pot (and we're talking about 6oz pots) from a teaspoon of leaves.

Home again and I had the Zojirushi fired up (except you have to discard the first batch of water when you buy it, so I ended up using the tea kettle one last time). After just a few minutes I was sipping the same fantastic pu-erh I had sampled in the store. By the sixth pot, I was starting to realize how tea could become an obsession.

Over the next few days I've brewed more pots of tea than I had in the past month. Out of curiosity I stopped into Uwajimaya to see what they had to offer (as it's less than half the distance to Fubonn). While they do have a lot of tea, Uwajimaya really doesn't have anything close to Serenity Art in terms of selection. However, I couldn't resist picking up a pretty well discounted Chinese New Year tea pack from Ten Fu Tea. The wooden box presented the tea inside as something quite special and after brewing up both the Tieh Kwan Yin and Bi Lo Chun, I agreed - both extremely tasty teas. Not in the same league as the oolong and pu-erh from Serenity Art, but extremely yummy.

Getting geared up with everything you need to make amazing tea isn't all that expensive, and when you realize that for the same price you pay for a box of Mighty Leaf tea at Whole Foods, you can get even more of a high quality tea (like the 1996 meng hai pu-erh I bought). I'm not going to stop going to places like Starbucks (where I often seem to meet friends) or avoid drinking 'bagged' tea while I am out. But the shades have been pulled back and the window thrown open on a pretty amazing journey with tea. I'm sure some people reading this will say, 'He's nuts! Who can be so crazy about tea?' All I have to say to that is, sit down and let me pour you a cup :)

- Geoff Kleinman

Tea Resources in Portland

Posted by gkleinman at February 20, 2008 5:13 PM