Tea Emperor

So, my review was a long time coming as my wife so eloquently put it in the previous article - Tea Emperor’s own review post will come soon after mine.

MAKERS OF THE TEA
Small tea plantation in Japan under private ownership. Can tea get any more real? Not much!

INSTRUCTIONS
Instruction manuals (and asking the way if lost) are for women and engineers. They are helpful if one has no idea about the topic, but useless if one doesn’t know how to read. Luckily I can read and I am rather new to tea. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I drink several big mugs of the damn thing every day, but ceremony and gong fu are far beyond the reach of my skills. Good thing that they include all the necessary guides on their website too, check them here.

COVER LETTER
They had included a very comforting cover letter, which told about the teas in question. Sample bags were stabled on to the paper so it was impossible to mix them up and therefore accidentally review a wrong product. Simple and effective not to mention beautiful.

THE TEA
Now you know that supportive items were fine, but how about the tea itself?

1st steep for half a minute
Refreshing and light taste with sweet aftertaste. Just my kind of a cup of tea that’s what this is, but then again I am from Finland and the strongest spice that we use here is black pepper. We like our food mild and vodka strong and cold. We drink coffee here tea, however, is a drink for old women… Anyway I liked my first cup.

2nd steep for about ten seconds
Much stronger and pit over the top for me. I liked the aftertaste though and had high hopes for the third steep.

3rd steep for half a minute again
This one already had lost its luster and was easily downed as a refreshing drink.

4th steep for one minute

Frustratingly bland and got quickly thrown away, but the left over green tea salad was fantastic!

I ordered few books from the Amazon and already I can say that tea intertwines with every aspect of the society in such an interesting manner that it would be a shame not to write about it. Currently I’m reading Roy Moxham’s A Brief History of Tea, which so far has been a fascinating read.

I’m going to start a series of posts that dive into the long history of tea. I’ll build small tidbits from here and there so it won’t be too academical, dry and boring. Have you ever heard of history that is not boring? I haven’t, so that’s I try to invent non-boring history. Let me know if your face is starting to turn green in a non-tea manner and I’ll make it even more non-boring.