Tales from the Tearoom 05

The tearoom. What’s that?

That is timeout zone for tea drinkers. No politics here. That’s for coffee drinkers unless we’re in charge. A place of serenity at its most beautiful… A place where we can stop battling the elements and put our swords away.

Does anybody know of a place like that in Australia, they would like to share with other tea drinkers?

Puerh Cakes

Puerh Cakes

For me, being a tea merchant, I haven’t really come across any in Australia. But that is only because my focus has been on the trade side of things. So if I were to give myself a place, it would be at home on my balcony, especially when it is raining at night. Where I live I am fortunate to get what I call Quiet Rain: That’s when I am sitting outside and it is pouring down, but for some reason it is quiet. So beautiful. When that happens I usually like to drink puerh. Earlier this year we were selling some puerh cakes called Golden Water. It is a young cake of only about two years old and still quite green. Traditional puerh drinkers find it under-mature. But to me it is like being in Yunnan, China and drinking what the Yunnan people drink. They actually drink green tea that needs to be brewed light otherwise it can be rather bitter and has an ever so slightly smokiness to it that would be described as when you’re making caramel. Puerh was in the past actually old tea as in old old because it took about a year by donkey for the stuff to be sold outside of Yunnan.

But that’s beside the point. What matters is that Golden Water Puerh cake is beautiful stuff to drink. And when I drink it, I am not here. I am in Yunnan chilling with the locals in a slightly rundown ancient tea house. The kind you see in picture books operated by pretty locals. I leave the ugly bits to the tourists.

 

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