Tea 106: Preparation, Consumption and Health Week One and Two!
So, after a lovely break I’m back to taking Sommelier classes again! This is my sixth class, with only two more to go before I have to take the certification exam, so it’s coming up quickly now…
This class is all about different tea drinking customs/cultures in different countries, with a small portion at the end dedicated to how to brew different types of tea differently Western style (temp differences/steep time differences between classes of tea) and different wellness benefits. Kinda cool, right?
So week one we cupping a Ti Kaun Yin and some Matcha, and we studied the Gong Fu ceremony and Chanoyu (The Japanese Tea Ceremony/Matcha Ceremony). Both were fascinating to study/look at and the teas we’re pretty solid but so far this has also been the week that I’ve had the most familiarity with and in a lot of aspects it’s kind of been like a “refresher” since I already practice Gong Fu on my own and am very familiar with Chanoyu.
Week two was much more interesting, in my opinion. For week two we looked at tea drinking traditions in Morocco, Russia, and India. So, the cuppings for the week were a Moroccan Mint, Russian Caravan, and traditional Chai.
The Moroccan Mint was my surprise favourite: I used to drink a lot of Moroccan Mint because I quite like Spearmint Tea in my "early tea drinking career’ but when I got exposed to all these other types I stopped drinking it. This Moroccan Mint was ‘made from scratch’ though; meaning I took Gunpowder Green tea the traditional tea used as the base and brewed it in a pot with a couple handfuls of fresh mint and around eight sugar cubes. The only thing I could have done to make it more traditional would be adding orange blossoms, but not sure where I would have got them. And fun fact; it took travelling to THREE grocery stores to find the fresh mint, which was crazy.
The amount of sugar is what made me hesitant though; I don’t typically sweeten anything. The tea was brilliant, though! The smell was like those Spearmint gummy candies you can buy at the convenience store: very sweet and sugary. The flavour was much more refreshing and natural though: I mean, yes it was VERY sweet but you could clearly tell the difference that using the fresh mint makes. When drinking Moroccan Mint traditionally, you also drink it ‘through’ a sugar cube/block of sugar held in your mouth and that seemed odd to me – but overall none of the sugar really bugged me too much. In fact, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to drinking the preblended Moroccan Mint. The fresh version was just so good and so refreshing that I honestly don’t think anything else will compare.
Cupping number two was Russian Caravan paired with spoonfuls of jam like is typically drank in Russia. This is the one I most anticipated liking because I do like Russian Caravan quite a lot; and there’s not much to say on this one because I did enjoy it. The Russian Caravan we cupped was a traditional one; Keemun, Lapsang, and a more oxidized oolong blended together.
The jam I used was black currant because that’s what I had on hand. I found the jam definitely softened the tea a lot, and cut down the smokiness a touch. I also think my particular choice in jam definitely drew out the fruitier notes of the Keemun.
And finally we looked at India, which of course meant we were cupping Chai. This was one I wasn’t thrilled about: I’m not a huge chai fan. We were meant to use steamed milk for the cupping, but I’ve been cutting milk out of my diet lately so I used steamed cashew milk instead since that’s what I had on hand: it still worked quite nicely and I thought that the cashew milk in particular added a nice nuttyness to the blend. I didn’t feel bad about deviating a little either since I have had traditionally made Chai before.
…And that was the last two weeks! Really enjoying myself thus far!
