I’m trying to be better at documenting so yesterday I took a few pictures with my cell phone during my Friday tea tasting.  As predicted, it was annoying and cumbersome and totally threw off the flow of the tasting.  And the pictures are of low resolution, having been taken on my phone.  but they do have a nice ghostly quality to them… like doing gong fu cha in heaven…

I usually set up by this window in order to get backlighting (for showing off the color of the tea)

Here’s a close-up of my rig.  This is before the actual tasting starts… this is how a guest would see it.

Zojirushi-chan.  The high chair is just the right height for my water boiler. And it keeps it from fidgeting too much.

白牡丹 White Peony.  I read in a  blog the other day someone describe a white tea as having a “bean sprout” taste.  This is definitely what they were talking about.  Individually, the characters for peony mean “male cinnabar”.  So true… so true.

Some Green Guan Yin 鐵觀音.  I love this oolong because it’s got a deep, green, honeysuckle-perfume smell.

Check out that one monster leaf on the right.

So that’s a little piece of tea tasting for you, just to get an idea of what it is I do.  but really this doesn’t convey 1% of what goes on… gong fu cha is all about the tastes, smells, and energy exchange between the participants, none of which can be captured on film (or a crappy camera phone).  So come down and have tea with me!

Fridays 3-6

Jade Leaves Teahouse

3110 N. Guadalupe

Austin, Tx, 78704