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Tazo is a good entry for places where better quality tea is not easily available. and I do have high hopes that Starbucks’ venture will bring good effects to push the awareness of finer teas. I have no intention at all to mean any negative comments on those, including yourself, who happily have discovered tea on a new level at Tazo’s. Do continue to enjoy the discovery process.On the other hand, this forum is open to people with all levels of background and there are those who have come a long way. And still have a lot that they want to cover.Just as Starbucks is a leap forward from McDonald coffee, Tazo is a giant step from fannings. You have come a long way yourself to the gate of the grand tea garden. Relax and enjoy. Just as a tea producer friend from Nepal said this morning, “I have been in tea since 2001 and I am still a novice!” There is so much here to have fun with…How’s the tea from the Chinese online shop?This is dependent on the quality of your Longjing and the taste effect you want to achieve. If your tea is a little too sharp, or too tannin, and you want to tone it down, use a pot with a slightly thicker wall made of coarser grain clay, or a slightly lower density one.
If however, you want to keep the sharpness of a milder tea, use a pot with denser clay. Higher density pots are better to render delicate types of aroma as well.In any case, Yixing pots need repeated usage so as to be properly seasoned to render the desired effect.I’ll discuss this topic in better details in the near future.I agree. Tazo is a bad reputation amongst real tea drinkers. I do hope, however, that the business power of Starbucks can help spread the popularity of tea and has a good ripple effect for raising the interest in finer teas.
One tea that they used to do was to caramelize Yingde black tea with the juice of lychee. That was the once famous and sweetly and florally aromatic Lychee Hong Cha. I cannot find any that is made naturally now, and miss it a bit.
Seems that few people know about this one then?
This lady who started out the JK shop operated as an interpreter and a guide for one of my tea friends from UK. I do not know her personally, but my friend said she’s okay.As far as the photos go, things seem normal and the prices seem normal. Maybe you’d like to give it a try and let us know 🙂Welcome to the forum!
I am in a rush but would like to tell you that this tea shop site you posted is strange to have the same JK name and many similar photos as a tea shop in Shanghai. The latter one is open and operated by a friend of a friend. I believe it is the original one:Sau Mei is usually made from the same kind of tea bushes as those for White Peonies, except that the former kind of tea is processed through a hasted process for oxidizing the leaves. Higher quality ones do have silvery leaf buds like those in White Peony so it is tempting for some traders to sell them as the more expensive version.
Sau Mei is used extensively in dim sum restaurants for its lower price. Although the best of this tea variety is really quite cheap, the lowest grades are used most of the time for better margin. Having said that, however, it is perhaps the safest tea to choose when you happen to dine in one of these. It is produced quite automatically so less chance for unwanted contamination in case it is not a proper production setup. It is also TCM neutral and tastes okay with most food.In terms of choosing a White Peony to buy, please do refer to related pages in the Tea Guardian so you are not falling into traps. Remember to examine the photos there carefully for the look:That is so true. There simply is too much noise out there. I think one reason for this is that some people want to muddle the distinction between things so they can sell their less than genuine products with a good name. This is projecting a wrong image of a category and can kill it. They have hurt white tea so badly, and it seems people are eyeing oolongs now. The only way to counter these “category” killers is to promote genuine quality to as many as possible. On one side we are against mega beverage player like who you know, and on the other, small shops who are trying to sell anything they got hold of to sell at whatever margin they could in whatever name they want. There really are a lot of BS selling junks in some sites in the US.
