Vitalitea

A few weeks ago I was visiting my boyfriend Matt (who was most recently spotted here) in the San Francisco Bay area, and was treated to a tea tasting in the city! He'd had the pleasure of experiencing one before, but (gasp!) I hadn't, so it automatically made the list of Stuff To Do.

We do a living wealthily happily!

I'd actually never been to San Francisco's famed Chinatown, unless you count a bus ride through it, so it was lovely to walk through Grant Avenue and see the sights. Apparently it's the oldest American Chinatown and the largest community of Chinese people outside of China. We did all the touristy things like go to the gate on Grant at Bush street and hobnob in a few of the shops. Many of them had awesome paper star lights that I had seen everywhere when I visited Goa, so now I know where to get them! We also played the Engrish game--whoever could find the best Engrish phrase won. (The winner by a landslide was Matt, with the impressive line, "we do a living wealthily happily," on some "Enrich Life" brand of sushi rolling trays.)

Then came the big event--the tasting itself. We stopped in at a cozy location of "Vital Tea Leaf," whose misfortune at missing the "vitalitea" pun was amply made up for by the epic layout of the store. Each wall was covered in large jars filled with tea, and a barista of sorts, manned the place, hovering over a counter that held various tea cups with his own sizable mug in hand.

Jasmine Green Tea

I wanted to find a floral oolong like the excellent one I found in China, and since I'm a new fan of jasmine, my first request was for a jasmine oolong. According to our tea guy (and contrary to the tea lady I met in a Lotus grocery store in Beijing), these didn't exist! He started us off with a jasmine green tea instead. It was a standard jasmine, with a soft, slightly bitter finish. Good for a meditative afternoon or after coming home drenched in rain. I actually thought it was a bit on the strong side, surprising given our barista's chosen method of steeping. He'd rinse the leaves, dunk them in water for a solid twenty seconds with constant agitation, and pour--by far the shortest infusion time I've heard of and, according to him, due to the high quality of the leaves.

Lychee Green Tea

The next tea was my choice again--a lychee green that began a lychee flavor kick that I'm still on. This is a fantastic tea. Tea guy brewed it a little too strong again, but with every sip I got a mouthful of not-too-sweet-but-oh-so-succulent lychee. And it smelled heavenly… Drink this any time, all the time, but especially with a bagel covered in salmon-flavored cream cheese.

Ginger Red Tea

Matt's pick was a smooth, sharp ginger red tea, not too heavy on the ginger, but adequately pungent. Like anything with ginger in it, I recommend this brew for anyone feeling under the weather. I happened to be on the last turn of a cough and cold business, so it was perfect. I'm generally not too much of a red tea person, but that may be just a matter of perspective since the name comes from the color of the tea and not necessarily from the ingredients. If I'm comparing it to the only real and true red tea I've had (a mulchy rooibos) and not various light black teas, this one was solid.

Chinese Black Tea (Pu-erh)

Then came a Chinese black tea, an anonymous pu-erh with a glassy, cherry wood color and a traditional punch. I remember a certain chilled tea drink I adventurously grabbed from a fridge in the student market at Tsinghua University, and this stuff was a hot near-copy. A friend explained the sharp bite of something in the chilled version as an additive of Chinese medicine. Very strong, very different flavor profile to standardly treated Camellia sinensis, and... not quite my thing. It might make a good marinade for lamb though.

Energy Tea!

Lychee Black Tea

To recover our salts from a colorful tea journey, our gracious barista treated us to a mysterious "energy" tea while I debated over the lychee. After we all successfully energized (helped by a blending effect from the sediment of all the previous teas in the cup), he suggested a sweeter lychee black tea, which ended up smelling as delightful as the green but finishing a little less sweet. The extra oxidation of the leaves gave the tea a bit more body, but unfortunately at the expense of some of the lychee flavor. After another trial of the green I was convinced. He packed up a quarter pound of of the lychee green (at $15) for me and another quarter pound of ginger red for Matt while we finished our tea. Our instructions: thirty-second brews at around 180 degrees Celsius, and each set of leaves can be used up to four times. To amend that--I've noticed a slight lag of flavor on the third and fourth steep, so I recommend extra agitation or an increase in the infusion time with each use.

If you're planning on going on your own tea tasting  adventure, remember to:

Drink quickly! By the time I finished my little cup, Matt had knocked back two and the pot had been dumped out for the next tea… Try something new! If a place offers tasting, they're sure to offer funky flavors with bamboo or weird flowers you've never heard of. Avoid buying tea sets. Seriously. They're way cheaper in China.