White Tea

I bought white tea for the first time when I was about twelve. I remember it vividly. I had just participated in a role playing camp (like dungeons and dragons but cooler). In the game my group had been essentially kidnapped by the illustrious White Mage. (Also know as Lord Hypotenuse.) We had been trapped in his castle, which was constructed out of white marble. Everything in this castle was so consistently white that one of the members of my group covered himself in flour to camouflage when sneaking around the castle at night. This adventure really captured my imagination, for weeks my friends and I relived moments of that exploit.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around this idea of a castle where everything was the same color when I in the grocery story with my mother and I was perusing the tea section. (Even before I was as openly enamored with tea as I am today I still made it my busying to check the tea sections in stores.) I came upon a tube of white tea from Republic of Tea and I had this overwhelming urge to get it, seeing as it fit into the imaginary world I have been obsessing over. Since my family had not tried white tea before we bought it and soon discovered that there was a reason we had not already incorporated it into our tea drinking habits. It was very different than the basic green and black tea were were accustomed to. I really liked it but I was the minority so we didn't buy more.

Currently my favorite white tea is from Teatulia. It has a richness and an earthiness that is somewhat unusual in a white tea. The person who sold it to me said that they added lemongrass to fill out the taste, so that might be part of what I'm tasting. It also has "notes of peach",  that is most likely a part of it too. Regardless its a charming and fascinating tea, I'm unhappy that I am about to run out of it. The image above portrays one of the Teatulia white tea tea bags.

Tea Tag Update

I was a bit disappointed with how few tea tags I had in my possession when I originally wrote about them, so I thought I'd post an update. My update is this: the tea tags have multiplied! I would like to thank my roommate well as my other friends wishing to expand their personal tea horizons for getting my collection to grow into the ensemble it is today. Now these tea tags shall travel across the country to fulfill their destiny as the inhabitance of my friend's tea tag zine.

Chocolate Chai Latte (From Starbucks)

The phenomenon of Chai Tea entering the mainstream has interested me for some time. This is partly due to the fact that I no longer drink coffee but I still frequent coffee shops and Chai Tea Lattes are very widely available. This leads me to today when I found myself waiting for a bus and very hungry. I was weighed down with just enough luggage that wandering in search of food seemed like a bit too much effort. Yet with just a turn of my head I noticed that I was already standing in front of a Starbucks. (It's a tad eery how they just pop up like that.) With a sigh I resolved myself to my fate. I picked out their only vegetarian sandwich before scanning the lists of fluffy milky beverages to see what was coffee-free. My gaze landed on a Chai Latte but only yesterday I had drunk Stumptown's version of the that beverage and I was not quite ready to let the memory of yesterday's stunning Chai Latte fade into the mediocrity that I have come to expect from Starbucks. I decided to instead try the Chocolate Chai Latte, because I figured even if it was subpar, it was still chocolate.

Having purchased my Chocolate Chai Latte I took a sip. Milk, sugar, cinnamon and chocolate syrup fought for my attention but where was the chai? I took another sip. Yes, the chai was in there somewhere but only as the subtlest of echoes, lurking behind the cinnamon. I know that cinnamon is an important ingredient to many a Chai Latte but this chai seem to be reduced to only that component. I wondered if, since cinnamon is one of the tastes in chai that's most recognizable to the american palette, Starbucks assumed that the taste of cinnamon in milk would be enough to conjure the feeling of chai for their customers. Even though my hopes were not high I'm still a bit disappointed. At least I got a smidge of chocolate.