Here it is. I finally ordered more. The tea that started it all. A random trip to San Francisco’s Chinatown years ago, a random visiting of a cool looking tea shop called Red Blossom Tea Company, and a random finding of a tea called “Gunpowder” that was a green tea with big, bold flavor.
Sold.
I walked out that day years ago with a couple ounces of leaves that would change my life. I already loved tea, but I was going through boxes of tea sachets from the grocery store. Some were very good, but I was still ignorant to what real tea was.
Until now. This one started it all, and I have been learning more about tea ever since.
Gunpowder tea gets it’s name not from the strong, dark taste, but the shape of the leaves, “rolled to form gunpowder pellets.” Preparation is simple, pretty much a standard green tea brewing, with just a bit higher temp water. (180 instead of 170-175)
32 ounces of 185 degree water onto 3 tablespoons of pre-rinsed leaves in my Bodum Assam teapot and steeped for 1:30 gives me a beautiful, almost velvety reddish brown color, semi see through.
The smell is, obviously, the first thing that hits me, and I remember right away how I fell in love with it the first time I had it. It is clearly a green tea, with all the nuances afforded a good, balanced, green, but in this case much stronger, more pungent, with a bit of bitterness layered into the green tea base.
If you like green tea but also like a stronger, bigger, fuller tea taste, go for a gunpowder. You won’t be disappointed.
I wasn’t.
-E
