Alishan, Spring 2010

Getting a very late start to the morning.

The family wanted to eat dinner before going to the concert last night, which resulted in us having to rush on the other end to find parking. Who knew there were so many parking lots around the SAP center? Anyway, after finally finding parking we had to hustle to walk what seemed like about half a mile to the venue.

We were walking down the stairs to ours seats when Bennie and the Jets started. The usher kind of gestured us to where we were supposed to go with the result that we ended up in the wrong seats — we were actually supposed to be several rows forward of where we were, which we found out during All the Girls Love Alice. So the entry was a bit chaotic. I had wanted to get there early enough to get drinks and maybe a T shirt, but c’est la vie. I was so thirsty by the end of the concert I bought four bottles of water from a street vendor and drank two of them on the walk back to the car.

By the way, we forgot where we parked. So we wandered around a bit before finding a kindly police officer who gave us some suggestions. We finally got home around 12:30.

Anyway, not sure I’ll drink much tea this morning since it’s almost noon.

But this one is very mellow and nice. The dry leaves have a rice-like aroma in the packet along with a very green note. The leaves are green to yellowish green and tightly balled.

Gaiwan. 195F. Rinse. 15 seconds +5 through four steeps.

This is really lovely. A gentle, primarily floral aroma and flavor. Along with the floral, there’s a surprisingly pleasing vegetal flavor (spinach?). The wet leaves smell like spinach.

The tea is a rather deep yellow and clear. Later steeps have a quality that is brothy, not savory, just satisfying in a way that feels nourishing on a cold rainy day.