dominic t.

What a sad day. For my upcoming wedding we are planning on
incorporating tea into the gifts for guests, one of her favorites and
one of mine. She is going Shui Xian, and I had been planning on BLC.
However, I just got news that this years BLC is not up to snuff and it
seems like I will have to go with a substitute now

I figured I'd share for two reasons, one being a warning so that no
one pays any exorbitant rates for BLC claiming to be high-quality or
super fresh, and the other just to pass along the info and let other
Bi Lo Chun fans down as easy as I can.

- Dominic
teasphere . wordpress . com

....now I have to come up with a fairly universal green that the
average person can brew and will like. I might have to go down a notch
to sencha.

sn

Congrats on the wedding

ps. thx for the BLC warning

melinda

Seems like I picked a bad year to try it for the first time. I got some
from YS, I'm in no position to judge it compared to other years, it
seems OK, but not stunning, but I didn't want stunning as I didn't want
to break the bank.

Melinda

teahub

Quality of this year's Dong Ting Bi Luo Chun actually is better than tha
of last year's.


Linda
www.teahub.com


-
Message posted using http://www.talkaboutdrinks.com/group/rec.food.drink.tea
More information at http://www.talkaboutdrinks.com/faq.htm

shen

Dominic,
The Bi Lo Chun from ITC is very, very good this year - perky and
fresh, not kelpy.
Fong does deal with very small growers that he's dealt with for years.
They also grow their own.
I just tasted some this past wekend at the teahouse in Berkeley and
bought a couple of ounces.
Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials!
Shen

space cowboy

Which version of BLC is that? The green tentacles with white tip or
the snale curly cue. After checking with my chinese book I found out
I had some of the first versus the more common second you find in
Chinatown which is really ragged bug eaten leaf. My second choice
would be Yin Hao without the jasmine scent. Commonly it is labeled as
Spring Bud. How did you find a gal with common interest in tea? My
wife will drink anything so long as it isn't 'smoky'. Weddings are
fun. Congratulations.

Jim

I'm posting this with the first release of Mac 10 and IE 5.1 circa
2001. Hey the Mac and OS was free.

dominic t.

Snail-ish Curly-Q was what I was after but I was having a hard time
finding any solid BLC this year so far. We will be putting them into
single cup filters for in the gifts so the agony of the leaf in
watching it unfurl will be lost no matter what... so either would have
done as long as it was fresh and good tasting. I really was interested
in having people experience something new and different and hopefully
one or two will get something out of it.

As for her, I never pushed it much and beyond some Celestial
Seasonings or some such she really had no prior tea experience. Every
now and then I would pass a different/new tea past her and see if it
got any favorable reaction. I'm a book nerd so we would spend a lot of
time at Borders/Barnes and Nobles and she would get different flavored
teas, hitting on Ginger Peach black tea. She came upon Chai on her own
due to the spike in popularity for a while, which was her gateway I
think. Then from there she got into oolong slightly, but then heavily
when we came upon some amazing Shui Xian. Also, realizing tea could be
better without anything added like sugar was a major milestone.

Smoky and flowery are right out for her, so is bitter. She did like
the Puer (bolay sp?) at Mr. Tangs in NYC, but that was very mild and
almost cut with oolong it seemed. No gaiwans or anything and she
depends on me to brew it, but she does have her own Yi Xing so who
knows where it will go from here.

- Dominic
(let me know when the fun starts and my wallet doesn't hurt so much
please)
And as soon as the next refresh of the Macbooks happens I'm in, so for
a longtime PC tech and Linux guy that's saying something.

Congratulations on your marriage.

Occurs to me that guests might be about like me, who has little
experience with varieties of tea and goes by what's preferred
commonly. Since there are several levels of the famous Lung Ching, or
Dragon Well, I suggest a superior pick of that.

Possibly a gift of tea might be accompanied by a small, gift wrapped
piece of the wedding cake, perhaps just for family? bookburn

dominic t.

Thanks, and the wedding bit wasn't included for congrats... just to
explain the story I was trying to both take average people into
consideration as well as a tie in to each of our tastes and a bit of
story. I actually was between Dragonwell or Sencha but thankfully that
is an issue of the past as Daniel from Teaspring managed to hook me up
with some really good BLC. BLC is fairly forgiving and I think most
people can brew it and enjoy it but it will certainly be different for
most. The Shui Xian is very close to Chinese Restaurant tea so I think
that will be more easily palatable.

Our cake is white with buttercream icing and a Bavarian creme and
fresh fruit center... so gift wrapping that would be a disaster I
think, but it is a good idea. We have some ideas how to finish it off,
I'll post photos once the madness is over.

- Dominic
http://teasphere.wordpress.com