Fire and Water!

Black teas and wulong teas that are oxidized to about 70% or more are fire element teas. This means they support the fire element within you, warming and energizing you! Furthermore, in itself, produced tea is yang, warming, outward-upward moving, and it needs great-tasting water for preparation, and water is yin, cooling, inward and downward flowing.

A wonderful, smooth, full-bodied yet elegant black tea from the Darjeeling Second Flush harvest 2025. Entirely from the cultivar T78, which gives malty teas with lots of honey notes.

Great teas energize, give you focus, and calm you down. This is the fantastic interplay of caffeine (also referred to as theine in tea) and L-theanine, which is an amino acid only found naturally in tea and a few other sources.

What makes a tea good?

Many factors influence the final quality of tea. These include the cultivar, elevation, latitude, climate, surrounding trees and plants, soil quality, and the balance of rainfall and sunshine. Often, all these factors are collectively referred to as the "terroir," meaning the factors that can be traced back to Terra, Mother Earth.

This tippy Darjeeling SF was hand-harvested and rolled by hand. This, of course, takes a much longer time than using machinery, but the quality is superior when done by skilled people. In this case, an all-woman team did this job!

People definitely influence the outcome of tea!

From harvest to the packing of the finished tea, a whole range of skilled people need to perform hard work and many tasks to get a high-quality, premium product. Producing tea is something you learn by watching, participating, experimenting, and doing together with other artisans who have perfected the skills of plucking, withering, oxidizing, rolling, baking, sorting, and packaging teas for centuries.

How not to ruin a great tea!

So now you have managed to buy a great tea, how do you treat it and steep it to perfection? First of all, gather your best tea-ware and place them all on a nice wooden tray, with a cute tea pet if you happen to have one. A smaller pot makes it easier to control the outcome. Heat the water, in this case with a Darjeeling SF, to about 96 °C. Warm the pot, the cups, and the pitcher with the hot water. Pour water over your pet (made of clay-earth). This is a simple ritual to cleanse and warm your utensils, allowing you to prepare yourself in silence with a few deep, smooth breaths, grounding the elements to the earth.

To release all its lovely flavours, tea needs great tasting, hot water. Too low water temperature does not release the whole spectrum of flavours. If you are sensitive to tannins, you can steep shorter time.

Steeping a tea to perfection!

To steep tea to the best possible outcome requires mindful practice, where you pay attention to how the elements of fire, water, time, air, and space all come together to create a perfect cuppa! No two people steep tea the same way! We all create our style based on who we are, our preferences, and the preferences of those who drink our tea. But every time we handle and steep tea, we have the opportunity to learn and improve our skills.

Enjoying a cup of the Darjeeling SF, on the deck of the boat! Further intensifying the interplay of fire and water!

Do you want to learn more about tea?

Learn how to source, steep, taste, and evaluate great teas. Gain an understanding of the content in the leaves that makes it possible to create all beautiful teas from basically one plant! It's fun, and you gain a valuable international network in tea and a platform for your future tea career! This is the last call for the ITA and Tea.master.s once per year, Tea Sommelier Diploma Course!

Find out all the details about the course here!

Reviews from earlier students, now Tea Sommeliers!

On my LinkedIn page and here in an earlier blog!

Welcome to contact me!

Welcome to join me for the next Tea Sommelier Diploma Course!