Feeling My Way Back to Tea

I want you to experiment with me for a moment. Just breathe. Breathe in the air that currently occupies your space. Breathe in the air that surrounds you, holds you, is your world in this very instance. After you’ve taken your first breath, I want you to now pause and, for the span of a few seconds, I want you to notice the flavor of the air. Is it sweet? Savory? Spicy? Is the flavor dull, sharp, simple or complex? How does the air feel as it goes from your nostrils to mouth to throat to lungs to belly? As you have fully inhaled and held that breath, I want you to now exhale, letting the air leave your chest, through your throat, mouth and nose. How does this feel? How does this taste? What lingers and fades? What remains? What feels as if it will never return to you again?

In the practice of tea, whether it’s 工夫茶 gōngfū chá, 茶の湯 chanoyu, the Korean Way of Tea, or other forms, the taste of tea is an integral part of both the experience, as well as a guide through the process of preparing tea. Over the many years that I’ve practiced the various forms of tea, the taste of tea has been a stalwart companion, pointing the way towards my learning and further delving into attaining deeper understanding of tea, as a plant, an agricultural product, an art, a cultural entity, a historical continuum. The taste of tea has taught me how to better brew a 烏龍茶 wūlóngchá, discern quality of a freshly harvested 작설 jakseol, and tell me if I’ve properly whisked a thick bowl of 濃茶 koicha. Without the taste of tea, I believed I would feel directionless, groping for something to hold onto in the dark. Yet, this is exactly what happened.

During the final days of 2023, amidst the Winter festivities and celebrations leading up to the new calendar year, my daughter and I became sick with the COVID-19 virus. So reduced was I that upon the heralding of 2024, I could barely muster the strength to write down my intentions. Soon thereafter, my wife, too, contracted the virus and, for several days, we all remained home in our shared sickbed (save for our dog, who escaped the sickness yet kept us company throughout the entire ordeal).

After our energy came back and our fevers broke, we returned to our regular routines. However, one aspect of the illness remained for me. For weeks and then past an entire month, I was unable to sense taste. For the first time in my life, for a frighteningly long period of time, I tasted nothing.

The first moments of this were oddly novel, enjoying a sense of emptiness that I’d never felt nor experienced before, ever. I’d prepare a bowl of 抹茶 matcha, one to mark the turning of the year, and taste nothing. I’d close my eyes, thinking that the momentary removal of my visual sense might help me to focus on finding what little flavor could be perceived and, still, nothing arose.

I soon began to marvel in this meditation. A sudden leap into a deep nothingness. A pure and vast abyss to explore. Nothing, so I thought, to attach one’s self to.

Alas, as the mind always does, it found a foothold.

In the emptiness emerged other clingings. The sensorial mind is one that habitually always wants to feel something and, so, it seeks anything to attach itself to, to analyze, to explore and identify. Soon each cup of tea became a means to wander through a new and unknown world, a realm of the senses, albeit one unencumbered by the sense of smell and taste.

The realization that taste, whether it was through aroma or through flavor perceived in the mouth and throat, was my primary way of understanding tea, I began to hone in on the other various avenues that now took center stage.

Surprisingly, touch became first of the senses I explored. During the weeks I could not taste, I recall gravitating towards a particular 宜興 Yíxìng teapot. A small 羅漢 Luóhàn (Arhat) shape teapot made of aged 朱泥 zhūní clay, made in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I had acquired it during my days as a graduate student, when I’d spend weekends escaping my studies to travel to tea houses up and down the coast of California.

In the particular instance when I found this teapot, I was in my old college town of Santa Cruz, visiting my friend April Shen’s antique store. I remember April handing me two, almost identical, teapots. Upon releasing both pots into my hands a loud thunderclap rang through the air and the electricity in her warehouse instantly shut off. Plunged into darkness, I was left to discern the qualities of both teapots without my sense of sight.

I remember how my hands felt each of the tiny vessels, first feeling their respective weight, then the texture of their exteriors, comparing both but treating each as if they were their own worlds. I could sense their volume by the shape of their bellies. I could determine how they would pour by the curve of their spouts. I felt for balance in the hand, how they would feel during use. I remember spinning and lifting the lids off of each to compare how fine the fit and crafting was. Tapping the lid against the body of the pot to determine the clay’s firing and density. Feeling the ridges and “architecture” of each of the pots to determine how structured each pot was, how the water would run off of and collect along these exterior forms, and how this would, in turn, affect the brewing of the tea.

With a sudden whir and clap, the lights turned back on and I remember looking down at each pot in the electric light, seeing them for the first time with my eyes and, yet, already knowing so much about them. I ended up getting both.

Sitting in my studio with the pot in the daylight of late Winter, I could appreciate all of the nuances I’ve come to know about this little 宜興茶壺 Yíxing cháhú (Yíxìng teapot).

As the sound of the kettle softened and water within it came to a boil, I started by warming the pot, observing the steam rise out from its dark concave. I could hear the sound of the water pushing up and around inside it, changing pitch as it slowly climbed up its interior walls.

The sound of the lid lifting off from the center of the three gathered adjoining 品茗杯 pǐn míng bēi (lit. “tea tasting cups”), and the corresponding sound of the lid setting atop the opening of the pot.

The feeling of the warmth radiating from the little teapot and then the warmth of the steam that rose from the cups as I transferred the water from the pot into them.

Emptied now, the pot awaited its next role in this play of objects.

From an antique Japanese 染め付け sometsuke blue-and-white tea jar (originally used for holding 煎茶 sencha leaves), with images of orchids rendered in blue colbalt upon its cool white surface, I drew a measure of tightly curled tea leaves.

Leaves of uniformed marbled colors of dark green, russet and red. Leaves that were harvested last Spring yet leaves I’ve grown accustomed to since I was a young boy.

Traditionally oxidized and roasted 鐵觀音烏龍茶 Tiěguānyīn (lit. “Iron Guānyīn/Avalokiteśvara/Bodhisattva of Mercy”) wūlóngchá from 安溪 Ānxī county, southern 福建 Fújiàn province, China, from the same farmer who’s made this tea now for many decades (if not for half a century).

Unable to enjoy their dry aroma, I was left to admire their visual beauty and to discern their quality on their merits of physical consistency. Lifting the old bamboo tea scoop, I readied the leaves to enter the awaiting teapot.

Using a twig I’d pulled from a fruit tree years ago, I slowly pushed the leaves into the vessel…

…working to ensure that they fell and arranged themselves…

…into a nicely formed heap within the warm clay pot.

Pouring boiling water over the leaves, I took a moment to observe the first brief moments of the steeping process. Oily foam rose and collected along the circumference of the teapot’s open mouth. Steam swirled in tiny cyclones off of the surface of hot liqueur. Tea leaves lifted and tumbled and fell in what looked like a tiny choreographed dance.

Closing the teapot, I sat and waited for the meniscus bubble to travel down the spout of the teapot. I sat and waited for the teapot’s color to deepen, from a bright sanguineous red to a deep lustrous crimson.

As I waited, I cleansed and emptied the warming cups.

As I waited…

…I listened to the quiet hiss of the boiling kettle.

Pouring a tea that I could not taste was a new experience. The color starts off pale and slowly grows deeper.

From one cup to the next and back again, the tea continues to decant, further steeping as long as it remains within the pot.

By the last draught, the tea is fully steeped. The last few drops are purported to be the best, offering the sweetest and most complex flavors.

Alas, I’d taste none of these.

Looking down into the three cups, looking down at the emptied pot (save for the unfurled tea leaves it contained), I recall the sense of anticipation. Having navigated the flavorless abyss for more than a month, I’d succumbed to the possibility that this might have become my new life, as so many have already succumbed to Long COVID. I did not fear this, although I wondered how I would continue to develop my tea practice with what I felt was an insurmountable challenge.

During this time, I constantly reminded myself that the basis of gōngfū chá was to attain skills through challenging oneself, and this instance was no different. A teacher leaf. A teapot. Hot water. Warm cups. Cold air lingering in my studio. These were challenges I’ve faced and overcome before. No taste would also have to be met and new skills to address this would ultimately arise.

I remember lifting the first cup. I studied its deep amber hue, noting that it was not one uniform color but a myriad of different shades and tones. How at its center the color appeared vibrant and clear, and how it shifted along the edges, with hints of green, purple, and gold.

As I lifted the cup closer, I made an attempt to smell the aroma (as I’d done time and time before my sickness had struck). While no scent was detected, I could feel the warmth of the tea radiate and enter my nostrils, reaching into the back of my throat and soft palate.

As I took my first sip, I aerated the liqueur with an audible slurp. The smallest of sip to pull the tea back over my tongue, back to the upper reaches of my soft palate, and back to the entrance of my throat. Here, where typically I would taste tea, I could feel the heat of the liquid. Here, too, what emerged, as if from shadows, were the properties of the first steeping.

In place of the complex swirl of flavors that a traditionally oxidized and roasted Tiěguānyīn displays, I could feel the tea produce sensations across the interior of my mouth and throat. Where there would normally be an initial sweetness balanced with a mild bitterness, followed by a cascading array of floral notes ranging from marigold to honeysuckle to rose, there were textures, shifting rapidly from slick and viscous to sticky like butterscotch, astringent like pomelo rind, and dry like the tannic sensation of eating walnut skin. The palate awoke despite being unable to taste and the mouth and cheeks reciprocated with salivation. The finish was met with slight tightening of the sides of the cheeks and back of the throat, followed by a long and lingering softness, both dry and moistening, building from the first small sip to the second and finally to the completion of the first cup. As I breathed out from my throat and into my mouth, these sensations echoed and remained.

I sat for a moment in wonderment. The words that my many mentors, teachers and trainers from my past seemed to well-up inside of me. These words, classic descriptors from Chinese tea culture used to give a linguistic framework for understanding tea’s complex vocabulary of flavors and sensations, suddenly started to come back to me.

收斂性 Shōuliǎn xìng may be used to describe the astringent quality of tea when it feels akin to biting into a rind of a fruit or akin to the astringent tannins found in higher oxidized tea. Though sometimes associated with rougher teas, if the tea is well-crafted, this quality can be balanced and interplay with the sweeter flavors of the tea. Traditionally oxidized and roasted Tiěguānyīn contains a subtle tannic quality, an enjoyable boldness that waivers on bitterness. While I could not taste this, the drying, tingling, and slightly puckering sensations caused by the tannins present in the tea were very present.

生津 Shēngjīn (lit. “life haven”) refers to the aspect of tea that can quench one’s thirst through the moistening of the mouth and generation of saliva (sometimes less poetically referred to a 口水 kǒu shuǐ, “mouth water”). The sensation is pleasant, revitalizing, and nourishing. Even after the first cup’s sensations lingered in my mouth minutes after I had completed it, I could still sense this aspect of its quality. My body, despite my lingering symptoms, felt nourished, relaxed and revitalized by the tea.

回甘 Huí Gàn (lit. “return sweet”) is the first of the long lasting sensations a tea can leave in the body. It is the convergence of bitter and sweet, producing a long and complex lingering finish which is the hallmark of a high quality tea (especially oolong tea). As I finished each sip of tea from the first cup, I could feel the confluence of the drying astringency with the silkiness of the sweet meeting in the back of my throat and returning to coat my mouth. This felt as if the tea was opening to new complexity, the beginning of its expansion across my senses despite not being able to taste the tea itself.

喉韻 Hóu Yùn (lit. “throat rhyme”) is expressed when a tea has been fully consumed and leaves a pleasant, resonating sensation in the throat. The “rhyming” comes with the subtle harmonizing of the sensations in the mouth and soft palate with that of the throat. Tea connoisseurs often consider that the taste of the tea is often at its richest and most complex when reflected in the Hóu Yùn. However, as I perceived it without my abilities to taste the tea, I could still feel the slick, smooth, rich textures, and complex, long and lingering sensations it left in my throat.

體感 Tǐ Gǎn (“body sensation”/“physical perception”) started to arrive after the second cup, and only in a slightly perceptible way. Tǐ Gǎn refers to the physical experience that tea brings once it has fully entered the body, changing the way the body feels and how the tea is perceived as it moves through the body. The warming qualities of the tea liqueur can be felt as it makes its way down the throat and to the stomach. There is a slight increase in the body’s vital energy as it begins to metabolize the tea. This coincides with a cooling effect as the sweet and bitter flavors subside and refresh the mouth, throat and body.

All the flavors described in tea are caused by a kaleidoscope of different naturally occurring chemical compounds, each of which also have their own attributed sensations. Catechins, a type of tea polyphenol, causes slight pleasant grassy bitterness in tea, but also can produce a slight astringent sensation. Caffeine, which contributes to bitterness, is also drying. Caffeine is also one of the primary compounds found in tea that wakes up the body and mind. Tannins contribute to a bitter and astringent taste in tea also helps to give the tea its body and complex texture, ranging from a slight drying sensation, to sharper, more interesting tones that linger and fade. L-theanine, an amino acid which contributes to a balanced sweetness in tea, can also be perceived in the freshness of the tea and the clean texture on the palate and throat. It, like caffeine, is responsible for the slight “pick-me-up” tea produces, but also promotes a sense of bodily relaxation. Finally, carbohydrates such as fructose, sucrose, and glucose, all of which are produced by photosynthesis, contribute to the complex sweetness of tea, as well as the long returning sweetness, fading soft textures, and refreshing energy evinced in Huí Gàn, Hóu Yùn and Tǐ Gǎn.

Finishing the last of the three cups, I endeavored onward to brew the tea again.

The leaves, almost fully open from the first long steeping were covered once again in the boiling water from my kettle.

Closing the pot once more, I used the pause as an opportunity to continue to feel the tea and its energy course through my body.

Late Winter in Upstate New York is marked by intermittent days of ice and snow. One day the mountains will look dark and bleak, the next they are set alight in a dusting of fresh snow.

Outside in my garden, snow had been piling up, creating a soft, cold world…

…where shadows cast long and blue…

…where footfalls of wild animals traced…

…where the old life of last year stood rigid and bare…

…where the sun pushed through treetops and gently sloughed off the snow by midday.

In my momentary existence of my tastelessness, I reveled in the not knowing and feeling my way back to tea. As the snow covered and concealed forms all around, so, too, did my lingering symptoms. Sipping tea as if it were medicine both for the mind and body kept me sane in a sense as I tumbled through this novel if not terrifying experience. A challenge to meet and make friends with and learn what all I could from the interaction. In conversation with my sickness and my body, the tea was telling me more than I could have ever imagined.

A second steeping and I could feel my cares drift away.

A third, and my body began to feel lighter.

A fourth and fifth…

…and the tea’s color lightened.

Six, seven, eight more steepings…

…and the tea and I kept pace.

Nine and ten and I began sitting up, rambling around my studio, searching for books on my shelf, my body electrified with the energy of the tea.

Eleven and twelve and I began to spin in a light hearted joy, finding pause in my attempt to decipher the calligraphy carved onto an old bamboo tea scoop.

茶醉 Chá Zuì (lit. “tea drunk”) soon gripped me, a culmination of all of tea’s remarkable sensations into a giddy, relaxed, and settled feeling. For those who ascribe to it, the 茶氣 Chá Qì (the tea’s frequency, energy, life force, literally “breath”) was surging through me, as palpable as the myriad of sensations that continued to play across my nostrils, tongue, cheeks, soft palate, throat, stomach, chest, forehead, body, and mind.

While I tasted no tea that day, as I cleaned my old 朱泥茶船 zhūní cháchuán (lit. “cinnabar mud/clay” “tea boat”), I remember looking down into its empty concave form. Slick with the cool water now evaporating from its soft skin, I could see the many layers of tea oil that had settled into it, giving it a fine patina of time and experience. Used for decades now, the brick-red of the clay shone like a jewel, even if it were just an old dish. The secondary nature I’d always ascribed to the piece seemed more artificial on this day. What I’d seen as a vessel that collected the off-pour, the overflow, the space around the teapot, now seemed more primary in its purpose. The cháchuán lifts the teapot off from the table, providing it a place to be used, clear from anything but itself and the tea it contains.

Here, too, I began to think of how the senses often take varying levels of prioritization when one 品茶 pǐnchá, the term classically used when tasting tea. However, the character 品 pǐn is comprised of three mouth (口 kǒu) radicals. In a more expansive translation of pǐn, “taste”/“tasting” can be read as “to grade” or “to judge/discern quality or character”. The three mouth radicals, too, may be linked to the multiple ways one consumes tea, not just to taste with the mouth but to see with the eyes, feel with the body and perceive with the mind. In this understanding, to taste tea is to taste it with all the senses. To see it, to savor it, to feel it beyond the flavor alone.

In the months that followed my recovery, I slowly but eventually did regain my abilities to taste tea. However, I still find myself seeking for those moments fleeting after I’ve sipped a cup, after I’ve finished a brew, when the feeling of tea is all that remains, perhaps as a reminder of this brief time in my life when it was all I had.

First of Spring

First of Spring

It’s already here

Already in the warmth of the wind

In the song of the breeze

In the rays of sunlight

In the leaves on the trees

Earth still cold

And rain still stays

Winter remains

But for how many more days?

****

Writing as we quietly step into a new season. Spring’s energy is palpable, yet Winter feels as if it is still holding tight. Sharing with you a moment as I sit at my work desk, drinking tea, and wondering what this new period in my life will bring.

The tea I drink is a fine 鴨屎香 Yā Shǐ Xiāng (lit. “Duck Shit Fragrance”) 鳳凰山單樅烏龍茶 Fènghuáng shān dān cōng wūlóngchá (Phoenix Mountain single bush/grove oolong tea) that I had sourced from a tea farmer in Chaozhou, originally with the intention of selling it as a tea purveyor.

Giving up on the idea that I would build a business making money off of tea, I find myself drinking my aging product, the flavor of which is sweet, gentle, kind.

With each scoop of tea leaves,…

…each pause for the kettle to boil,…

…each draught of hot water poured,…

…each pot I brew,…

…each cup I fill,…

…each time I drink,…

…I’m reminded of this dream I had. Slacking my thirst on it. Savoring how it changes with age. Realizing that I’ve given up on selling tea so I can share it freely to anyone who may want to enjoy it alongside me. Without a sense of repayment needed. With no expectations between host and guest. A practice of learning, of acting, and then letting go.

As cold still clings to the earth, its grip softens with time. Warmth returns slowly but assuredly. A new season emerges and new experiences abound. What is there to be found in the moment as Winter turns to Spring? What is there to learn from this change?

Up the Hill I Go

Up the hill I go,

What mysteries will I find?

Through forest path and bend in road,

The world I’ll leave behind.

A shimmering brook and water’s ebb,

Flow as I take each stride.

The creek’s force stills and causes pause,

To watch sunlight caught inside.

It glows golden like tea I brew,

By thinning waterfall’s catch.

The water roars less and less each year,

Reduced by late Summer’s dry patch.

What will we do when the water’s gone?

Where will the forest go?

In my mind will it reside?

Where will the trees,

the moss,

the lichen grow?

And what of the mysteries that I once found there,

With forest floors dry and bare?

No owls, no raven, no millipede, no salamander’s lair.

Just the hill set against a vast blue sky,

Amidst the hot, dry air.

It makes me sad to sit and think,

Brewing tea just to drink,

What of these memories will I share?

Of the fondness and despair.

Both occur in the wretches of my mind,

Some thoughts familiar,

Some unkind.

When footsteps on paths crossed are covered over,

By dry leaves, by old soil, by new clover.

Then what there will be found?

Nothing, nothing, nothing will abound.

Yet from nothing always arises something new.

Not in my lifetime but perhaps for you.

The next after me who will come,

A hill, a forest, a waterfall, and then some.

A whole world to explore and all their own,

Where the owls, the raven, the millipede, the salamander call their home.

Not in my lifetime but maybe in yours,

Up the hill you’ll go,

Through the forest floors.

And what mysteries you’ll find,

In the forests, those hills, your mind?

Take the Time You Need

Take the time you need. No one will give it to you otherwise.

Take the time you need it takes to boil water. To set out wares for tea. To sit.

Take the time you need to breathe in and to exhale.

Take the time you need to step away from work. To put space between you and your job. Between you and your expectations. Between the expectations you have of others and the expectations others have of you.

Take the time you need to pour boiled water into pot. Boiled water from pot to empty cup. Warmed cup to waste water bowl.

Take the time to sort through leaves, to pick those you want to steep, to place them into the open pot.

Take the time you need to inhale aromas awakening, sense flavors arising, arouse thoughts from a curious mind.

Take the time you need to brew tea leaves. As much time as you need. As much time as the tea likes to steep. As much time you like to sit.

Pour out brewed liquid into cup and take time to ponder how long it will take you to drink it up.

Take the time you need to do all of this. Again and again and again if you need.

Take the time you need to take up space, both here in this world but also in your mind and in your heart.

Take the time you need to stretch out your body, your wanting soul, your unmet desires.

Stretch each thin until opaque becomes transparent and take the time you need to explore each facet of yourself. Of your inner world and outer world. Of your insides and of your surroundings.

Take the time you need. Take all that you can spare. And when you’re done, return back to your day, knowing you’ve given yourself the time you need.

****

Dear Beloved Blog Reader,

Upon publishing this article, I thought I’d offer my afterthoughts on writing my 200th blogpost on Scotttea, which I’ve included below.

Thank you for your support, your feedback, your continued readership.

Thank you,

Scott

“Take the time you need”

Words that kept rattling around in my head.

I have not been on social media for a short bit and I plan not to be on for a while longer. Life, expectations, social and professional demands. These things can push one inwards and, hopefully, allow for an investigation into what truly matters.

Years of being on social media, fighting screen addiction, and fretting daily about am I on too much or too little has come to this. A breath. A long, drawn-out breath. I’ve chosen to just sit with this feeling and to just engage with the act of not acting, not using online life to become a replacement for the real thing.

Hikes in the forests with friends. Sunlight and the warmth of a Summer’s day. The slow growth of gourds in the garden. The sounds of birds in the trees.

I can’t cling to these things but I also can’t capture them and share them the way technology seems to want to promise it can. Can we truly experience these phenomena through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Twitch? Can an hour on YouTube teach you both how to fix your furnace and fix your life?

Will comments and likes, link shares and photo album memories spark the real change we all need to see in our lifetimes? Or, is it a carousel that keeps us spinning, approximating forward motion but amounting to stasis, to stagnation over decades of use and being used?

For all this, I feel like I still have accomplished nothing. Friendships and memories are the jewels drawn from this hard time spent and these I cherish.

200 blogposts on tea. Digital paper and words. Flavors and phantasms. Pictures and poetry about things long passed.

I hope for more meaningful moments. More life not led online. More connection through cups of tea shared, not facilitated through fiber optic cables.

Summer comes but once a year. In our lifetimes, perhaps, if we’re lucky, we’ll experience enough to count 100. Then where will these Summer’s warm days be? In memories. In the sensations of heat against our skin as we sip from warmed cups of tea. From the feelings of friends and family whom we still can meet.

To do this, all this, we must all take the time we need.

International Tea Day: Today, and Everyday

Wishing everyone a beautiful International Tea Day! Drink a cup, bowl, or pot of tea and think of all that went into the growing, harvesting, processing, packing, shipping, selling, and sending of that tea so you can enjoy it! There are lots of people and beings that work towards making that little cup you and I savor. As they say, it’s all in the tea! So, drink up, give thanks to all the labor and love that went towards making this moment happen, and share!

Today, I brew up a personal favorite of mine: a 鳳凰單樅烏龍茶 fènghuáng dān cōng wūlóngchá poetically named 《兄弟》“Xiōngdì”, “Brothers” which I and two of my own “tea brothers”, So Han Fan of West China Tea in Austin, Texas, and Steve Odell of Enthea Teahouse in Portland, Oregon, sourced while traveling in China in 2013.

The tea is grown, tended by, picked and processed by the 林 Lín family on the high slopes of 烏崬山 Wūdōngshān in 潮州 Cháozhōu, in northeastern 廣東 Guǎngdōng province.

The tea’s poetic name alludes to how it is made up of two distinct cultivars that are grown in a single grove, which when processed, maintain a unique harmony and balance in their flavor.

I brew the tea in a contemporary 汝窯 Rǔ yáo celadon teapot gifted to me by So Han, long before he had opened his tea house.

I brew the tea in a contemporary 汝窯 Rǔ yáo celadon teapot gifted to me by So Han, long before he had opened his tea house. The cup is one of a pair, a gift from 郑国谷 Zhèng Guógǔ of the Chinese artist collective the Yangjiang Group, whom I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with on several art projects, namely the 2016 site-specific participatory installation Unwritten Rules Cannot Be Broken at the Guggenheim Museum.

Using the cup today, I’m reminded of my time working and making tea with Guógǔ, who, while widely known for his art, is also a skilled practitioner in tea, often infusing tea and local tea culture into his art practice.

Flavors and memories always seem to mix and bring up emotions from the past.

Gratitude. Joy. Bittersweet remembrances. Longing to be with friends whose paths I’ve crossed a myriad of times or just once and never again. Teachers and students. Tea masters and aficionados. Farmers, artists, poets, musicians, and monks. Deepest of thanks and warmest of thoughts to all who’ve been part of my life in tea, each somehow pointing the way. So much to celebrate. Today, and everyday.

Warm Winds and a Shallow Bowl

Spring has faded and the first warm days of Summer of the old lunisolar calendar have arrived in the Hudson Valley. Birdsongs peal against the bright blue sky. Rhubarb flowers climb and explode in the garden and I don’t have it in me to cut them down.

Heat rises. So, too, does a wisp of smoke from my incense burner, filling my studio with the soft scent of 伽羅 kyara. The plastered walls and wooden floors remain cold to the touch. How long before these will warm as well and no cool solace will exist until Autumn arrives?

I pour fresh water into my kettle and sit myself down upon the floor before a sliding glass door that looks out onto my garden. Sounds and fresh breezes blow in, mixing with the incense in the air.

As the heat from the kettle grows, I produce a small ceramic container: a celadon jar originally intended for sweets turned tea caddy with a lid made of dried leaves, cork, and thread.

Inside are the tightly rolled leaves of a 大禹嶺高山茶 Dàyǔlǐng gāoshān chá that a friend gifted to me last Winter. Will their flavors be as tightly kept as their leaves are bundled? Or will they open as Summer has here in the river valley I’ve called home for these past few years?

I loosely arrange objects across the wooden plank I use for a tea table. Cloth. 茶船 chá chuán. A vintage 綠泥西施壺 lǜní Xīshī hú. A shallow 青白茶碗 qīngbái cháwǎn from the 宋 Sòng period (960-1279). Objects are kept informal, alluding to the feeling of the day.

I measure out a portion of tea and place it into the hollow of my warmed teapot.

I wait for a moment and watch the sunlight filter through the pines and maples that tower over the garden outside the open door.

Birds cackle and dogs in the distance bark but do not wake mine who sleeps beside my work desk. A relaxed state seems to settle all about me as I wait for the tea to brew.

Pot in hand, I draw it to the wide opening of the shallow teabowl.

With a simple downward tilt of my wrist and the pot and the tea pours effortlessly into the empty vessel. The color of tea is initially bright and clear against the pale blue-green of the qīngbái cháwǎn.

As the liqueur continues to pour, the color deepens and darkens, until jade turns to gold.

The light of the day is caught against the flat surface of the warm liquid. Blue sky against the crystalline tea liqueur.

As I set the teapot back down into the chá chuán and lift the lid off and angle it upon the open top, the distinctive scent of Dàyǔlǐng becomes present. Big, clean, a mixture of fresh vegetation and fragrant magnolia. Even before I let the liquid cross by lips, I feel as if I’ve already slacked my thirst.

As I take the first sip, I am met with minerality. Next, sweetness. Cascades of flavors followed by a pronounced lingering mouthfeel. Dàyǔlǐng is a unique tea.

Often harvested in Winter, the leaves produce a markedly sweet, if not cane sugar-like, flavor, which recede and evolve into notes of fresh greens and flowers that bloom on trees. The feeling left over is soft, buttery, almost chewy. The qualities of this tea meld into the environment of the cool climes of my garden-level studio.

I relax more and, as I do, so too does my brewing style. I let the tea steep longer.

The color, accordingly, darkens.

The liqueur seems to glow as the sunlight does against the trees and the mountains in the distance.

As the day fades, so too does the tea. Countless steepings have pushed this tea to evolve into a calm, crisp elixir. Still holding on to its Wintery sweetness, although, gone is the intense complexity that the first infusions produced.

Early Summer, too, feels this way. Gone are the radical shifts that marked the previous seasons. Gone is the ice and the garden locked with snow. Gone is the hardened soil, the bare trees, the dark clouds.

What has come is sweet, mellow, easy. The birds relax, as do the leaves in the breeze. The sound of a frog is heard nearby as creeks throb and gurgle beside willows and rocks in gullies and between homes and hillocks of the Hudson Valley.

The sun has woken this world around me and now it stands tall and shimmers in shades of green. The tea leaves, too, evoke this change, this quality, this coming to life from Winter’s hold.

Cool shadows cast darker and darker shade across the stretch of wood and floorboards of my studio. The ease of early Summer spreads and collects in the cooling vessels of my assembled tea set.

Warm winds and a shallow bowl. Winter’s tea and Summer’s flavor.

Last Days of Grain Rain

The last few days of 穀雨 Gǔyǔ (“Grain Rain”). Here, it feels unfathomable that we are on the precipice of Summer. How would you know as it is raining today in New York? Yet, hints of the incoming warm season are all around.

Blossoms on trees burst. Leaves shine an emerald green. The earth is warm and wet. The insects abound, soon to chime and chatter as they do in the Summer months.

Today, as the world feels cool and refreshing, I sit by my window and enjoy the sound of rain pattering on the plants outside.

Ferns and hostas.

Lilacs and budding flowers.

Water droplets become small jewels as the collect and form bright prisms on velvet foliage.

Old teaware accompanies new vegetation and the awakening of the latent season.

An antique 石灣 Shíwān pot and blue-and-white cup.

Roasted tea beams bright gold liqueur.

Low light filtered through the trees.

The feeling is calm and casual as I spread my wares and body across the surface of my wooden floor.

Birds call outside.

Reflections fade and evolve across the crackled surface of the iridescent glaze of the old teapot.

The flavor of tea lingers even as the scent of it flags.

Cool breeze and the emptiness that’s caused by the sound of raindrops.

Summer is almost here. Can you feel it?

Tea While Traveling

For several days now I’ve been traveling with my wife to see her family in the Philippines. We’re both jet lagged, her more than I. Regardless, I don’t know what day it is. My body is still using New York time as its tether, a bellwether guiding me but in a way that no longer makes sense.

I haven’t found time to sit for tea, save for right now. An aged 肉桂 Ròuguì seems to taste of the flavors from last night’s dinner of braised meats, steamed fish, tamarind soup, shrimp paste, buko pie. The wine here is sweeter. The beer, lighter. The weather joyously warm but not hot. It snowed today in New York. Today, there are white, billowing clouds set against a bright blue sky here in the highlands of Tagaytay.

While my wife sleeps and works-off her jet lag, I’ve found a moment to spread out a small tea cloth and prepare a series of steepings of dark oolong that I’ve tucked-away in my carry-on bag.

A set of vintage white porcelain made up of one small 蓋碗 gàiwǎn and four 品茗杯 pǐn míng bēi from the 1980s. Tea from the mid-2000s. Water boiled and stowed in a travel thermos. No flourish. More of a fix.

As I sit, the act of making tea is still meditative, set to the sound of the air conditioner mounted loosely in the wall beside me, to the sound of vehicles of all types zooming outside of the walls of the garden, to the irregular cry of a cockerel somewhere nearby.

The soft gurgle of water and the light clink of ceramic lid against ceramic cup.

Tea steeps and settles in as I do into the concrete and stucco home of my wife’s mother, built on land their family’s owned for centuries.

Outside our room, orchids grow in the inner courtyard and geckos find their homes between the cracks and crevices of tiles, worn brick, and the joints between walls and ceilings.

Inside, the relative quiet allows for momentary respite and another cup of tea brewed.

My wife wakes and wanders into the shower as I pour my third or fourth cup from a third or fourth steeping.

The color is still dark but waning as I pour out the sixth or seventh steeping.

I turn over a second cup to offer to her as she walks from the bathroom, the sent of shower soap now blending with the aroma of tea.

I drink the first of the two cups. The second waits idly for my wife to dry off in the humid air. I breathe over my tongue with mouth closed and taste the lingering 回甘 huígān of the Ròuguì tea. The 岩骨 yángǔ, the “rock bones”, the meat-like quality of this tea is still here.

I pour more tea into my empty cup and the difference in color between the last steeping and this marks the passing of time. Darker is the subsequent. A bit deeper in flavor.

The warm water kept in the gàiwǎn pushing more color and tone from the leaves that continue to brew. The flavor is softer, more complex but gentle. No hint of bitterness, just the spiciness of this particular kind of tea, with just the slightest hint of age. 活 huó, it is still lively in the mouth and the mind.

The last steepings of tea continue to come but, as travel often does, I am pulled away to the work of travel, of coordinating the next thing-to-do, the next stop in the list of stops. Wind blows harder outside in the garden of my wife’s mother’s house. The winds of the Tagaytay are locally famous, peeling and pushing up off from the placid surface of Lake Taal.

I pour the remaining tea and liquid into a cut crystal tumbler glass with the hopes of saving what’s left. I empty the small cup my wife never got to. I pour-out what’s left in my thermos. It all amounts to one more cup to save for later.

As I did before but in reverse, I pack away my tea set I’d made to travel with.

Gàiwǎn wrapped in a pattern printed cloth. The four white porcelain pǐn míng bēi set around it. Box closed and wrapped-up tightly. Stowed away until next time, whenever that will be.

The roar of vehicles of all types zooming by. The hum of the air conditioner set loosely in the wall. The irregular cry of a cockerel somewhere nearby. Sweet wine. Light beer. The spice of tea and tamarind still lingering. I close the door and my wife and I continue our travels.

Ten Years

Dear Beloved Blog Readers,

When we offer a bowl, or cup, or pot of tea, do we think of the effect it will have on our lives and the lives of others?

Do we think beyond the singular moment that this simple gesture represents?

The leaves are selected with care…

…and placed within the teapot gently.

The kettle is warmed to a boil…

…and water is poured with attentiveness.

The pot is closed and, through one’s own awareness of what is happening within the tiny vessel, tea is brewed to a quality nearing perfection.

In truth, much of this effort to make this happen was already complete well before the tea made its way into the pot. Effort by the countless farmers, artisans, and trades people who cultivated, picked, produced, packaged and delivered tea to you and I, the tea brewer or lucky tea drinker, was done with a level of mastery and attentiveness that we may never fully appreciate.

What one is left with is the mere navigation of knowledge of leaves and wares, of material qualities and the qualities of one’s own self.

In steeping tea and offering tea, there is no true goal, only the hope that through offering tea you can somehow offer something of yourself to others.

This, coupled with showing one’s appreciation and respect to the art and craft and effort that went into producing the fine tea that you have chosen to brew.

Ten years ago, I published the first blogpost on Scotttea. Then, as now, I set out with no goal in mind, just a hope to explore the world of tea and the thoughts that would invariably arise as I sat down to make tea. Since then, a lot has happened.

Almost two hundred blogposts have been written, with enough content to fill several books. Incalculable amounts of tea were made, some shared with others, most savored alone.

However, as I’ve discovered since starting this blog, the vast expanse that defines the digital divide seems less expansive. In many ways, the space that separates you and I is the width of my tea table, the space between one 畳 tatami mat, the space between where we sit in my makeshift tea hut.

The true distance I find that changes is time. Time between ten years ago and now seems vast as it does miniscule. Ten years ago I was living and working and making tea in San Francisco. Less than an hour away from where I grew up. Less than a walk away from the hospital where I was born. Living in a small apartment in a 100-year-old Victorian townhouse furnished with three tatami mats, a few antique 箪笥 tansu cabinets, and a collection of tea and teaware.

For almost a decade I lived in this space and continued a tea practice that I had begun since my childhood, one I further honed and developed during my formative years in college. Little thought was given to writing down these experiences. When I did, they never amounted to much. I’d start a blog about tea and soon after abandon it. There was little staying power. In many ways, Scotttea was no different.

What kept me writing is hard to define. Perhaps the desire to log memories. Perhaps a hope to guide others in the often confusing crossroads of the internet and tea. Maybe it was just to see if writing about tea could encourage myself to just keep at it. An experiment at best. No expectations for an outcome.

Looking back at many of my old posts, all I see are the glaring mistakes of a neophyte, groping and stumbling along the Way. A misplaced 茶杓 chashaku. Too much or too little tea. Poor camera angles. Missed opportunities.

In trying to overcome all of this, my posts seem to have grown in size and length. The desire to want to say everything and show everything combined with a sort of endless thread of thought approach has seemed to evolve over the years, much to the chagrin of readers who may have hoped for a quick musing on tea, a poetic vignette, or singular statement.

The practice that has emerged has been one that longs more and more for the connection with others in the real world, in real time. The hut on the edge of my property remains empty, save for maybe the pair of mice I once evicted or a queen hornet trying to survive the Winter cold. Instead of opening the door, I write and hope that once this pandemic ends and once the sickness of our too busy world is over that you and other tea people like you may join me in a bowl or cup or pot of tea.

Until then, I share with you the same tea that I made ten years ago. A fantastic aged 水仙武夷山巖茶 Shuǐxiān Wǔyíshān yánchá from the mid-1980s that was gifted to me by a dear friend more than a decade ago, the same I featured in my first blogpost. With ten additional years of age on this tea, the leaves have an aroma akin to a fine incense. The brewed liqueur is medicinal, both in its flavor and its affect of the body.

Tea like this is rare and special not because it exists but because of the forces that work against it. It’s delicious. It’s too good to pass up. A fool would store it away. And, yet, I’ve done this so I can enjoy it today.

Perhaps this blog is similar. The tea it documents is, more often than not, amazing. It demands to be savored and enjoyed in the moment. To snap photographs, to think about what I will write about it, memorializing each tea experience with word, prose and pictures to produce a blogpost is, in some sense, madness. I’ve often thought of what happens as I make tea and then invite these thoughts and actions into my otherwise unobstructed, often austere practice.

It is a fool who saves these moments. Old used up tea leaves. The dregs of 抹茶 matcha. The dust and patina that accumulates on old teaware. Memories captured and catalogued. And, yet, here we are. Ten years since I put word to virtual page and pressed share. I’m deeply thankful to all who’ve joined me. I hope some day we can join for tea together in real life, beyond this digital space. Just know that the door to my tea room is always open and my message box is just a click away.

Ten years. Almost two hundred posts. Several books somehow locked within these pages. Who will know where we’ll be in ten more years. More tea leaves? A darker patina on my old teaware? Oil and residue accumulating in the cracks and fissures of old teabowls and old tea pots? We’ll see. Until then, let’s have another cup and see what it inspires.

Thank you,

Scott

Warm Winter

With the first day of the new year, I find myself wanting to climb a mountain. Ever since moving away from the city, I’ve used these moments of wandering the trails and streams to reset the mind, recalibrate the heart, and refresh the spirit. With the chaotic year that was 2021 now behind me, momentarily losing one’s self within the ramble of woods and ravines feels like closing the door on the world behind me and opening another on what’s to come.

The path, as always, is winding. However, today, it seems noticeably different, shockingly similar to when I last hiked along this trail. This Winter has been warm. Autumn leaves still lay scattered on the forest floor.

Moss.

Lichen.

Ferns and the green leaves of mountain plants still abound.

The water that normally by now would be frozen still cascades and pools as it runs down the carved cut it created over centuries.

Memories of trying to climb this mountain last year return. Memories of ice and snow, of Winter’s lock in frigid torpor. These running headlong against what I see today, which is a forest that is very much awake, very much alive in a warmer time.

As I climb higher, I relish the rare instance I find myself in. While I fear that this weather is somehow linked to the greater warming pattern that our future holds, I cannot help but to find myself enjoying the sight of spiny moss poking up through the rocks…

… of bright yellow mushrooms in bloom…

…of buff and woody shelf fungus climbing up a tree. Simple pleasures found in times of warning. These are for certain demarcators of things to come.

More twists in the trail, more steps up the steep hill, and I find myself back beside my usual waterfall stop. The same rocks and fallen trees welcome me as if it were months ago, still full of energy and color and water surging forth from the recent Winter rains. I sit down upon the wet rocks and spread out a cloth kept in my rucksack. Upon this, I sit a teapot and cup. The sound of water rushing off the rocks. The sound of water pouring from my thermos into the open pot over rolled leaves of 鐵觀音烏龍茶 Tiě guānyīn wūlóngchá. The last of this tea for the first of this year.

Pot closed, I wait and wonder what the year will bring, what the tea will taste like, and what the warm weather will set forth for years to come. The sound of the waterfalls rushing beside me. The occasional chatter of birds and backpackers in the distance. Silence before I pour out the pot into a single red and white cup, pouring out as much as the tiny open vessel can contain.

Golden hues from the tea leaves left against the enameled interior of the 宜興 Yíxìng cup.

Gold and the reflection of the trees above it.

The bare cold trees that stretch skyward against the dull grey expanse. Their branches skeletal against the sky.

Below, copper-colored leaves collect in wetted piles and flat, matted carpets across the forest floor.

Between these two worlds, the river cascading…

…the rock which I sit upon…

…the tiny tea set which is keeping me warm.

With each successive pouring of the pot the tea grows darker, the flavors more complex, shifting from sweet butterscotch to deep notes of incense wood.

Bitterness is there and so too is a lingering complexity that coats my tongue and throat.

In the ancient texts, they note the occurrence of 甘露 gānlù, an auspicious omen, the sweet dew that comes from nature, moisture that clings to leaves, that is said to be a medicine that is far above others to replenish the body and bring immortality.

In tea, it can describe the saliva that is produced on the back sides of the cheeks, that carries the flavor of the tea into the body, that continues to permeate long after the tea is gone (producing the sensation of 回甘 huígān).

My only hope is that this flavor lingers longer as I pack up my bag and head up the mountain, and that this may be a harbinger for a harmonious year to come.

The warm Winter weather makes the trek up the mountain gentler. No footsteps in the snow to mark the way. Instead, an uneven ripple of leaves that runs up the side of the hill points to where others have gone before me, guiding me to the top.

Fallen trees and the forest thins as I get closer to the mountain’s peak.

Toppled limbs and trunks with scarlet veins brought to life and luster in the moisture of the morning.

At summit, I see nothing. Just a blanket of fog across the town and wide river below. The sound of a train in the distance is muffled by the soft lumbering clouds. Thick mist and no vista to speak of.

I’m reminded of the tradition in many East Asian cultures, where upon the first of the new year, people climb mountains to watch the sunrise for the first time, to see its rays of golden glow peek and creep over the horizon. Wishes are made and offered up to the new day on the new year in the hopes that they will come true.

On this first of the year, in the obscurity of the fog and cold clouds, I wish to remain up this mountain a little longer, waiting for Winter’s chill to bite me. On this warm Winter day, I worry for our little planet, for the forces that we don’t yet know. I hope for a better year than the one that has now since passed, and for a better future not yet here.