While in Suzhou, China last week I bought some of the famous tea from the area.
I bought the tea in a little shop that also sold other items like drinks and snacks.
You can see the tea cans on the shelf. They were all empty. The tea itself was in the freezer that is covered with the pictures of fruit.
Here is a picture of some of the tea in the freezer. I bought some from this bag to bring home with me. I bought two varieties of the tea and tried one of them tonight.
Here I am getting ready to try the Bi Lou Chun tea from Suzhou.
The characters on the canister translate to Bi Luo Chun.
Bi Luo Chun basically means green snail spring.
The tea is grown in the mountains across the lake west of Suzhou.
Here you see a picture of the tea leaves and can understand why it is called green snail. The tea leaves are rolled up into little balls that look like snail meat. The tea is harvested in the spring, is pan fired to stop the oxidation process, and is then hand rolled. This is how it gets the distinctive shape of the leaves.
Here the leaves are in my infuser waiting for the tea kettle to finish heating the water to about 185 degrees. This green tea needs a lower temperature since the leaves are so delicate.
Here the leaves have opened up while infusing and are imparting their flavor to the water. I infused the tea for about two minutes.
The aroma of the tea is very strong and distinctive. In fact the original name of this tea in Chinese meant scary fragrance. There is an interesting story about a young girl who was picking tea and carried some of the leaves against her bare skin. Her body heat caused the tea leaves to give off a strong fragrance.
Here the tea is ready for me to try. The tea has a nice color and the aroma is very interesting. It has a very strong aroma that is vegetal with some fruity notes.
The taste is also vegetal, but it is also a bit sweet and nutty. One site that I found described the taste as artichoke, chestnut and poundcake.
I am looking forward to see how the taste changes in further infusions. The second infusion has a slightly different taste as is usually the case.
Bi luo chun is considered one of the Famous Teas of China. Some say that it is the best green tea, while others give precedence to longjing or Dragon Well tea. In any case, it is definitely distinctive.
I will have to try the other variety soon and see how much different it is.
I will slowly get to all the tea that I bought while in China 🙂
Steven
Here you can see my ragged lawn, including some roses that were laying over onto the ground.
Here you can see a bit how tall the grass was getting. It actually looked pretty cool with the wind blowing over it, but it was time to get it under control.
The grass was soon cut short. However, I didn’t do any trimming. It can look ragged around the edges for a week or so before I get ready for my next trip.
My backyard was worse than the front with a row of volunteer trees sprouting up.
The back yard was soon cleaned up. I also cut off a large branch from one of my trees that was getting too close to the roof. I need to do more tree work, but it must wait.
Braman's Wanderings 