Gongfu tea

I don't remember exactly what, um, you turned me on here, but I, I was just starting to research more about the, the teas.

And I have tried before sort of like the, the Chinese way of brewing or Gong Fu-

Okay

... tea, essentially where you just brew instead of putting the water in for several minutes, or the tea in the water for several minutes.

Just one.

A friend of mine, who is very deeply into this world and was very patient in explaining things, made it for me in a proper Gong Fu style.

Small clay pot, small cups, multiple short infusions.

We sat and drank it through maybe eight or ten infusions and talked about what we noticed each time.

I find myself oddly fond of it.

Let me talk about the ceremony of making tea, the ritual dimension, because this is something that people outside the hobby often find puzzling, or precious, or both.

In Chinese Gong Fu Cha practice, Gong fuo tier meaning not martial arts but skill developed through practice and time.

Same root.

elevate your appreciation of tea in many of these things you might see if you are a wine aficionado so step one will be look at your loose leaf tea leaves appreciate their color their texture whether it be an oolong or a white or a poo or whatever it is or it's the same smell the leaves smell the leaves When you steep them, as soon as they hit the water, open up the lid and smell them because there's going to be a special smell.

You see a lot of these played on Gong Fu.

When you do Gong Fu, these are all things that you do.

You pass around the leaves, you know, before you steep them and then you smell the lid and all these things like that.

So when it comes to tasting much of taste, the gustatory aspect is really the olfactory aspect, meaning there's a very intimate connection between tasting and smelling.

Look at the leaves dry, and then look at the leaves wet as well.

Smell the wet leaves.

And gung fu is the best way to do this, but you don't have to gung fu.

And so, um, I paid about-- I would pay about $20 for an ancient tree tea that you...

I would make myself, uh, Gong Fu style, and that's infusing it maybe 10, 15 times over about an hour.

Yeah.

And I'd get this real, uh, spirit coming through this plant, and I think there's something to be said about, uh, ingesting a plant that is potentially, uh, 500 or even 1,000 years of age.