teakkurim

4 tamuz 5781 my friends came over last night and one of them is into tea and recently got some stuff from Enthea in PDX (my old roommate, who got me into gong fu cha, is friends with the owner) so we did a trade. i got a lil bit of some green tea and a dan cong. i don’t normally drink green tea but i wanted to use it as a comparison for a future tea sesh i want to do with another friend who likes green. in exchange i gave some 07 peacock yiwu blend form puerhjunky, a 2011 yiwu stored in Taiwan, and 2020 fujian white and some aged white from 2014. i wanted to hook them up.   this felt good. sharing tea with people and giving them some things that are normally pretty hard to get. up next, a tea tasting with the another friend as i continue to introduce them to puer. the first dose is always free… xoxo, atzei besamim  

7 adar 5781   after posting all these pictures of snow, i thought i’d share something a bit warmer. here is me pouring tea in my friend’s back yard back from the end of summer in 2020. look how pretty my face is! it’s an aged white tea and it was really nice.      here’s to more sunny tea sharing with friends :)   xoxo, atzei besamim

15 shvat 5781 today is the jewish new year of the trees. yaaaaaay!  like mnay jewish holidays it occurs on the full moon for extra magic sparkles.   why is today the new year of the trees you may ask. the tradition holds that during this time of year is when the sap in the trees starts flowing. this is a transition for the trees’ life cycle and is the beginning of them ‘waking up’ for spring.   this holiday was originally a time for israelites to mark when trees were planted or started bearing fruit for detaied tithing reasons that i dont fully understand... in the 1500s, kabbalists started to reframe the holiday in a new light choosing to focus on fruits and the beauty trees bring to our world. these sages developed a seder similar in style to Passover where people would gather to eat fruit, drink wine, and share teachings about nature. incase you didn’t know, there are a lot of teachings in Judaism about trees. the foundational ‘tree of life’ being just the beginning....

3 tevet 5781  my go to teas in the winter are puers and aged white teas. im here for the fresh sheng as well as the aged. this doesn’t sound like a big revelation because these are already teas i really like independent of the season. these are my go to teas in addition to dan congs so there is nothing too astounding about this revelation. so why do i like them during this time of year in particular? im about to get kinda woo, look out.   in the winter i spend more time indoors than i wish i did. i still go out into the woods and go for walks, but i have a hard time with the cold. its not bad out here in the PNW, but im still indoors more than i wish i was. i need the woods and being outside to not get too depressed. it makes me happy and helps me connect to the world and the things i love in it. the less im outside, the less i get to connect in that way and i have to find other ways to connect. tea is one of those ways for me.   puer and white tea both hold a certain qi ...