Yame Tea Map
Yame Tea Map Yame city, Fukuoka is a consistent origin site of Japan’s best gyokuro teas. In the very dark green (looks black) is an outline of every tea farm […]
Matcha Blending Attempts in 2024
Matcha Blending Attempts in 2024 I’ve gotta say: grinding matcha is a lot of work. It’s worth it when you can drink your creation, or see the look of happiness […]
Gan and Briskness
Gan and BrisknessWhy traditional black tea drinkers from around the world would love Shui Xian I don’t consider myself a traditional black tea drinker, but over my career in tea […]
Darjeeling 2024
Hello! I have purchased and tasted through 4 teas from India at the selection of Praveen from TeaGardenia — an excellent source for high quality Darjeeling’s. These teas are available […]
Milk and Sugar in Tea (Comprehensive Article)
Milk and Sugar in Tea. A generally ignored topic in my mind. Friends, I’ve been sitting on these notes for a couple years. Hidden away in a folder, in a […]
How does the process of brewing tea work
October 5th 2023 by Joshua Linvershttps://www.sommerier.com/?p=3463 I think it’s best as an analogy. As a person who brews tea, you’re not an artist, you’re more of a manager. It’s up […]
The Lilac Festival 2023
What an experience. I’m grateful to Carino for allowing me to participate independently as ‘sommerier’ while they all worked their asses off. The night before I spent nearly 4 hours […]
Shikoku Tea Map
Shikoku Tea Map: Since I began doing my ‘subscription box’ which is not a subscription… due to lack of eCommerce skills… I’ve had to double down on making educational content. […]
Genmaicha (making my own blend)
Genmaicha (making my own blend) The famous Japanese blend of rice and tea. I’ve made my own versions several times but its always been fast and loose – an unmeasured, […]
Factors that Influence Enjoyment of Tea
When we sit down with a cup of tea, we continue a journey enabled by millions of years of evolution in both our bodies and the tea plant. Physical and […]
Tasting Notes and their Relevance
“The nose knows things that the mind does not understand” – Blaise Pascal The benevolent reason for tasting notes to exist and be shared is to inform our colleagues/friends/customers about […]
Chinese Tea Harvest Terminology
Chinese Tea Terminology Note: The Gregorian dates presented in this post are only relevant in 2021 as they are based on the Lunar calendar. Hello everyone! Let’s run through an […]
Sencha brewing fun with Mine no Kaori
It’s Wednesday morning and my daughter is in school. I finished reading my novel ‘Buddenbrooks’ thanks to a stint of several 4+ hour reading sessions. It’s a quite lengthy classic […]
Matcha Cultivar Comparison
Matcha Cultivar Comparison As some of you may know, I am planning to get into the world of selling matcha on this site and preparing it in my tea room […]
Yunnan Golden Buds
If I tried to tell you what this tea smells like, I’d say a blend of Nesquik powder (powdered chocolate drink mix), brulee’d sugar (the caramelized sugar on top of […]
Does Teaware make better tea?
(short answer: yes, but) I want you to come to your own conclusion, and to help you do that, I’ll lay out as much relevant information as I’m able to. […]
Tea in the Future
The Connoisseur MarketCigars, Whiskey, Wine, Coffee, Sake, Cocktails, … Tea? Why is it that someone will spend $40 on an ounce of whiskey? A person might argue the fact that […]
Tea in the Present
Tea is the most popular beverage in the world with huge amounts of production coming out of the worlds most populated areas: China, India, and Japan. The US makes a […]
Health Benefits
I’ll make no claims of tea preventing cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, low blood pressure, etc. This is not a topic that I am interested in, nor one I want to […]
A Primer on Yellow Tea
https://www.sommerier.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Yellow-tea.mp4
A Primer on White Tea
A little series I’ll start doing, hopefully soon with a better mic and a script. 🙂
Tie Guan Yin, Ratio Test Results
Iron Goddess of Mercy (Tie Guan Yin) has a very specific flavor in the world of tea, especially when it’s made in the modern style (like the one I sell). […]
Mi Lan Xiang Ratio Test Results
Drinking and recording my notes of drinking the phoenix oolong ‘Wudong Mi Lan Xiang’ that I sell (the cheaper of the 2), I made some interesting observations. All of the […]
Bai Mu Dan, A Painting of Noon in October
Today I had a lot of tea. I got into my bag of Bai Mu Dan and tried to figure out how to brew it the best I can. It […]
Edible Tea Cups
I was drinking a Soufuu sencha sample yesterday, one of the many single cultivar creations by Ashikubo Tea Works that I can consider to pick up in a future order. […]
‘Perfection’ Might Not Be Ideal?
Over the past weeks, I developed a new way to taste tea. I’ve covered it already in 2 other posts so I wont get into it here past a brief […]
How to Brew Tea Well
Brewing tea well equates to consistency, and this consistency can be developed in two ways: with technology or intuition. In the video above, water temperature is deduced by the size […]
Gyokuro Analogy
In June 2017 I wrote a small fictional piece about gyokuro as the highlight of our tea menu at Q Haute Cuisine. Today I was browsing reddit and saw a […]
Salted Water for Tea
Above: 0.15g (roughly) of kosher salt, thumbnail for comparison. Adding a pinch of salt to tea to improve its flavor was already common knowledge to tea drinkers by the year […]
Making Houjicha (Roasted Green Tea) at Home
Do you have green tea which you bought years ago still sitting in the cupboard? If yes, it’s probably not very good anymore. Rather than throwing it out you can […]
What happens to tea over time? What can you do with old tea?
What happens to tea over time? What can you do with old tea? You might have heard that tea has a shelf life and the claim that you should drink […]
Evaluating Tea
A disclaimer before we begin: This is not a science, this is entirely opinion based. Over the years of discovering how to assess tea better I have arrived at a […]
A Musical Analogy of Tea
A Musical Analogy:This is still a work in progress, but I think if you could imagine such an abstract concept that tea is music, and that each tea type (eg: […]
Pairing Tea with Food
Part 1) Introduction:If a person has only experienced unsalted bread for their whole life and was then exposed to bread with an appropriate amount of salt, I believe their life […]
Wine and Tea
Today on reddit I saw an article comparing wine and tea [link here]. I responded to the post with my comments on his article, but I feel I can do […]
The Best of the Best
I was thinking: What are the best tea’s I’ve had from memory and where do they come from? I made a list! You can hover over the names for a […]
The History of Tea
If you would rather watch a video of me talking than reading this, a good amount of this article is presented as a video. I’m new to making videos, it […]
Chinese Green Tea Battle Royale 2020
With my most recent shipment of tea for business I purchased a couple hundred grams of various highly esteemed green teas for personal consumption. I’ve had a strange sleeping schedule […]
Gyokuro (and Tea of the Sages)
Gyokuro is on my short lists of favorite teas. I’m reading a book called ‘Tea of the Sages’ by Patricia Jane Graham which included the origin story of gyokuro. I’ll […]
Gongfucha and Chado — Inspiration from Inspiration
Recently on MarshalN‘s blog I came across a very interesting article about the origins of Gongfucha (China’s ceremonial tea preparation). I’ve included a summary of what I think the important […]
Iron vs. Silver II
Following up on my previous post I would like to share information about brewing different teas with water boiled in an iron kettle vs a silver kettle. The test was […]
Jasmine Tea
I’ll eventually add to this (I think), I didn’t proof read it yet and decided to pump this out before I hit the bed (4:30am wooo….) There are a couple […]
Iron vs. Silver
Recently I have found myself in a position to purchase a 990 grade silver tea kettle. It has been my goal for many years to contribute to the discussion on […]
Hibiscus
Today I showed up at work 2 hours earlier than I needed to because I misread my schedule. Naturally I sat down with a flight of hibiscus and drank until […]
Lavender
Well this was unexpected. After the article about Chamomile I felt I should get to know 2 other major herbal ’tisanes’ — Lavender and Hibiscus. Herbal teas have always been […]
Chamomile
Of all the 2019 teas I have imported, my sampling this year starts with Chamomile. It was surprisingly hard to brew a tolerable or even acceptable flavor. To reach the […]
Emerald Crystal – Flight of Matcha
As I was enjoying a bowl of matcha whilst daydreaming on one sunny afternoon, I thought that doing a flight of matcha is akin to starting a fantasy adventure in […]
Matcha 2018
I recently purchased a ‘comparative set’ of matcha from yunomi.life ranging from ‘culinary grade’ to ‘master class ceremonial’ It’s Saturday June 30th, before I started work I flew through all […]
Q Haute Cuisine Modern Tea July 2018 (Part 1)
So I’ve started planning out the tea selection for our next ‘Modern Tea’ event at Q Haute Cuisine. Generally the focus of ‘Modern Tea’ is education of the tea and […]
Magnoila Berries / Schisandra Berries
On a recent episode of Shokugeki no Soma (‘Food Wars’ in English) the students were studying regional foods of Hokkaido, Japan. A tea made of ‘Magnolia Berries’ aka Schisandra Berries […]
Care for your Tetsubin!
Finally something important I feel I can contribute to the tea world — my poor habits of caring for my iron kettle (tetsubin) I am starting to develop some bad […]
Christmas Tasting Flight of Mi Lan Xiang
I brought in some tea so that people (maybe you!) can do a taste comparison between low, high, and very high quality tea of the same type and see in […]
Tea for Sale
Hey everyone, skip to the bottom if you are just here to see what I’ve got to sell. It’s been a wild few months (since June really), everything great. The […]
‘The Aurora’
Four-Dimensional Space: “Being three-dimensional, we are only able to see the world with our eyes in two dimensions. A four-dimensional being would be able to see the world in three […]
‘The Geisha’
‘The Geisha’ 2017 Phoenix Oolong Dan Zhu Jiang Hua Xiang (The Fragrance of Ginger Flowers) A beautiful young woman in tragic circumstances began to work as a geisha. She practiced […]
Maillard Reaction
Feeling a little sick, I guess this is something I’ve been fending off while I was busy with the ‘Big Taste’. I had a nap today, now I’m up at […]
Building a memory
We encounter so many things a day, from smells, thoughts, ambient sounds, what makes something memorable? I think the short answer is consciousness, and in particular; Reading the atmosphere and […]
Tea Interview Prep!
Personal: Where did you learn? I’ve learned what I know from books, blogs, forums, and of course a lot of focused tasting. teachat.com hojotea.com marshaln.com The Tea Companion by Jane […]
Where to start with tea-ware?
Let me start by saying my work life and home life are polar opposites when it comes to tea. At Q Haute we brew our tea in a wine carafe, […]
Stagnation
:/ Brick wall. Work life has gotten kind of boring. I can keep on trucking along and doing what I’m doing, but I don’t really feel any satisfaction — I’m […]
Tie Guan Yin
Some of our wonderful regulars came into the restaurant for lunch today and got into the duck shit tea (it was in the building for less than an hour, and […]
Duck Shit, and the tea Plateau.
Soon enough, our tea list will hit a plateau. There isn’t much I feel I could change to diversify it without just being nitpicky and careless with our money. With […]
Chaga-khan lol
Chaka, Chaka, Chaka, Chaka Khan Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan Chaka Khan, let me rock you Let me rock you, Chaka Khan Let me rock you, that’s all I […]
Just another monday~
Life’s just too good sometimes. They don’t happen often, but days like this literally make months at a time for me. #hyperbolictimechamber, #horyshet, #icame Chateau de Chevalier 2004 Domaine Jean […]
Gyokuro for Bob & Margaret
Coming up on mothers day, some very special customers are coming in for brunch at Q. They had such a great night when they attended dinner the last time, that […]
Fook Ming Tong Tea Shop, Anxi Crown Grade Tie Guan Yin
Nose: Honeysuckle, fresh grass, blooming bushes, fish Palate: Light bitterness like Chinese brocolli Sunflower heads at the time you pick the seeds out Mild flavours with a rich texture The […]
Q Haute Modern Tea
This menu was a fucking masterpiece, hands down one of the best ‘event dinners’ that we’ve done. I’ve gotta be one of the worst procrastinators around, deadlines are certainly my […]
Cultivars of Japan, the future of Japanese Tea
Cultivars of Japan, the future of Japanese tea Josh Linvers, Umijoshi @ teachat.com ————————————————————————————————————————————— In the 1970s, alongside the economic growth of Japan, drinking green tea was getting more and […]
Health Benefits of Tea
I’ve read into the anti-oxidant stuff around the forum, and while the popular opinion seems to be AO’s are bullshit or bad for you, my knowledge and thoughts on them […]