SOMF, Song of Misty Forests
This article kind of sucks. It’s unfinished. I’ll tend to it as soon as I can. Sorry friends.
Tai Ping Hou Kui (TPHK) is a renowned, high‑cost, luxury Chinese green tea with a beautiful and unusual leaf appearance. Despite its fame, I’ve never chosen to stock it until now. Each season I sift through dozens of green teas, choosing those that meet my criteria of having high‑impact flavor and clear aroma. Though I’d love to carry every ultra‑premium style of Chinese green tea at once, my current customer base doesn’t support it. For past few years I’ve showcased Chinese favorites like Anji Bai Cha, Bi Luo Chun and Long Jing. It would seem that most North Americans are not after the gangster green teas of China, so to ease this new market into enjoying them, I’ve brought in teas like Enshi Lu Yu, Anhua Song Zhen, and Meng Ding Gan Lu for daily drinking.
As someone who also sells Japanese teas, which tend to be much bolder and straightforward than their Chinese counterparts, I’ve realized that I’ve been exclusively importing Chinese teas that approximate that represent intensity (within the Chinese spectrum); and on reflection of this, I’ve been unfairly forcing something intrinsically more delicate into my vision of “power” and in doing so, perhaps have been misrepresenting their true character.
I’ve given some recent thought to “what is the meaning of Chinese green tea? What does it represent in the world of taste that is unable to be produced elsewhere” and my current answer is: Chinese green teas capture the quintessential aroma of everyday nature. It’s not something we give much conscious thought to, “the fragrance of everyday” because really, there’s no such fragrance. February 10th smells different than July 1st, different from October 25th. I believe that if given fragrance as a multiple choice test, the average person would do quite well in their ability to differentiate the above dates, but as we live in them, we’re blind to their beauty. I think this is something that Chinese tea does so well, an aromatic replication of movements in nature. I think the idyllic hillside of windows xp is on full display in the fragrance of tai ping hou kui. It’s not a powerhouse that jumps out at you like what’s to be expected from Japanese greens, but one that really lets your mind wander.
With that in mind, I’m finally offering TPHK as the representative of Chinese delicate tea, the spot it deserves. TPHK is a very carefully shaped tea, and is incredibly fragile, it will be sold in very small portions in order to preserve its appearance.
The video above displays the tea being prepared in this so-called ‘Grandpa style’ — you would eventually drink the tea right off the top of the leaves; they’ll stay sunken at the bottom of the cup and wont really move. If some tea gets in your mouth, chew it and swallow it, or spit it out — grandpa style.
In the production of this tea, there is an interesting process where the pickled leaves are twisted lengthwise, laid out, and flattened, usually by a rolling pin device over a cotton mesh.
The label of this tea is a play off of last years ‘Scary Fragrance’ Label, I had a lot of fun with it, and it has since inspired some other projects. Art is really great, eh?
