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Saturday, November 21, 2009

Tea and its embodiment of Nature



So most of you only know me through this blog, few of you know that I'm actually a hopeful mathematician. So last night and today I was at a conference at which I gave a talk. But the purpose of this post comes from the thoughts I had on the several hour drive home from the conference.

Driving through the mountains in Pennsylvania tonight, there was something in the air of the slightly moist leaves on a cool evening with sparse civilization around, perhaps a few burning fires. But for a solid half hour if not more of the trip, all I could smell was puerh tea. Now this is odd as I had not had some since my last post here, yet all I could smell and fantasize about was puerh tea.

I'm sure it was one of those flukes with sensory perception, but then I started thinking what was it I was picking up in the aroma? Decaying leaves, a wonderful earthy aroma, and a subtle hint of smoke possibly from a bonfire somewhere in the distance.

This caused me to think back on posts I have made, as I believe I said many times that Yancha makes me think of fall, whereas I believe I also said at least once that puerh is quite like fall. But pondering the differences, I realized yancha reminds me of stuff baked in fall, whereas puerh is the nature in the fall.

And I'm sure we all have ideas about what times of year certain teas remind us of. I have heard many times about green tea being a great symbol of spring. I do not know if thats from the freshness that green tea imparts or the fact that its usually released late spring, and spring is often anticipation for the upcoming release.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

There seems to be a redolence common to both pu-erh and wet leaves or wet earth. This is a not infrequent (though not frequent enough) experience for me: walking along the street after a rain, and flashing back to sessions with excellent and well-aged pu-erh.

Anonymous said...

Ripe or aged Puerh may be a fall tea. In my opinion, the young, green Puerh makes a good spring or early summer tea.

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