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Thursday, November 5, 2009

Blending Tea...

I've always had mixed feelings on blends, and while I do enjoy a good Earl Grey or Irish Breakfast on occasion, I often feel that the sum of the parts is of lesser quality than each individually. But this has troubling interpretations when viewing it in light of certain teas.

I had the two Jing Tea shop Shui Xians left and together they had enough for one pot full. In retrospect I should have practiced with my small gaiwan as I've been a bit out of practice with my gaiwan. But I combined the two into my yixing and brewed. It is rather dissapointing to say the least, its like the characteristics that make each one unique are fighting with each other, and they do not come together elegantly.

I understand that there are blenders out there whose sole purpose is to produce consistent results, and avoid any unharmoneous results, but my view on blends holds the same for my view with Whiskey.

A blend is never as good as its components though ultimately easier to reproduce within a very small margin of error.

What does this mean with Tea?

Well in puerh it seems all mass marketed cakes are blends, in part as it is the only way to get such a massive quantity, so these and our breakfast blends will not taste much different ten years from now than they do now, bar any major environmental or industrial changes. But the question is do you want to be tasting the exact same tea for 10 years straight over many different production runs?

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