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Maybe some fun context, someone did a video on Joyce Chen's "Peking Ravioli". Maybe a good example of the kind of environment that created interest in "Chinese Restaurant" tea blends for serving at home during the 1960s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTJ1WICXL6o *Edit: Joyce Chen did a segment on ...

If I'm reading Pratt correctly, it sounds like he recommends a seven minute steeping time for Bai Hao. :O Has anyone actually done this? I imagine it would create an incredibly bitter mess. An eight-minute steep is the way oolong was served by the Army, as described by The Manual for Army Cooks , 1...

There's clearly two different kinds of oxidation going on among the leaves, and a small amount of jasmine flowers. Tea that have been in tins for decades often have a tin flavour and aroma. That said, if the tin is larger, full, has quality leaves, and sealed in shrink wrap, it can sometimes still ...

sembodja-china-leaf.jpg Another interesting one, Sembodja China-leaf, which despite the name was Formosa Oolong. Sembodja was one of the companies Frank F. Cho worked at before starting Grace Rare Tea. According to Broadcasting/Telecasting Magazine, they had a TV and radio ad campaign lined up to i...

James Norwood Pratt seems to imply that Ch'a Ching was pure Formosa oolong, although I don't know if that is true... When I read 'A Tea Lover's Treasury' I found Pratt's knowledge of Taiwanese teas to be limited. It has the feel of pipe tobacco scented occidental scholars who write about the Orient...

butong-tea.jpg For Indonesian teas, Pratt notes that it is mostly used as a filler tea in the U.S. for teabag blends, although some loose-leaf is available. The main supplier he mentions, Tiffiny Gourmet Coffee of Mount Vernon, seems to be out of business. A particular estate they sold that Pratt m...

cha-ching.jpg It sounds like there was some variation in the blends -- James Norwood Pratt seems to imply that Ch'a Ching was pure Formosa oolong, although I don't know if that is true... chin-chu.jpg dynasty-chinese-restaurant.jpg kame-chineserestaurant.jpg Ch'in Ch'u was Formosa oolong and poucho...

chinese-fortune.jpg I was reminded of these due to the Tea Lover's Treasury thread. Not the tea served in American Chinese restaurants, but rather the named Taiwanese blends that were developed in response to the U.S./China trade embargo. Most of these blends have been retired, I think due to the e...

The next section is on Formosa oolong -- it seems like by 1982 awareness of oolong generally was low enough that it needed more explanation than other teas. "It's not a Black Tea, like Assam, Ceylon or Darjeeling, but I put it here because it's not a Green Tea either." cha-ching.jpg This is a topic ...

Handbooks/Guides An interesting problem here: Is how do you separate books that have detailed dictionaries by tea type as WELL as comprehensive guides, and those that JUST have guides, and those guides that follow brewing, or production, or both? Pasqualini, D. T. & Suet, B. The Time of Tea Got thi...

Not sure if this is the same factory, but a video of the modern process from 2021:

The section on Darjeeling reflects the quirks of the time. In 1982 it had already transitioned to the new greener modern Darjeeling, which was very popular in Germany and Russia, selling for "as much as forty dollars the pound" ($118 in 2021 money), which made it "easily the world's most expensive t...

For Ceylon tea, Pratt mostly relies on vendors previously mentioned -- Twinings, Pannikin, Mark T. Wendell... However, he also suggests writing to the Sri Lanka Tea Board (https://www.pureceylontea.com/), as they were selling tea directly through mail-order at the time. While this is not true today,...

https://lotusier.com/ These are interesting to me, as they seem to be expensive designer gift-pumidors from the UK, which I would not have thought there was a market for... maybe for the Hong Kong businessman working in Canada? The website itself is fairly quiet about their origins, other than havin...

starbucks-coffee-tea-and-spices.jpg Going into descriptions of black tea generally, Pratt starts with Assam -- puzzling over the rarity of first-flush Assams, and, interestingly, relying on coffeeshops that sold tea as suggested sources, as dedicated teashops were still so rare back then. He sugges...