It's All About Tea

If you are on the path of brewing loose-leaf teas and learning Gong Fu Cha, you have undoubtedly heard of yixing clay teapots. You start browsing the subject and find bits and pieces of information full of marketing hype, often conflicting, leaving you even more confused. 

We hope this article will help you better understand yixing clay, figure out which type of yixing teapot you need, why you need it, and what to pay attention to when shopping for one. (Read more)

Tea drinkers worldwide have a special spot in their hearts for the warm, roasted notes of Wuyi Mountain tea (yancha) with its unforgettable Yan Yun. Within the vast history of tea, the Wuyi Mountains are a relatively new growing region. Nonetheless, they continue to produce mesmerizing tea, which we cannot stop talking about. This time, we will go a little more into detail about the different growing regions within Wuyi Shan (Wuyi Mountain) itself.  (Read more)

Have you ever heard about Chabana before? It’s similar to Ikebana — Japanese flower arrangement. However, Chabana (茶花) is a flower arrangement explicitly done for tea ceremonies. Cha meaning tea, and bana meaning flower in Japanese. (Read more)

Yue Guang Bai White Tea, or White Moonlight, is a type of Yunnan tea, which grows in Yunnan province. The region where farmers produce the world’s supply of pu-erh tea. Interestingly enough, there is still some debate whether Yue Guang Bai should be categorized as a white tea, a pu-erh, or perhaps even have an entire tea category of its own! What we do know, however, is that this White Moonlight is incredibly mellow and delicious, with notes of honey and apricots. One would have difficulty not falling in love with this unique craft tea! (Read more).

Gong Fu tea is the Chinese tea ceremony, the Chinese way of drinking tea. Literally, Gong Fu Cha means "tea made with effort", referring to the skill, time, and attention involved in brewing tea well. Gong Fu cha is quite different from the western way of preparing tea. To make tea the Gong Fu way, we need a proper tea set. These are generally small tea utensils, like a teapot or gaiwan, small tea cups, and more.

Furthermore, we brew big amounts of tea leaves in the small teapots. Oftentimes, the teapot will be practically filled to the brim with tea leaves, although this will depend on the type of tea we're brewing. We also must pay attention to the proper water temperature and tea brewing times. (Read more)