Jasmine Pearls got me hooked on tea. The pearls are a type of green tea that is hand rolled and infused with jasmine scent. After my first cup of Jasmine Pearls, I started to search for every type of tea, exploring new flavors. Now, 10 years later, I know a lot more about tea, but I am still fascinated by the varieties of tastes, textures, brewing methods, names, and myths.
Jasmine Pearls, pre-brewing:
I’ve heard stories that some use tea leaves to tell your fortune. I do not really believe in fortunes, but I do enjoy watching tea leaves brewing because interesting shapes, patterns and scenes emerge. For some teas, watching the leaves unfurl is interesting, while with other teas, it is interesting to watch the tea flavor the water.
Pu-erh tea falls into the latter category, as it can be interesting to watch the tea turn the water a deep, dark red. Pu-erh is an aged tea that has an earthy flavor, it is lower in caffeine than black tea and is often made into tuo-cha’s which are compressed tea cakes, wrapped in parchment for storage. This tuo-cha was in the shape of a bird’s nest:
To brew, I just drop a tuo cha into a pot of water and it very slowly breaks down and brews from the bottom, creating these interesting scenes I mentioned earlier:
Someone compared the scene in the tea pot to Ayer’s Rock. What do you see?
A photograph of Jade green tea on a New Yorker article.
I was just playing around with the video on my new 5D Mark II, and this is my first clip. It is completely unedited. The footage is of some tea—dragonwell green tea from China—brewing in a french press. I took this at Driade, a coffee, tea and cigar shop in Chapel Hill, NC.
Make sure you watch the video in 1080p!
I am going to be taking a lot of short clips so be on the lookout for more polished work (shot on a tripod!) in the near future.
