Hi folks!  Things are cooling down here in the Midwest and many folks are looking for a good cup of hot tea!  I’ve just the thing.  “Four Leaves Ripe” pu’er tea in both loose leaf and beengs (compressed into round 250 gram cakes)!  After many sittings with a myriad of different ripened pu’er leaves, I finally tweaked a blend that is already selling like well,  hot tea   The leaves used in this MandalaTea exclusive blend are spring-picked leaves and were ripened in 2006 and 2007 by one of our very favorite tea processors.  Delicious strong and thick like espresso or light and subtle, reminiscent of walks in the Stone Forest not far from Kunming in the Yunnan province of China.

This tea is really delicious if I do say so myself and we’ve had many repeat buyers already, some of whom are quite picky about their ripe pu’er teas (me, too).  You may take a look at the “Four Leaves Ripe” cake at our online tea shop!  We’ll have the loose-leaf up there soon, I promise.  We just finished blending it and will have pics soon!!  Our friend, Ian Llanas, and Sarah got the lovely label together.

And for goodness sake, if you want to try it, stop on in and share a cup with us!

Many good wishes,

Garret

In between massages today, I have been sipping on some fine pu’er tea in the form of a mini-tuo.  These are small, single-serving cakes or bricks of pu’er tea, much smaller versions than their bigger brothers and sisters.  They are convenient in that one does not need to go through the work of breaking apart a larger cake nor guess as to how much to use.  And guess, what?  Some of them are really tasty!  We sampled many while in China and continue to test them out when we have samples sent to us from our connections in China.  You can find quite a variety of them in our tea shop and rest assured, there are always new ones on the way!  We choose the best we can find for ourselves, and for you!

Unwrap the mini-tuo, place it in your pot or gaiwan, and pour boiling water over it.  Let it warm up like that for 20 seconds and discard that liquid, using it to warm your sharing pitcher and then your serving cups.  Pour more boiling water over it and steep away!  For those who like a strong cup, do a longer initial steeping,  as in 3 to 5 minutes.  For a more delicate cup and many repeated steepings (giving you the opportunity to taste the tea as it opens up, start out with a couple 30 second infusions and gradually increase time from there!  Try it every which way you can.  You can’t go wrong.

Rockin’ in the tea world,

Garret