The Year of the Dragon

Another new year! Brilliant. We’ve now entered the Chinese year of the Dragon, so to celebrate here at the Gilded Teapot, we had a free tea tasting (with fortune cookies) in the shop. Yum yum yum

We tasted some of China’s famous teas – Silver Needle, Dragon Well, beautiful black tea and the fabled Oriental Beauty – one of the world’s rarest Oolongs. What makes Oriental Beauty special and so darn delicious is something rather unusual. This tea comes from Taiwan and can only be produced every few years, because it needs a visitor – the Tea Jassid to be precise. These little aphids come to live on the tea plants, and to defend itself against these guests, the plant produces an enzyme to defend itself. At this point the leaf and the bud are picked and it this that makes the tea. The end result is a beautiful citrus muscatel brew the colour of Golden Syrup. Sublime.

So what else has been going on? Well, to brew our China teas we had a brand new piece of tea brewing equipment to play with!

These lovely fellas are the end result of a brilliant collaboration between potter extraordinaire Linda Bloomfield and two professional tea tasters and artisan importers. They’re a modern twist on the traditional Chinese Gaiwan, a lidded cup used for tea brewing, but these are much larger with a pouring lip and rounded top to give maximum perfume from the leaves after they’ve been brewed. So, a big hello to our new Gaiwans! I wonder how we ever managed without them.

And it hasn’t just been Chinese New Year – last week was the first official Farmhouse Breakfast Week, so we went down to Washingpool Farm just outside of Bridport, Gaiwans in hand, to brew some tasty breakfast teas. We were right next door to the tasty folks of Denhay bacon, so we were trying to find which was the best tea to have with a bacon sarnie – we had two winners! The LaKyrsiew tea from northern India and Ceylon Kenilworth.

So, to China and back again. It’s been a fun week!

A New Year

A new year and a new blog that’s all about tea and us here at The Gilded Teapot. So welcome aboard! We’ll be keeping you updated on everything going on here – and boy do we have a lot planned!

So, a big hello to you. Here’s a little bit about us – I’m Jo, and I opened a brand new tea and coffee specialists in Dorchester, Dorset a little over a year ago. Tired of all the industrial tea bagged offerings on local supermarket shelves, we decided to bring loose leaf tea and local freshly roasted coffee to our little shop in an old tobacconists shop. And what a year it’s been so far – over one hundred teas and fourteen coffees later, we’ve got our website up and are planning all sorts of tea events and goings on for the next year…

You can follow us right here on this blog, and also on Twitter and Facebook so you’ll always be in touch with what’s cooking here at the teapot.

I love hearing about people’s first tea and coffee experiences that got them into loving the brew – be it supping Tibetan tea with butter or sipping Moroccan mint in a marketplace, do tell us what it was that got you started. Here’s what did it for me:

My family have always been big tea drinkers, and my Grandparents ran a hotel – my brother and I used to kick around in the kitchens during school holidays, and once we went to the Cash and Carry on their usual supply run (we loved riding on the big flatbed trollies). My Grandparents bought an industrial sack jam packed full of tea bags, and this particular one was having a giveaway – do you remember those dolls called Trolls? The ones with the hair? Well, there was one of these trolls in the tea sack, and one of the guys in the kitchen gave it to me. I must admit, I wasn’t really into the Trolls – I found them a bit scary to be honest, but I loved this one. Because this Troll was different – this Troll’s hair smelled of tea.

And that’s how it all began.

So thank you, Trolls and thank you, tea.

Happy New Year!