Hints and Guesses —

Three Teas in Early Spring

A raccoon climbed the fire escape as we brewed the first tea.

A Raw Wild Pu-Erh from OT-3 presented itself next. This time the tea stood up properly — though it never stands up the same way twice. It shows itself differently to each person.

Pointing out a tea’s specialness often meets resistance. What seems self-evident to one may not be obvious to all. For this reason, many have come to see tea reviews as faintly absurd.

In truth, apart from the cookie-cutter examples, most reviews tell us as much about the author as the tea. Hints and guesses, someone once called them — and that seems about right.

I am almost more inclined to choose a tea whose description lists the previous night’s baseball scores instead of flavor notes. Whoever did that might be onto something.

Even the best intentions in writing about tea often leave one unsatisfied — especially when one truly loves it.

The tea world is full of eccentrics. Generally, it’s the ones who hide it best who stand out — with a few glorious exceptions.

Our third tea was an attempt at a Five Element blend in the way of my teacher.

Mixing teas — true blending — is an exalted art form. Simple on the surface, intricate in practice. The best results tend to arise when one gives over entirely to intuition.

Three Raw teas from the early 1980s, in mixed proportions, were added to three small scoops of an early-1970s citrus-stored Pu-Erh of note.

Aged woods and decayed florals met resinous citrus rind.

As the pot filled, the sun emerged. A chorus of birds began singing in the rafters above our heads — a first. The tea had been selected as a tribute to Spring. The timing felt precise.

My guests played it cool when this was observed.

Then, at the first cup, one was suitably stilled — eye at table height, staring through the tar-colored liquor like a lens pointed toward the infinite.

That response is the only review that matters.

All of this unfolding in the very heart of a bustling city.

dirt 1983 | Raw Pu-Erh

$100.00

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The Cloudwalker Sessions — Pu-Erh Tea — Exploring Tea's Echo

— with empty tea cup

“So, what would a typical tea lesson look like for you in Taiwan?” my guest, a mathematician from Eastern Europe, asked over the second cup of the second tea — a 40 year raw Pu-Erh.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really had a lesson in tea. Not in the sense of being instructed,” I answered. With my teacher, much was done through observation and long exposure. There were no step-by-step guides, no theory, no procedures. One’s ability to tune into the moment made the difference in what could be taken from a session — or a season of sessions.

Much as ripe Pu-Erh attempts to replicate the flavour of old tea in a hurried way, it never quite captures the intricacy — subtlety — of aged raw. The threshold of experience may be pointed to, but cannot be crossed by proxy. In the end, the difference may appear to be “nothing much at all.” Exactly. That not very much at all makes all the difference.

Flavour may be a gateway, but it is also the departure point.

Whether we approach tea through flavour, through rhythm, or through something like the music of the spheres, we judge the tree by its fruit — not by mathematics, but by the aftermath.

How a tea leaves you — its echo — the subtle shift in one’s gaze or gait — says all that can be said about our proximity to the infinite.

Cloudwalker —

— write from Tea, not about it.

Sunday Sessions — Pu-Erh Tea — Dissolving Walls

the session, before

— Victoria

Pu-Erh tea is often encountered slowly — not as flavor, but as atmosphere. This session unfolded in that register.

My guest and I sat facing opposite directions. We interacted when appropriate, but more often sat quietly — eyes closed, or half-resting on whatever happened to be in view. Spacing out. Communing with the invisible.

In my case, that view was a well-weathered brick wall, its surface softened by time — calcium deposits washed and re-washed by rain. At one point I remarked that if the wall began to melt, this would be confirmation that we had arrived at a good place in the session.

My guest faced the harbour — or what would have been the harbour, were it not for the backsides of the Union Club and the Hotel Empress, two stalwarts of the Victoria skyline. Though unseen, the harbour was felt, and seemed to play a role in what followed.

After a long silence, my guest said that just as the second tea was first poured, a blue patch opened in the rainy sky. A shaft of light passed through it and fell directly in his line of sight. I suggested this was an entirely appropriate response from the natural world, as we were drinking a tea of extreme rarity and grace.

This was a tea difficult to perceive in groups — amid traffic, chatter, or distraction. Neither of us could be accused of being overly talkative that day, and so the tea seemed to rise to meet us.

We can prepare the room. Ultimately, it is the tea that decides how it will enter — if it enters at all.

The anthropomorphizing of tea is sometimes dismissed as fantasy or delusion, and it is usually best left out of discussion. It cannot be explained in a way that satisfies. I mention it only as reassurance for those who encounter this experience and wonder if they are imagining things.

They are — no more so than the world itself is the product of imagination. It both is and is not.

What I will say is this: if you reach a point in a tea session where you briefly wonder whether you are influencing the weather with your mind — and then question your own sanity — this is, in fact, a very good sign. You may at last have found the tea you were searching for.

The sun set that day, but the feeling lingered — a subtle pulse in the body. We do not participate in such sessions to learn so much as to remember. We tune the body and mind until the feeling carries us for weeks, until the next meeting with a tea capable of folding memory, thought, and experience into a single moment — both in time, and seemingly outside it.

A tea will show itself differently depending on time, place, weather, and the people present. This once struck me as strange. The strangeness has not worn off, though it has become something I now quietly expect — or at least allow for.

Tea from this session:

dirt 1983

$100.00

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