telophase: (Saiyuki - drinking)
telophase ([personal profile] telophase) wrote2009-03-12 10:18 am
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Tea blends

I was poking back at Adagio Teas, to see what they'd come up with since the last time I'd been there.* They offer custom blends of teas now - you can blend like mad and not be obligated to buy - and while I knew about it, I hadn't paid much attention to it.

But now ... I feel inspired to create a Sanzo-themed tea, and have done so. It's currently marked private, until I feel it's right (and dare to buy it). At the moment it's 80% gunpowder and 20% lapsang souchong. Gunpowder is a green tea whose leaves are rolled into little 'bullets,' described as producing a full-bodied cup with a hint of smokiness. Lapsang souchong is a tea formed by smoking the tea leaves over a fire, and when it's brewed it smells like wood smoke.** You either love it or hate it, and I love it. You can toss some into another kind of tea when brewing to produce a nice hint of smoke.

Whether I like the blend or not...? The teas I like seem to be described as "smoky" (although not to the literal extent that Lapsang Souchong is), so there's a possibility, although I tend not to like green teas. Hm.


Anyway ... ideas for tea blends for the rest of them? I'd think that Golden Monkey might be a large component of Goku's tea, while Hakkai might sip demurely on an oolong. If you wanted to be literal, Gojyo might be a rooibos (a.k.a. red tea), but ... I really don't like rooibos. :)




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* [livejournal.com profile] chomiji, of the things off my wishlist you sent, I really love the Fujian Baroque. Yum!

** To the point where I don't brew it at work, because otherwise people from down the hall will be sticking their heads into the office, asking what's on fire. No joke.

[identity profile] vom-marlowe.livejournal.com 2009-03-12 04:28 pm (UTC)(link)
I enjoy their tea blends a lot. I get an order of my blend each month.
https://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/blend.html?blend=3282
It's not a particular character, but it makes me think of manga and fanfic and story kinks. Sort of wonderfully complex. (I can't have a lot of straight black tea, except for certain types. I can do the Yunnans just fine. I think Sanzo would be a Yunnan Noir kind of guy.)

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2009-03-12 06:36 pm (UTC)(link)
The reason I'm angled more towards the green teas for Sanzo is mostly idiosyncratic - I associate green teas with monks due to the only bowl of green tea I've really liked was drunk at a temple in Kita-Kamakura, to a backdrop of chanting from a few buildings over. (Not to mention the bitterness of green tea matches the BITTERNESS OF HIS HEART!!!)