Learning about Puer

I've been diving, head first into the world of Puer tea lately and learning much ^^

I've just finished doing a tasting of a 06' Raw puehr and I felt that it was quite amazing. With what I can precieve as having great potential for growth. I feel that there is a slight green astringency not that much different from a young white sauvignon wine. Perhaps that is why I have such a great affinity for Puer tea.

After learning much about Chinese Medicine, wine and beer tastings are now to become things of rarity in my life due to the overall constitution of myself. So upon this discovery and the dissapointing news of my teachers and peers, that Alcohol may not be the best things for more. More rather I'm to some degree allergic to alcohol in an Oriental Medicine Sense. My heart had broken, into not many small pieces, no no no, but into dust. Wine a beer tastings had been such a love for me for so many years. The ability to descern tastes, smells, and even with the great ones, the envisionment of where the brewmaster or wine maker wanted one to feel when drinking something. Okay, maybe that's alittle farfetched but that's what I feel sometimes when I taste something mind blowing. It's alittle bit like Pixar's Ratatouille's Remy, When he eats something, there is a fanciful world that literally Explodes around him, The blend and sexually melding of flavors and smells, The Foreplay on the tongue of the vast limitless combinations and concoctions of ingredients.

When the film came out, I was truly in love. Not because it was a great film, but because it spoke the same language to me. As if finally someone in the media verse had grasped the idea of what is so truly a emotional and yet deeply visceral sensation such that is taste. Absolutely wonderful. So can you imagine the heartbreak that I had when I was told that Alcohol should most indefinatly be removed from my diet?!? I thought Preposturous, You must be insane. To me it was the equivalent of telling a Fish that they were allergic to water!!!

So what did I do the day that I was told the bad news.

I had a drink ^^ I had a 03' Australian Railroad Shiraz, That was given to me as a gift along with a Ribeye that I marinaded in Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Rosemary, Oregano and Salt & Pepper. Let sit for about 1 hour and sprinkled some of the wine on the meat. Put it through a spit and let it rotisserie for about 30 mins at about 450 degrees F. Made a side of saffron and garlic sauted spinich with a dash of aged balsamic vinegar, and some korean kimchee. I reveled in that meal as if it was my last. Let's just say that, in that moment when i smelled the wine, smelled the aroma of roasted ribeye, the glistening sight of the fat and oils with the textured rough coarse ness of herbs and the herbally aromatic scents of saffron with Spinich, and the pungency of pickled cabbage. Yea, oh yea, let's just say that I have yet to have another meal that rivaled the one on that day. Not because it was the ingredients, nor the fact that everything was made and prepared to perfection, no. It was because I dove into that plate as if it were my last and final true tasting of food. My last stand against all that was against me from tasting anything enjoyable again. It was my Alamo.

Months passed after my last stand, Life had become stagnant. I preoccupied my mind with other things, such as studying and movies. I was told that I could still have the occasional wine and beer here and there, but it just wasn't the same anymore. The Honeymoon I suppose one could say was over. What eles could there possible be for an ex chef to yearn for on his veteran tongue. What eles could stimulate my mind and an exercise of thought, taste, smell, and imagination? I did just about everything to be able to practice the skill that I had so long honed for so many years in Kitchens and Restaurants all up and down the eastern seaboard and abroad. I tried with powdered herbs in the pharmacy at school, even the archaic old raw herbs, even though I was advised not to. I tried exotic fruits, and other rare ingredients. But alas, there was nothing in the world as complex and diverse as the world that I had so begrudgingly left behind. I felt that perhaps I should move on, let go, maybe try my hand at the coffee trade while sipping on a cup of 02' CNNP Meng hai Seven Sons Puer. Coffee is okay, there is some degree of complexity there too, although I'll probably become all that I hate (Starbucks) Yet it isn't all that bad to be come a java snob.

Lychee....Why am I tasting Lychee in my Tea? I love Lychee, what the nasty, what is this that I'm tasting?!?!?!?! I've been drinking this tea now for almost 2 years and i'm tasting odd things that I never took the time to notice. Lychee, limes, mohagony, cherry and oak woods, Plums, cinammon, even a smoky chardonnay. Holy crap, this is more complex than wine.!!! I loved Tea, I always have loved tea. Yet this is something different, something new, a new kind of love, a love that I soon discovered had been there almost all my life but I took for granted. It equated to a Jane Austin novel-like experience where the main Heroine was in love the the dashingly handsome Duke that everyone knew and loved, they had a whirlwind romance and then the war took him away. All the while her best friend, since childhood, had always been with her, secretly loving her and supporting her, all from behind the scenes. Then one day, in her dull and passionless life, she takes a glance at her childhood friend and he looks upon her from a distance, with a passion that has always been gazed upon herself since the beginning, in the dire hopes that she will recognize the deeply rooted devotion of everything that is her. Wind blowing upon her back to coax her from her place to move in the direction of her beloved. Her Heart feeling a fire and light that radiates from her inner being, a sensation all to familiar yet, as if a dream unknown to her and new and fresh.

Okay, Okay, that's enough of that Crap!!! You get the point.

K I need some tea now ^^

-Peace