Not Much Tea in Puerto Rico

Recently I took a one week long trip to Puerto Rico. The trip was rather spontaneous; one of my friends approached me with an offer to stay in her hotel, paid for by her employer, while she was there on a business trip. When I checked idly for flights, I was surprised that even last-minute flights, direct from Philly, were very cheap. And since Puerto Rico is a US Territory, there is no need for visas, passports, and the like. I couldn't pass up this opportunity.

Having grown up in Lancaster, PA, a small city where Puerto Ricans are the largest ethnic group (outnumbering each of whites, blacks, and Asians), I've acquired an odd familiarity with and affinity for Puerto Rican culture, for someone who has zero hispanic heritage in my own family. When left to my own devices, the music I most often put on my playlist is Puerto Rican salsa, and, to me, Puerto Ricans sound like they have no accent, whereas Mexicans, Spaniards, and other Spanish-speaking people from Latin America all sound to me like they have some strange sort of accent.

I want to write about this trip here on this blog, but it's a bit of a struggle, because I did not do much in Puerto Rico relating to tea. But when I started thinking about that, that in itself is interesting.

Going mostly without tea:

The first cup of true tea (not herbal) which I had in Puerto Rico was a cup of the London Cuppa, served with breakfast in Hotel Belgica, a quirky hotel in Ponce, a city on Puerto Rico's southern coast. I would recommend this hotel wholeheartedly; it was very reasonably priced, and located conveniently on the town square. Unlike many of the hotels in San Juan, it was not a tourist trap; some of the hotel staff spoke no English. But the rooms were clean and the building was beautiful and a prime example of the unique architecture you can find about Ponce.

I didn't drink much tea in Puerto Rico, but I found, I didn't miss it very much, mainly because it was so hot. I did, however, have a very nice iced herbal concoction, involving ginger and lemongrass. In Puerto Rico, herbal teas, especially iced ones, seemed a little more popular and widespread, but only slightly so.

Pictured above is the town square in Ponce, in the morning, when it was quietest. This square came alive in the evening, filled up with people doing all sorts of activities. One thing that struck me on my trip was how friendly and approachable Puerto Ricans were, and how caring they were towards each other, their families, and to me. With my minimal Spanish and the fact that most Puerto Ricans speak at least some English, I found it easy to communicate with almost everyone. And people I talked to were immensely positive, helpful, and open. I found little of the closed-off attitude that seems to be the default in much of the U.S. and especially in the bigger cities of the east coast. I never got the sense that anyone was judging anyone else or trying to impress. It seemed everyone I talked to at length talked about their families a lot, and many expressed a deep caring for Puerto Rico, and for their families and communities.

A lot of little things went wrong on the trip; random things we had hoped to depend on were often closed, broken, under construction, or just not present at all. But there was always someone willing to help out. Once I got used to the slight unpredictability, and got more comfortable talking to random people, I realized that the unpredictable points were small and most of the important things worked out very nicely on the trip.

My experience with the people made me want to go back again some time soon.

Hot, Humid Climates and Tea:

The climate in Puerto Rico is solidly tropical, fairly uniformly hot and humid. Temperatures are relatively constant year-round and from day-to-day, and, especially in San Juan, on the humid, northeast part of the Island, there is much less variation in temperature between day and night than I am used to in the U.S. Temperatures ranged from about 87F (30C) during the peak of the day to around 77F (25C) at night.

In San Juan, pictured above, it seemed like there was water everywhere, even when it was not raining. I saw numerous rainbows like this one pictured here. I got used to being rather sweaty while walking around in the near constant 70% humidity. It rained every day, at unpredictable times (apparently, May is a rainy month on much of the island), although the rain only took up a small portion of the day. Umbrellas are a lot less useful than I thought they would be...when it starts to rain, the wind typically picks up, making umbrellas unwieldly. And it's often more pleasant to just let it rain on you...you're already wet from the humidity, and the rain doesn't seem to get you much more wet.

Tea in hot weather?

Here in the U.S. I like to drink hot tea even in very hot weather. But what is "hot"? During the heat of the day, in July and August, it often gets much hotter than the 87F (30C) highs I encountered daily in Puerto Rico. But it tends to cool off a lot more at night, and during much of the year, it's much cooler.

I've heard that coffee is much more popular than tea in Puerto Rico, and I saw a lot of coffee for sale and on menus, but I did not see many people actually drinking coffee. I saw a lot of people drinking water, beer, smoothies, and various cold sugary drinks.

People think of South China and Taiwan, where hot tea is popular and widely consumed, as being tropical and humid, but these regions are actually much cooler than Puerto Rico. Taipei, for instance, has more well-defined seasons, with night-time lows in winter averaging 55F(13C), a good 22F(13C) cooler than San Juan's "winter" night-time lows. See Taipei's Weather Averages compared to San Juan's averages to see for yourself. I can understand why people might not want to consume many hot beverages in this climate. San Juan's temperatures are more similar to areas much farther south than China's southernmost point, like Southern Vietnam or points in the Philippines. Do people consume many hot beverages in these solidly tropical areas? I don't know, and I'd be curious to hear from people who have traveled in these areas.

Masala Chai at Cafe Clave

I'm still basking in my success of "getting" as many people as I did with my April fool's joke. Tallying up the blog comments, comments on various forms of social media, and private remarks, I think I had well 100 people going. Mission accomplished!

I like finding different coffee shops in different areas, so that I can work from them on my laptop. When in West Philadelphia, I frequently work from Cafe Clave. This post is both about the cafe and about their masala chai.



Cafe Clave is a small cafe and coffee shop with a Cuban music theme to it. It is named after the claves, a key (haha) percussion instrument in Afro-Cuban music. In contrast to the music, the cafe tends to be rather quiet, and I've found it to be a good place to work on my laptop when working on my websites. The cafe also serves some very tasty home-made food, and serves Novus tea in whole-leaf sachets. If you are visiting Philadelphia and want to check this place out, it's on Locust Ave. between 43rd and 44th streets.

The cafe also has live salsa music; the picture says that the music is on Friday nights, but it has since been moved to Thursdays. I will say one thing...the band is amazing.

Cafe Clave's Masala Chai:

I recently tried the Masala chai made by Cafe Clave. This cafe serves its own proprietary blend of spiced tea, made from scratch by blending loose-leaf black tea and spices. The base black tea is itself a blend, including loose-leaf Turkish black tea from Caykur, and a slightly stronger black tea from Ahmad tea. If you want to know exactly what goes into it, go to the cafe and see for yourself!



I really like this particular rendition of masala chai. The base teas are high quality and balance strength with smoothness. The spices go heavy on anise and cardamom, two of my favorite spices. And the cafe sweetens it to taste, rather than pre-sweetening, so I was able to order an unsweetened variety.

Exquisite!

It is hard for me to find Masala chai that I like better than the stuff I can prepare at home, but I think I've found some.

Drinking Tea for Memories, My Memories of Tea in the Dining Hall, and a Wish

I'm scheduling this post for 11:11 on 11/11/11, because it contains a wish.

This post is inspired by a post by Ken Macbeth, on lahikmajoedrinkstea, titled Red Rose memories. The post relays a story from Cara in Cleveland about her grandmother, and memories she has of drinking Red Rose Tea.

Cara talks about how she does not actually like the taste of Red Rose Tea, but she finds that it brings back pleasant memories of her grandmother, and drinks it more for the memories than for anything else.

Aromas in particular can be some of the most powerful agents at conjuring up vivid memories from our past. Tea, stimulating multiple senses, but primarily manifesting itself in the sense of smell, has a particularly rich potential to bring back memories in this way.

A memory of mine:

I touched on this topic very early in my tea blog, in my post how I became interested in tea, but a formative experience in my life, and the place where I first started to deliberately sample different teas (not to mention a broad range of foods) was the dining hall at Oberlin College, where I went for undergrad. Pictured here is one of the few pictures I have from this period of my life:



This photo was taken with a manual camera and scanned into the computer years later; when I started college, digital cameras were virtually unheard of; they cost thousands of dollars and I had never even seen one. When I graduated, I received my first digital camera, evidence of the changing times.

I loved the dining hall at Oberlin college.

Why did I like the dining halls at Oberlin so much?

• I found it very easy to meet people in the dining hall. Often, it would happen with little effort: I would sit with one friend or with a table of familiar friends, and then new people would join the table, and we would introduce ourselves or be introduced. Even when I went into a dining hall alone, I found it was often easy to meet people. If I sat alone, people would often join me, and if I approached a stranger or table of strangers, they were nearly always open to me joining them and starting a conversation. I met more people in the dining hall than any other way in college.


• I could always go to the dining hall, alone, unplanned, and I could be virtually certain of running into people I knew. This imparted a sense of stability and security to my life, at a time when I had moved out to a new place where I knew almost no one and had no established friendships.


• The dining hall was a reliable source of stimulating intellectual conversation. I never knew what to expect, but it was nearly always interesting. Often, people would talk about their classes, and through these conversations, I got exposed to knowledge and intellectual ideas from courses that I would never take and academic fields that I would never have any direct involvement in.


• The dining hall was a place where practical knowledge was exchanged. People would talk about courses to take and professors to seek out or avoid. Classmates would talk about math and physics problems they were stuck on, musicians would talk about technique, expressiveness, and pieces they loved or hated to play, people would talk about where they wanted to live next year. In more intimate conversations, people would talk about relationships or their own personal life struggles. People would talk about anything and everything.


• The dining hall was highly democratic, a place where there were no pretences of social status, where everyone was an equal. Everyone had to wait in lines and eat the same food, and everyone had the same choices. And the choices were almost always good enough that you could, sometimes with effort, secure a healthy, well-balanced meal.

At times, I really miss the dining hall. I've spent a large portion of my life after college eating alone, and when I eat with people, it's often with just one person. Currently, I am self-employed, but even when I've worked for large employers, I've often eaten alone. I've been shocked to see how many people in America eat lunch at their desks (Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal writes a great post about why this is a terrible idea), or worse, don't even eat at all. Many parts of my life after college have seemed like a desert to me, a lot like this photograph here, which I took in the American southwest, when I drove across the country:



Furthermore, I have found that getting together with people out in the "real world" requires a great deal of effort. I need to plan ahead, and this planning requires work, a commitment of time and energy. I have been unable to find community gathering places that recreate the sort of stimulating and wholesome environment that I found in the college dining hall. And I know that this dearth of spaces (physical and temporal) to connect with other human beings is not good for me, nor is it good for anyone. As political alarmists and reactionaries would like to say:

IT IS DESTROYING AMERICA! IT IS RIPPING OUR NATION APART!!!

I'm not joking here though.

My wish:

I'm hoping that people can read this and feel inspired, and moved to do their part to make the world more like the dining hall at Oberlin college. I want people to think: "That dining hall sounds awesome! I would love to have environments like that in my life!" My wish is that our world would have more environments like this, not just for me, but for all people.



The world is the way it is because of our collective thoughts, decisions, and behaviors. If we are open to meeting new people, we make the environment around us one in which it is easier for people to meet each other. If we create common spaces where people can go to eat with friends in a causal, relaxed atmosphere, then those spaces will exist in society and will be there as a support net for people who need these sorts of spaces. But if we judge others by social status, we move the environment in our social sphere more in this direction. And if we associate only with our existing clique of friends, we make the social environment around us more closed. On the other hand, if we engage in stimulating intellectual conversation with those around us, we create a stimulating intellectual environment around us. We can push things either in a positive or negative direction through the choices we make.

But there's only so much I can do in the short-term. One way I feel better is by remembering the happy times in the past, and the feelings of connectedness and purpose that these times were characterized by. And one way I can do this is by drinking tea.

Tea in the Dining Hall:

Back to tea...which teas did I drink in the dining hall? I drank Bigelow tea, specifically, their flavored teas and their herbal teas, including Earl Grey, Constant Comment, Plantation Mint, Mint Medley, and many others. But there is one of these that I drank more often than the rest: Sweet Dreams Herbal Tea, and because I drank it so often in this dining hall, it is the (herbal) tea that brings back the most memories. This effect is so strong that even drinking similar teas such as ShanTeas Lotus Wisdom (a blend also combining peppermint, hibiscus, and chamomile) produces this same effect.

How about you?

What teas evoke memories for you, and what memories do they remind you of? Do you like college dining halls? Was your college dining hall like the one I described? Have you found that sort of environment elsewhere in your life? Do you have any novel ideas for how to find or create that sort of environment?

Perilla, or Shiso, in the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge

One of my favorite hobbies is birdwatching, and one of my favorite places for birdwatching in the Philadelphia area is the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, a large tract of open water and wetlands, with some surrounding forest, located across I-95 from the Philadelphia Airport. Here is one of the smaller, more secluded necks of water in this refuge, to give you an idea of what sort of habitat can be found there:



While walking on the main loop in the refuge, which goes between two bodies of water, I discovered a patch of naturalized perilla, or shiso. Back in september, I wrote about Red Shiso, or Perilla, a plant I have found growing wild in many locations in Philadelphia. This population of perilla was of a green-colored variety, and the leaves were yellowing slightly as the plant had gone to seed and was preparing to die down for the fall:



I want to write more about this particular patch of perilla, but first, an aside about invasive plants.

Invasive Plants:

Humans, through trade and colonization, have brought numerous plants with them, mostly plants that we cultivate for food, but also weeds that hitched a ride with other cargo. These plants often escape cultivation and establish wild populations in the native ecosystems.

Non-native plants are aliens in the ecosystems which they colonize. In most cases, they are poorly adapted to these ecosystems, and they cannot establish stable populations, and die out. But in other cases, they have unique adaptations that allow them to thrive in a new environment, and the other members of the ecosystems they colonize are not adapted to their presence. In particular, plants like perilla, which produce complex combinations of aromatic chemicals, toxic to insects, are often not eaten by as many native insects. The native insects co-evolve with native plants, and are not adapted to eat these strange new plants. The plant thus gains a competitive advantage, as it has fewer natural herbivores. It then colonizes the ecosystem and grows disproportionately, shutting out other plants.

Note that the perilla leaves show no insect damage. Older leaves of plants usually show some sign of insect damage by fall...for an example, look at the black cherry leaves in my old post on tea monoculture and biodynamic agriculture. While this is good for the perilla, it's not necessarily good for the rest of the ecosystem. Fewer insects eating plants means fewer birds to eat the insects, and total biodiversity is decreased. As biodiversity is lost, the capacity for the ecosystem to adapt to changing conditions is diminished.

I'm picking on perilla unfairly here. Although I've seen it growing quite vigorously and establishing large populations, I haven't seen it establishing a monoculture and totally shutting out other plants, the way some invasive species do. Although perilla is considered to be an invasive species in some areas, it is nowhere near the most problematic one in this area, and in the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, it is relatively harmless compared to a number of other plant species. Some more problematic invasive species in this particular refuge are Phragmites, and some of the non-native honeysuckles.

Back to the perilla:

Out of curiosity, I gathered a small handful of leaves, enough for a single cup of herbal tea. The results of drying them can be seen here:




The Review:

I was steeping this tea as I was writing this post, and then I proceeded to drink a cup of it.

This perilla is noticeably different in aroma and flavor from the red-leafed variety. It has a much more minty aroma. The red variety had a strong licorice/anise quality; these qualities are still present, but weaker, and I would describe them as more fennel-like than anise-like. The flavor is much sweeter. There are still skunky and vegetal undertones that, in my opinion, characterize this herb. I also would say this batch was less basil-like, although still somewhat so. There is a very strong quality of fennel or anise that lingers on the tongue, more so than with the red variety. The lingering finish also suggests dried hay.

Really interesting! And different enough from the red-leafed variety that I can see growing both in my garden! Still, I would prefer to grow native herbs, especially given the considerations I talked about above.

Do you think about whether or not plants are native to your local ecosystems, when considering what to grow in your garden?

Cups & Chairs Tea Shop, Philadelphia

This post is about a tea shop in Philadelphia, Cups and Chairs. I recently learned about this shop because one of my friends started working at it. This photo shows the interior of the shop:



I wanted to take a picture of the storefront too, but it started to rain when I was there, and I didn't get a picture of the outside. The store was very cute, and the inside very clean, new, sleek, and well-kept, yet while still being cozy and comfortable. The storefront had a bright, open feel, located on a corner, and with big windows looking out on the street.

The shop is located on 5th street, just south of Bainbridge (which is just south of South Street). This neighborhood is somewhat interesting...it's very near the busy commercial district on South Street, and in a relatively high-density area, but enough off the beaten path that I can see many people overlooking this shop.

What does this shop have to offer?

This shop sells loose-leaf tea, sells a small selection of teaware (pictured below), and sells some food, in a pleasant, casual, sit-down cafe type atmosphere. This shop is very much like a typical "coffee shop", except that it focuses on tea and not coffee.



The first two pictures do not show that there is a whole second room with a much bigger seating area. This shop has quite a lot of seating, and has both tables and chairs, as well as a sizeable cozy nook with cushiony sofas in the back:



Because of the layout, and the fact that it started raining so I was unable to take a picture from outside looking in, it was hard for me to capture the size and extent of this shop, but I will say it was very large, easily enough to accommodate 25 or so people sitting down and enjoying tea. The shop features free wireless internet; I did not have my laptop, however, so I was not able to test its reliability. But I can see this being a very pleasant place to work from.

Further thoughts:

I ordered a cup of kabusecha, and it was decent, although I'm not particularly knowledgeable about this type of tea (a shaded tea which is shaded for a shorter period than gyokuro). I don't think I would regularly buy my tea here, however. Although there was a good selection, there wasn't anything in the selection that really jumped out at me as being an amazing buy in terms of value or quality. For example, I regularly buy black teas from Upton Tea Imports, and I think they set the gold standard in terms of value...because I can buy high-quality single-estate teas for $7 for 125 grams, sometimes even less, the bar is set pretty high for me to buy something in a local tea shop. I also am drawn in by something truly unusual -- and will often pay a price premium for such teas -- but there wasn't anything in this shop that jumped out at me as truly unusual, such as teas from regions I have never tried before, or unusual styles or varieties of tea.

I also wasn't crazy about the glass jars with samples of tea (for smelling). Glass is not a good way to store tea, especially in a bright store like this one, because light causes the tea to break down. Needless to say, the samples did not smell particularly fresh. I will point out, however, that Cups & Chairs stores its actual tea, the tea that is for sale or used to brew the tea you order, in opaque metal tins, pictured here:



I would be more likely to come back because of the ambiance or atmosphere...this place is just really nice on the inside. It strikes a balance between modern and old, between cozy and professional, and between quiet and active. Unfortunately, its location doesn't correspond well with places I tend to go in the course of my daily life in Philadelphia, so I probably won't be here particularly frequently, but I would like to recommend it especially to anyone who lives nearby and wants a cafe to hang out in that offers a change of pace from the coffee-centered coffee shops that dominate most of the cafe scene in most American cities.

World Tea East - I Will Be There

Happy labor day!

I am pleased to announce that I will be attending World Tea East, the new, Philadelphia-centered event run by the organization that is behind the World Tea Expo, where I will be representing RateTea.


Since I created RateTea and started blogging about tea, about two years ago, I have read two rounds of excited posts about the World Tea Expo. I have thought seriously about attending the World Tea Expo both years, but did not. With this new event so close to home for me, there's no reason not to attend.

I am excited to meet lots of new people involved in the tea industry, but I think one of the things I am most eagerly looking forward to at this event is the opportunity to meet tea bloggers, and employees and owners of tea companies, and others in the tea industry that I already interact with online, through blogs, twitter, or RateTea. If you are someone who I regularly interact with, and you are coming to this event, please let me know so that I can be sure to meet up with you.

I also want to say that I am excited about the fact that there has been enough interest in the World Tea Expo to spark the spinning off of this second event in a new location. I think this bodes well for the specialty tea industry, which, following up on the slow tea / slow food connection in my last post, also bodes well for a more sustainable and diverse culture of food and drink in society as a whole.

More information:

For more information on this event, you can read the official press release about World Tea East.

Random Tea Room, Random But Delightful

I have been wanting to check out the Random Tea Room for quite some time, as it has been recommended to me by a number of people as being one of the best places to experience tea, especially in the Chinese tradition, in the Philadelphia area. I finally checked it out this past thursday. Here is a photo of the storefront, at 713 North 4th Street:


The Random Tea Room & Curiosity Shop is located in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia, due northeast from center city. It is easily accessible from the Spring Garden stop of SEPTA's Market-Frankford Line (Blue Line), which is how I got there. Street parking is not too hard to find in this neighborhood in case you want to drive.

The neighborhood is interesting; like most of Philadelphia, it is fairly dense, with old and often ornate housing. This area has recently become "trendy" for better or for worse, and has had some newer housing built which, in my opinion, does not fit well with the architecture of the area. But the Random Tea Room and its immediate surroundings look relatively unmarred by modern architecture.

The inside of the shop was quirky, and I mean that in a lovable sort of way. It's a tiny space, but it has been artfully arranged so as to create a number of different nooks and crannies with different feels to them. The window is lined with cushioned window-seats, and there is a chess-board table, a larger round table where I sat with my friend, and some other seating around the other corners.

The Tea:

This place has a good and well-balanced selection of different types of teas, with several black teas, green teas, whites, oolongs, and Pu-erhs, and a good representation of different styles and regions. It is a pure tea lover's store; there are a few flavored teas but they are mostly of the traditional varieties, Jasmine of the Chinese teas, and Earl Grey of the British-style teas, so as not to agitate purists too greatly. There is also an interesting selection of herbs, including quite a number of pure herbs, and several blends, with an emphasis on the medicinal properties.

The tea is also sold loose by the ounce, and prices are very reasonable.

We ordered Bi Luo Chun, and it was served in this unusually large gaiwan:



We were given a tea timer, but we were given a bit more leaf than would be optimal for this timer so we settled on briefer steeping times. The tea was delicious. One thing that immediately jumped out at me about the tea was that it had not been selected for western tastes, which often tend towards sweetness and avoid sharper qualities. I felt clumsy using the gaiwan, due to a combination of its large size, and my lack of experience using one, and I spilled a little (although that's what the tray is for), but it was fun.

I recall a long time ago buying a small amount of Bi Luo Chun from Teavana. It was aromatic, pleasing, there was some complexity to the aroma. But brewed...it was sweet...and just...not edgy enough. I also have some very inexpensive Bi Luo Chun in my cupboard and it's a bit more complex but just a bit. This Bi Luo Chun was edgy, and I loved it. In addition to the sweet, grassy tones, there were some deep, fruity aromas as well, and an almost skunky (in a pleasant way, if that makes sense) herbaceous quality.

I also took a picture of this hourglass tea timer; it wasn't the most practical timer, but I thought it was very cute and random, fitting with the theme quite well:



I would like to come back here soon, and I would heartily recommend this place to anyone looking for either a good tea experience, or just a pleasant dose of randomness.