TeaChat

This is a topic that has been on my mind for some time now.

Sacramento in Northern California gets a range of weather throughout the year. Winter is great for tea drinking ... it is often windy, wet and COLD. However, in summer months, especially this year with the heat wave and droughts, the weather can be very, very hot (it feels like it has been mid to high 90s and above for months now).

So the question I pose is what is the weather like where you reside? If it is not conducive to tea drinking (even if for several months out of the year), how do you get by?

It has been an oven here in the midwest and drinking tea can be difficult in 100 plus degree weather. Some days I just force myself to drink something so I won't go into caffeine withdrawal. I tend to drink more green tea and young puerhs.

summers here are grueling hot, but then I just drink tea inside in the AC so no biggie, no way I'm passing on drinking hot tea

Where I live is hot and humid most of the year, so I basically limit my tea drinking habits to the following three "animals":

1. Puerh
2. Greens
3. High Mountain Taiwanese oolongs

The first two account for almost 80% of what I drink.

In winter (if you can call winter having 16 degrees during the day and 5 at night time) I will venture into Wuyi rock and red teas; unfortunately winters last only 3 months in my area, which is pretty sad, lol.

Living in 2 cities year-round, one in a tropical area, the other one in a Mediterranean climate, I still manage to drink green tea throughout the year. Basically, if it gets too hot, I just make iced green tea, but in any case, I usually never drink my green tea too hot. I also buy summer-style matcha from Japan, so that I can drink matcha icy-cold.

Maaaaannnn...

When *I* think of good weather for puerh, I'm thinking about that right blend of humidity and temperature that allows for great huigans and mouth aromas...

Don't care if it's sulfuric acid rain out there, I'll have my puerh...hot.

I like for it to be raining when I have tea - and in this case, almost any tea. also, cooler weather plus rain is even better.

I live in South Carolina and I do not know why. I should move to somewhere cold, where my genes tell me I would be better suited.

Like most others, the higher the mercury rises the greener I go in tea tastes. Not so much that green teas taste better, just the darker teas tend to taste worse. Oddly enough Hong Cha ( red/ black tea) seems to defy this theory as sometimes it really hits the spot even when its nearly 100 F outside.

Though I find when the temps are about 70F or below, which as I am in Michigan is typically 7-8 months of the year, just about all teas taste delicious. I am getting back into Yancha, so I will have to see if this winter I still drink as much Gyokuro and Sencha as I did the past two winters.

I find any weather conducive to tea drinking. During the recent heat wave, while still residing in a non-A/C house, I suddenly rediscovered the joys of cool-brewed and chilled tea, herbal and C. sinensis, and mixed teas, as long as it was cold and wet.

In chilly gray winter days--or on overcast gray muggy summer days, that give a feeling of winter chill when inside an airconditioned building--yanchas and puerhs feel right. I also love to brew larger volumes of sencha on cold winter mornings, warming my hands on thinner walled teacups.

Green oolongs are great chilled when it's too hot to drink hot water, and hot brewed other times.

In short, it's always tea weather, hot or cold, dry or wet.

I tend to enjoy Yunnan teas (green and raw puerh) virtually any time, regardless of weather. As heat and humidity increase, sencha becomes more appealing; when it gets cold, ripe puerh sometimes hits the spot. But there's shengpu and lucha in my cup pretty much year round.

For me, my taste for tea depends on my mood rather than the weather. I tend to do all my tea drinking indoors, where it is nice and cool and comfortable with the air conditioning and a fan going. Right now I prefer the heavy traditional HK pu erh in the morning and a light shou mei at night, with some cooling chrysanthemum in the day time.

I've noticed Hong Kong people often drink pu erh with chrysanthemum, and the last time I went for yum cha with two of my Vietnamese-Chinese friends who were visiting from California, that's what we had. After pairing some delicate chrysanthemum buds I 'borrowed' from my brother with pu erh I'd been drinking straight, I realized the chrysanthemum almost entirely overpowers the subtleties of the pu erh. Definitely not for me, although with commercial 'dim sum' pu erh, covering up the subtleties may be a good thing!

I'll have hot tea anytime no matter the outside temperature, but where I live, it's often so dry that I have trouble smelling things, which is quite frustrating.