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Mar 4th, '18, 11:26
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Joined: Mar 4th, '18, 10:47

Hello, fellow comrades!

by Syntezz » Mar 4th, '18, 11:26

Hello there from cold and snowy mother Russia.
My name is Anton and I am an IT engineer and a huge tea lover for about a year.
I came here in search of source of information about tea, teaware and all related topics.
Here in Russia we don't have much tea cultute since we have only one region that grow tea an it's pretty meh. For years we had only low grade ceylon tea available and all tea culture was like: put it in teapot, pour hot water and wait until it's ok. Beacuse of this we have lot's of tea related delusions like that puer tea buried under ground to ferment.
For about year ago my friend showed me what chinese tea is all about and got me really hooked on this. For now I'm equipped with cheap clay teapot, gaiwan and huge love to tea. And I'm glad I foud such great community where I can learn so much.

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Mar 5th, '18, 02:20
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Joined: Dec 25th, '13, 22:59
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Re: Hello, fellow comrades!

by john.b » Mar 5th, '18, 02:20

Nice to meet you! I explored the idea of tea culture in Russia not so long back related to visiting Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Murmansk over the New Years holiday. That trip was awesome.

Tea was as you say; teas from different places are around, but related to what turns up in grocery stores or most places it's mostly modest quality Ceylon. I've only tried one actual Russian tea, which I just posted a review for two days ago, as chance has it, a green tea from the Sochi area. It was pretty good tea, I just don't love green tea, compared to all other types.

There does seem to be a lot of developed tea culture in Russia based on Chinese practices based on seeing small vendors post things and Instagram profile posts and such. I suppose that's not an indication of a substantial count of people into better tea, since it could just be that a few dozen people drinking good tea could be really active at social networking.

The best tea I found there was from Moychay, a large chain. Two modest priced Georgian black teas were good (but not great), one sheng I really liked, and a tea sort of like a hei cha was a bit unusual. Of course it doesn't work well to sample a few teas and extend that to concluding what everything a vendor sells is like, but it's a good sign when the samples work out. Are there other main Russian sources you'd recommend? I live in Thailand so I'm not going to order tea from Russia, just curious. I also tried Laos Tea there, made by Russians, which was interesting.

Links to those posts (shameless self-promotion related to blogging is sort of partly my thing):

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... -from.html

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... ow-st.html

Mar 6th, '18, 05:28
Posts: 2
Joined: Mar 4th, '18, 10:47

Re: RE: Re: Hello, fellow comrades!

by Syntezz » Mar 6th, '18, 05:28

john.b wrote:Nice to meet you! I explored the idea of tea culture in Russia not so long back related to visiting Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Murmansk over the New Years holiday. That trip was awesome.

Tea was as you say; teas from different places are around, but related to what turns up in grocery stores or most places it's mostly modest quality Ceylon. I've only tried one actual Russian tea, which I just posted a review for two days ago, as chance has it, a green tea from the Sochi area. It was pretty good tea, I just don't love green tea, compared to all other types.

There does seem to be a lot of developed tea culture in Russia based on Chinese practices based on seeing small vendors post things and Instagram profile posts and such. I suppose that's not an indication of a substantial count of people into better tea, since it could just be that a few dozen people drinking good tea could be really active at social networking.

The best tea I found there was from Moychay, a large chain. Two modest priced Georgian black teas were good (but not great), one sheng I really liked, and a tea sort of like a hei cha was a bit unusual. Of course it doesn't work well to sample a few teas and extend that to concluding what everything a vendor sells is like, but it's a good sign when the samples work out. Are there other main Russian sources you'd recommend? I live in Thailand so I'm not going to order tea from Russia, just curious. I also tried Laos Tea there, made by Russians, which was interesting.

Links to those posts (shameless self-promotion related to blogging is sort of partly my thing):

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... -from.html

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... ow-st.html
Glad to hear you visited Russia. Hooe you enjoyed this trip. Indeed Sochi is the part of the the only tea region of Russia - Krasnodar. Tea growing started there about 100 years ago and all teas was brought in from Georgia, so these teas are not originally russian.
BTW I just heard another awsomely stupid deluision about Da Hong Pao from my fellow. He said that it called red robe because it harvested by specially trained monkeys that wearing red robes. And they wearing robes to make chinese peasants know that this is special tea monkeys so peasants won't eat them among the ordinary monkeys.

Отправлено с моего Redmi Note 4 через Tapatalk

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Mar 13th, '18, 01:50
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Re: Hello, fellow comrades!

by john.b » Mar 13th, '18, 01:50

That's pretty outrageous, the part about monkeys picking tea and wearing red robes. You could just give them some sort of badge or a vest and that would work just as well. That and it's not really practical to train monkeys to pick tea.

The two standard stories are that the tea plants did wear robes, a few of them, and that it refers to Chinese officials (who also do) drinking the tea. I think I've heard a reference to it relating to the color of the bushes too. Who knows about those ancient Chinese stories.

I reviewed a pretty good Russian green tea since that comment but I'm not especially into green tea, which makes it harder to appreciate those.

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