Any good teashop in London?

[J.]

Hello,

Monday, I'm going to London to visit the Botanical Garden of Kew.
But of course I'll stay there 3 days.

Do you know teashops that I have to visit if I'm there.
I'm especially looking for chinese teashops (maybe in Chinatown) or Japanese ones but I will also enjoy visiting a "general" teashop merely if they sell nepalese teas.

Do you know good addresses in London?

Thanks

[Chip]

Cannot help with a tea shop. BUT, Kew is a major destination point for me since I am very into Botany and Horticulture.

Hope to hear a report.

[J.]

I went to Kew gardens I year ago and visited it during 1 day.

But this wasn't enough.
This year, I decided to return and visit it during 2 days because a friend wanted to go there.

My main interest there are cacti but all greenhouses are marvelous and surprisingly presented.

I'll upload pictures.

Here are some pictures I had taken 1year ago

[Chip]

Cacti, very cool.

... still off topic, we used to collect a LOT of cacti cousins, succulents, mostly African including Euphorbia and Pachypodium. My fave were Crown of Thorns which I bred, and crested. Then our greenhouse heat failed on a super cold night, below 0* F. The collection was largely very rare specimens.

[J.]

South african plants are great but I have more informations and expensive books about cacti because it's my main interest in the plant kingdom.

I prefer natural plants that I could see in habitat if I made a travel that crested plants.
Some succulents and other ouchy plants from central africa, madagascar and so on are a bit more sensitive to cold than cacti (except brazilian ones that are too sensitive).
Crown of Thorns is still a common plant when young and small but when they are big, they become really impressive and become more spiny and less leafy.


well, it's out of topic but cacti are such a strong passion that I'm forced to answer.

If you like south african plants, you should haved a look to Florentg website.
He's a 17-18years old guy who works in cactus nurseries, mesembs burseries and who makes travels to south africa (even regions that haven't been explored yet for botanical purposes)!
Here

[brandon]

http://half-dipper.blogspot.com/2009/06 ... -yiwu.html

[Proinsias]

Another vote for TeaSmith.

Next time I drop by London I planning on visiting Postcard Teas:

http://chadao.blogspot.com/2009/05/post ... ondon.html

[J.]

Thank you, I also found a shop called Camelia Sinensis one year ago but it was closed.

It seems to be not so far away from postcard teas, good new.

[Ritva]

My vote to TeaSmith as well! They're great. Just one thing: when I visited there on July they didn't take credit cards. There had been problems with connections or something so they had decided not to take credit card payments at all. I don't know the current situation. Anyway, we had to pay by cash and after buying some tea & teaware we didn't have much left for drinking tea. With foreign VISA card you'd have to pay extra for using ATMs so we couldn't get more cash. They said that we can share a gaiwan and that was only 3.50 pounds for the standard teas if I remember correctly.

There were other customers as well and the lady serving our tea let us taste what they were drinking. She made 4 or 5 brews from the tea we chose. I think they guarantee to make at least 3 brews and then depending on how much crowd there is they can make more or not. At some point the owner was making some tea for himself and gave that for us as well. So we paid altogether 3.50 pounds for two people and got to taste three different teas! It was a quiet rainy afternoon and we spent there a couple of hours. When I think back to my visit to London that is maybe the most pleasant memory that I have.

[reincarnate]

When I was to Chinatown in London most of the stores had tea, but from the ones I bought, I can tell you the quality was so so. Maybe I was unlucky ...

[FunkyFossil]

I've found that Tea Orient in Sedley Place (opposite Debenhams, Oxford Street) is a good tea shop, especially if you enjoy Dim Sum and green tea as they have a large collection of very fresh teas. Their website is at www.teaorient.co.uk

[J.]

Cannot help with a tea shop. BUT, Kew is a major destination point for me since I am very into Botany and Horticulture.

Hope to hear a report.

Now it's time for a report .
I went to 2 teashops in London: Teasmith and Postcard Teas.
I only made pictures of the Botanical garden and I'll tell you about the teashops.

I first went to Poscard Teas.

It's a lovely simple teashop with at Left with some tea packs on it, an étagère and et Right, a long table with two long seats at each side of the table.
There is also a room beneath with tea related objectssuch as teapots and tea storage tins.










There were a man and his wife with their baby drinking tea.
I first asked them if there was a possibility of drinking tea here, and they told me "yes", but... they didn't seem to be the owners.
Then, I heard a guy saying me "Hello", that was Tim, the boss who was at the counter, at the end of the teashop.
I asked for trying a Mi Lan Xian.
He said "ok, for the price of a Mi Lan Xian try,I'll make you some teas".
I think he was happy a young guy (I'm 19) travelled to London for seeing his teashop.

I tried some of his teas, but I found these "weak", it may be because I'm tired, of because the rude cheap food I eated during the travel...
I had to go, because I was with a friend who wanted to go shopping (something I had nothing to do about).
When I wanted to pay, he told me that the teas weren't as good as he wanted these to be and that I had'nt to pay, he also gave me a free sample of Rou Gui (I'll tell you more about this one)


The next day, I came back, the two people that were there the day before, were still there.
Tim made me taste 1 infusion of ... I don't remember how many, but these teas were different oolongs, he wanted to make me try more but I had a friend behind me who had nothing to do about tea so the tea tastings have been shortened.
He showed me marvelous pictures of the places were the teas were made and we speaked a bit.
He gave me 3 other samples because I had no time for trying.
-A Laoshan Green from China because I like Japanese greens and this region is no far away from Japan
-A classic roast Tie Kwan Yin from Nantou
-A phoenix made with tress dating back to the Ming Dinasty



And, guess what, I tried these ones yesterday, these are all good teas, I'll write a report in a few hours.


Oops, I forgot to speak about TeaSmith.
Well, it's another kind of teashop, as you can see on the pictures the walls of Postcard were white, there the ambience was "darker" (I don't know how to express nuances in English as I'm not a usual English speaker).
The shop is a kind of long corridor with different teapacks in baskets.
There is also a room beneath but I haven't gone into.
There is also a ingenious "teabar": there is a kind of teatable inside the bar and taps that deliver nearly boiling water.
There, I tried a Alishan that was good but that tasted more green than milky.
The girl that was at the counter also made me taste one infusion of a Dan Cong, we spoke a bit about teashops in Brussel because she planned to go there in a few weeks.
I bought there a 2003 Puer and a dark roasted yancha (I suppose the heavy roaste teas are grown not in the rocks but around the hill.


Postcard teas is a place you have to go to If you have time to speak with the craziest tea seller I've met and if you want to drink teas that are made by masters.
Teasmith is also really good and provides more different teas but I prefered poscard.

[J.]

I first tasted the Laoshan Green.

Mr Moo 14 acre organic farm Pre Ching Ming Laoshan Green (Shandong)
The tea is made organically on Mr Moo's small farm in Shangdong not too far from where the famous Chinese beer TsingTao is brewed.

I discover chinese greens and my friends discover Laoshan greens.

I think we used something like 7grams of leaves, 200ml of water and 3minutes of infusion, 85°c.
We did'nt was the leaves, maybe it would have been a good think to do because they were tightly rolled.
1st infusion, the tea has a good umami taste, strong and green taste, its really a tea I like.
2nd infusion, 3 minutes again, I had forgotten to let some water in the teapot. The tea is good and I notice good notes of fruits like grapes and also a slight nutty taste.
3rd infusion, the infusion time grows a bit, It's a bit the same, I don't really remember.
4th infusion, the tea has given waht it had, or maybe it was at the 5th infusion.





My friends described this tea as "Mao Feng" style, with first a bitter taste (that I liked) and then a sugar aftertaste.
The leaves were 2nd or 3rd flush according to them, organicaly grown and very well handcrafted.


Then, we tasted the Tie Kwan Yin.

Mr Hsieh's Ti Kwan Yin is from his 1 acre estate in Nantou, Taiwan where he and his sister farm organically.

1acre, this is really small production according to me!
They told me Nantou was a good place for growing tea.

I never drink Tie Kwan Yin, it's too expensive if you want to drink a good one, so I drink Benshan.
This one is tightly rolled and heavily roasted.
We compared it with a "modern style" one made in China, these are completely different even in aspect.
The Taiwanese one has red marks on the edges of the leaves and has a long pétiole wether the Chinese one has no red mark and no pétiole.


We used 7 grams for a gaiwan(100ml), nearly boiling water, infusions dured first around 1 minut and then more.

1st infusion, the smell is really surprinsing, it smells a bit like a belgian biscuit called "speculoos", a good mellow taste in the mouth with a lot of hot spicy notes like cinnamon.
2nd infusion, it still tastes speculoos but it becomes more like cooked fruits with spices, I compared this with pears cooked in wine with spices.
3rd infusion, it becomes a bit astringeant, I really like that, but I don't remember the next infusions.
It gave us at least 6 infusions

I really like this Tie Kwan Yin, classic roast is really tea while the modern roasts are between tea and perfumed water, the modern ones lack of taste but have a lot of frangrances in the nose.



Then we tasted the Rou Gui

The Rou Gui is from Tian Xin Mountain in the Inner part of Wuyishan where all the original plants like Da HongPao are and where only about 15,000 kg of tea is made a year. Master Xu made 100kg of this
tea in 2008, 2009 has of course been made but we haven't asked for
it to be sent yet. All his teas from Inner Wuyishan are of course grown
without pesticides, fertilizers, and even irrigation. Master Xu worked
for the Wuyishan Tea Research station after studying tea agriculture.
In 2005 and 2006 he was one of the team that made the original Da Hong Pao.

Tim told me this one was only slightly roasted, according to me and my friends, it wasn't.
During my travel I had broken the leaves, well it doesnt matter.

We used 6 grams for a gaiwan,nearly boiling water, infusion time, I think we did 45sec,1min, 1min15sec (a lot of time aound 1min30sec) and then longer infusions up to 5 minutes.

Even when I rinsed the teacups, the perfume of roast was really strong.
1st infusion, we all noticed one astringency and the taste of fire but there was no note of any kind of sweet perfume.
We tought it was because of the broken leave or because the Master who made it fired it a bit too much.
2nd infusion, it's a bit the same, this is no problem because I like the taste of "fire" there is in wuyi oolongs.
3rd infusion, this is completely different, the tea reveals a lot of notes I can't really describe.
It's a bit the same and we continue up to 11 infusions!
At the end, I found the tea a bit weak but the last infusion was really surprising: it was like someone adde a teaspoon of sugar in the water, the taste was really ... sugary.

There is no doubt, this is a master tea

Master Wang's Tribute Tea is made from old trees dating back to
the Ming dynasty on the Phoenix mountain at about 800m above sea level
in Guangdong province. This is handmade by Master Wang around May 20th and this tea won him a silver medal at the China Tea Competition.

We did the same with this tea, 6grams, infusions around 1 minute, 85°c water (Tim told me to do so).

1st infusion, the tea has a good taste of sugar (maybe it's because of our latest tea), no bitterness or astringeancy that could be found in old tree teas or in Dan Cong s.
2nd infusion, the taste is a bit weak, we have drunk a lot of tea so I haven't tried to notice the flavours.
3rd infusion, the same even with longer infusions.
4th infusion, the same again, maybe I should use hotter water, I haven't tried.

No doubt, this is a good tea but we can't free the flavours out of these leaves.


Notice that tere are different kind of leaves mixed, surely to ensured a good balance of the taste, perfume, and other good things.

This one hasn't convinced me but I'll try it again, it's supposed to be a good tea.


Some pictures may not be as those usually posted, well this is made with a portable camera in a normal house, according to me, it lacked of light for good pictures but I am not a professional.


This was my report.
When I was in postcard teas' shop, I found the teas expensive or at least to expensive for my budget.
Now, they still are but they are of good quality and I'm sure they have more value than the price he sells these and I'll maybe buy one pack a day or another.