Floating Leaves Tea

This episode was so much fun to record! It's the debut of a new line-up of high mountain oolongs that we're SUPER excited to share. Enjoy :) Also, it's Shiuwen's birthday on the day this comes out. Happy Birthday Shiuwen!!

There are so many new teas in the shop that we can barely walk around!! So we decided to drink THREE teas on the podcast this week. Two Charcoal Dong Ding Oolongs (comparing the last batch with this new batch) and one Hehuan Shan High Mountain Oolong harvested in November.   

We're back after a brief hiatus to pack tea. Last week's sale went really well! Thank you to everyone who bought tea!!   This week we are full of both gratitude and the desire to take a long nap. So we decided to have a laid back session with this comforting puer for the podcast this week. We call this cake of 2011 Menghai puer the "Big Sister Cake". It is a cake from our teacher Mr Zhan. Very gra...

The first fresh picked oolong from this year's Winter harvest at Floating Leaves IS... Smooth Water Baozhong! The weather was not especially favorable to tea production in Taiwan this year, but this farmer from Nangang pulled it off to produce something really special! We both loved it! After I pressed stop recording, our hands simultaneously raised in a 'thumbs up' motion and we gave each other a...

It's time for new Hong Shui! But this time we don't know if it's from Lala Shan or Lo-Shan (yet). For this episode we drank the new crop of Hong Shui and tried to figure out where it's from, and really focused on looking at the tea based on our objective experience. Really awesome tea! We'll have it up on the site sometime next week, and by that time we will be able to say definitely where it's fr...

There's a new GABA oolong in the shop, and it's awesome! High elevation tea from Shan Lin Xi, and processed by the GABA master that taught the Lalashan farmer to make GABA tea.  This episode we compared this new Shan Lin Xi GABA Oolong with the previous crop, AKA Nantou GABA Oolong. It was a fun, light session with two really solid teas!

Another Dong Ding session! We said a couple of weeks ago that we would come back to this new batch of Charcoal Dong Ding, and we did!  Also, this is our faux Halloween episode! Happy (belated) Halloween!!!

I've been wanting to do this session for a few weeks now, and the weather was perfect for it today! Aged oolong is great for gently warming up the body as the seasons are changing. This time we drank an especially clean aged Baozhong from the 1970's, and talked a bit about how to spot potential in a tea for aging.

This episode we drank from two batches of Charcoal Dong Ding. And within the session, Shiuwen noticed the tea was taking us somewhere. The name of the episode is an homage to Red Pine, local author and translator of the Pacific Northwest, who asked Shiuwen the same question. This episode felt like we were sharing tea with him. Which prompts me to ask again... Who says you can't travel?

A new tea from Charcoal Master Lai arrived recently. Every time we've tasted it since it arrived, there's been more and more layers showing up. In the same fashion, the session that became this week's episode brought up some new things for us to chew on. This is a BIG TEA! 

This episode was full of GABA in epic proportions. We drank TWO Lo-Shan Hongshui oolongs, the last of the previous crop and the first of this new crop. Both are excellent for different reasons, and by the end Shiuwen was giggling like a crazy tea lady! So much fun!

We've got two new high mountain oolongs in the shop: Alishan and Lishan. This episode we did a side-by-side tasting of the previous batch of each tea with the current batch of each tea. So that's TWO side-by-sides in ONE podcast. Wow! We got pretty lifted off of so many high mountain oolongs!

Dong Ding! AGAIN!!! This week we are comparing a fresh, new batch of Dong Ding A with the previous batch that we described as Dong Ding A Deluxe. We brewed them bowl style and drank with a ceramic soup spoon. The teas both showed up really clearly, which helped us easily pinpoint their differences and enjoy them! It's a really fun practice to get to know teas as they change over the seasons.

This episode we revisited an excellent batch of Charcoal Dong Ding just before it's sold out. The combination of roasting and aging over time have produced a wonderfully complex Dong Ding tea!

This episode we compared three different batches of our only tea we roast ourselves, House Oolong! We got into the topic of roasting a lot more than I thought we would. There's some good information in here if you want to try your hand at tea roasting at home, which I highly encourage you to try!

We had a light session with two easygoing tea, Oriental Beauty (or OB One) and Honey Beauty. The comparison was really fun, and we ended up getting onto the topic of cold brew... just, by chance ;) Both of these teas are new arrivals, and we wanted to feature them because they are sweet, yummy and refreshing!

This session we drank Taiji Hongshui (AKA Gongfu Hongshui) from Shi Ding. This is a really fun tea, and we enjoyed its relaxing effect. Especially after a long couple of weeks!   We dug into some of the 'fundamental structures' as they show up in this tea. We'll keep revisiting these over and over because they build the foundation for clear observation of a good tea. Check out those original 'fund...

We're back!! We've been so busy packing tea, that we've mostly been drinking grandpa style in the shop. So to honor that, we recorded a light session of us drinking grandpa style tea. Enjoy! And if you're really busy, drink some grandpa style yourself. It's a great way to let the tea brew itself.

It's Floating Leaves 15 year anniversary! We're celebrating with a noon picked, charcoal roasted oolong from Taiwan. If you haven't had a chance yet, please consider entering our photo contest by August 5th to help us celebrate. We're giving away teapots! And the annual Anniversary Sale will start on August 7th.

A week ago, we did a session that ended in me (Noah) drinking two mystery teas in order to get out of my own head while drinking the tea. This week, I chose a tea for Shiuwen to brew, but she was not privy to the name of the tea. It was really fun! So mind opening to taste tea like this. It helps us get closer to the tea and see what it is objectively doing!

In this episode we started off with a delightful Baozhong, but halfway through I realized I was 'drinking' what wasn't actually there in the tea. Drinking with my mind. So we did a little experiment and it was really fun! The message was this : Know what you know, and know what you don't know.

After last week's episode, we have been doing a lot of thinking. This episode we drank a special batch of Charcoal Dong Ding, and Shiuwen reflected on some of the ideas that have been going through her head. 

We had a very illuminating session the day before recording this episode, and this episode became very emotional very quickly. We drank Lala Shan for its calming and comforting properties, and ended up having some deep discussions.

We really felt like having another session with this beautiful tea. And by the end of the session we were both grateful we drank this tea, because it had a lot to say!

We have been enjoying and learning a lot from blind tasting high mountains, so we took a thwack at Dong Ding with the same method. This episode we 'cereal bowl' brewed three Dong Ding oolongs that are currently in the shop : Traditional A, Traditional B and Charcoal. It was illuminating, and we're looking forward to more sessions like this!