Talking Tea

Today on Talking Tea we focus on the nuances of flavor, and how to fully appreciate the taste of tea by engaging all of our senses. Guiding us through this exploration of tasting is Billy Dietz, a tea development specialist based in Montreal. We chat with Billy via Skype as he shares a little of his own remarkable tea journey and then takes us through two methods of preparing a tea he selected for this episode, a Muzha Tie Kwan Yin oolong from Taiwan provided by Naivetea. We compare the preparation of this tea in the traditional Chinese covered cup known as a gaiwan with the professional tasting method known as "cupping". (In the image here the gaiwan is in the left foreground, the cupping set to its right.) Billy explains the purpose of each of these brewing methods, gives us details on brewing tips in each style and discusses how these details of preparation affect the taste. We chat about how the other senses come into play as well - the visual aspects of the dry and infused leaf and the brewed tea, the ar