Tea tasting event

The weather calmed down yesterday.

Instead of downpours and cloudy sky, we finally had a sunny, warm day in Bratislava after quite a long time (It's going to rain again today.).

And I'm glad, because Teatrade.sk, one of my favorite local shops, organized free tasting of 2010 Chinese green teas from Meng Ding area of Sichuan Province. As I've already mentioned before, the owners of this shop visited China in April and personally assisted in picking and processing of teas in this area. Therefore, they brought some really wonderful teas and decided to share their experiences through series of tastings and talks.

The tasting took place in a garden of their teahouse, close to the historical city center.

We drank six teas - five of them from Meng Ding and one quite mysterious, bought by them in a small pack from one local farmer in different province (of course, my poor memory can't recall which one it was).

All teas from Meng Ding were steamed instead of pan-roasted, which is quite untypical for Chinese green tea - but seems to be a common practice in Sichuan.

First was Meng Ding Shincha; I already tried this tea and wrote about it here.

Next four:

From upper left to right - Si Bei Xiang, Cui Yu, Mao Feng and Gan Lu. These teas were sorted by quality and date of picking, with Gan Lu being the best (and most expensive, of course) and Si Bei Xiang being the worst (still very nice, in my opinion).

Whole tasting was accompanied by really interesting talk and experiences from owner's trip.

Next, we had the mysterious tea -

I guess you can see why it was prepared in a glass cup. This tea was, unlike all previous, obviously pan-roasted, so it was an interesting alternation to the whole tasting.

Next tasting, this time of oolongs from WuYi will take place in the middle of June.

Personally, I can't wait for it.

Thunderstorm has just started outside, although the sun is shining at the same time. When will this weird and absolutely unpredictable weather calm down?