Birthday Tea

My 25th birthday is fast approaching and so I decided to get myself a present and on Saturday went to the tea shop on Lyndale. This place is across the street from Bob's Java hut and is the sort of store that I can afford to go into twice a year.

I love tea. I've developed a love of coffee but tea is my first love. There is a remarkable subtlety to it that is lacking in anything else save perhaps wine and really good belgian beer.
So after much ( 50 minutes) of sniffing , sampling, and kibitzing I settled on these three teas.

First the Dragon Well. Real Dragon Well is from three estates in China and is very easy to tell from the fake stuff. It is a lovely green tea and one of my favourites.
Another of my favourites are Darjeeling first flushes. The first flush are the first leaves off a given estate for a season. They are always rather pricey and renowned estates sell out before the leaves are even picked. This is a very unforgiving tea with a steep time of 7 minutes at 212 and a secondary time of 4 minutes. This tea is from the Castleton Estate .
Finally there is the Goo Pao an oolong from Taiwan. It hovers on the edge between green tea and oolong and I am very happy with it. 3 minutes at 190 and a secondary time of 3 minutes. I thought I would cover the whole tea spectrum and bought a small French press at Ikea to make tea at school.