The resurgence of classic cocktails and the invention of new concoctions featuring ingredients such as fresh fruit juices, herbs, and even vegetables is, we think, something to be applauded. Nowadays it's not uncommon to occasionally come across cocktails featuring oolongs or herbal infusions of elderflower or hibiscus. After an intensive afternoon of taste testing (truly!) in Las Vegas this spring with our friend Francesco LaFranconi, of Southern Wine and Spirit of Nevada's Academy of Spirits and Fine Service, we offer Francesco's pairing tips.

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Matcha tea from Japan is traditionally produced from high-quality tea leaves. Several weeks before picking, the fields are covered with straw or black plastic fabric to shade the plants from the sun. This intensifies the color and caffeine as well as other compounds within the leaf. The same method is also used to make gyokuro tea, a full-leaf style that is similar in appearance to sencha.

Why Matcha Is Stone Ground
Grinding tea by stone was the method used in China when a Japanese Zen priest, Myoan Eisai, brought the tradition back to Japan in 1191. Eisai carried with him tea seeds and the knowledge of how to grow, process, and drink the tea. By the thirteenth century tea was being cultivated in Uji, Japan, where our matcha grows today. It is still ground using stone wheels that have been specially chiseled for this express purpose, made by craftsmen whose families have been making these grinders for generations.

Thick Tea (Koicha)
The Japanese refined drinking the powdered tea so that it became a elaborate manifestation of Zen buddhism. The more superficial aspects are the physical acts of the tea ceremony and exchanges of hospitality and appreciation whereas the spiritual side (cha-no-yu) concerns Zen practice and quest for a pure state of mind.

A full tea ceremony can take four hours and includes a meal, sweets, and tea served two times. Thick tea is made with three bamboo spoonfuls (chashaku), or about 3.5 grams of tea which then has the hot water added to it. The bamboo whisk (chasen) is moved back and forth slowly, only enough to blend the tea into a smooth, thick liquid. The exact temperature of the water varies according to the season and and can range from nearly boiling down to about 190 degrees. The exact amount of water to make the perfect tea comes from experience.

Thin Tea (Usucha)
Thin tea is served after a sweet cake (kashi) and is prepared differently than the thick tea. Two bamboo scoops of tea are added to the bowl (after being sifted through a metal sieve to eliminate any lumps in the tea). The goal is to briskly whisk the tea into a froth (15-20 strokes). Too little doesn't blend the tea and it can be too watery and if you whisk it too much it becomes foamy. Practice of course is the best teacher.

A Tea Kit to Get You Started
Our Matcha Starter Kit contains a 20-gram tin of matcha, a bamboo spoon, a bamboo whisk, and a traditional ceramic bowl, all produced in Japan. (We include helpful instructions, too, and everything is available individually as well.)

--Bids and Offers, The Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2005, --Compiled by Gene Colter with contributions from Susanne Craig and John Hechinger.

Today's newspaper is replete with coverage of the yuan currency revaluation, but the Bid & Offers crew, being completists, thought it best to ask: "What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?"

First, an editor put the question to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York official whom he was talking to about another matter. (The editor did this because he is what his mother likes to call a wisenheimer.) The sharp-witted Fedster didn't miss a beat: He noted that there was an automatic 2% price change.

Yes. The yuan's revaluation, such as it is, could conceivably affect the price of the conglomerate food companies that buy Chinese tea in bulk for export, because they buy on such "fine margins," notes Sebastian Beckwith, co-founder of In Pursuit of Tea, a Brooklyn, N.Y., company dedicated to bringing quality teas, often from remote areas, to U.S. consumers. (Completists they be, too).

Mr. Beckwith spends several months a year in Asia sourcing tea. In China, he deals with small farms and even individual gardens, and a yuan here or there isn't going to change his price points much.

What matters more to Mr. Beckwith is the Chinese infrastructure: "It's easier to get in and do business, but it's still difficult to travel [and] communications are difficult," he says.

And therein lies a larger message about the Chinese currency policy, one that's echoed by economists: Even if China does move beyond this small step and lets its currency really float, cultural and political differences that affect trade with that country will remain.

Assam is the single largest tea-growing region on Earth, a rainy tropical plain adjacent to Bangladesh and Burma bordering the Brahmaputra River. Assam produces only black tea and proves that great tea does not always need to be high-grown. Like Keemun or Taiwan oolong, this is low-grown tea and it deserves its reputation as one of the world’s strongest. It is unfailingly full-bodied and prized for a malty characteristic all its own.

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Tea tastes great. It is a simple beverage, just water and leaves, but it contains worlds. Like all things of beauty, it is both plain and complex. The detailed practice of the Japanse Cha No Yu tea ceremony is meant simply to lead one fully into the present moment. The deeper into tea we delve, the more interesting it becomes. Still, for us, a pot of tea is at heart a daily ritual, a great, but elemental pleasure.

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