Tea mixing – Jasmine White Down and Sencha

The tea purists will never forgive me, but I’m not a purist. I like to experiment. This tea studying thing started as me trying to learn as much about tea as possible to pair it with food or to cook with it. Pairing with food is not a problem, but cooking is, because I have yet to find a tea that has the characters I’m looking for. So, why not mix them together?

People crossbreed plants all the time to make better harvests, and teas have been infused with a whole host of things, so I don’t see a problem with me mixing tea just before drinking them. I would argue that it’s purer than mixing milk with tea like the Brits.

Assuming that one knows a decent amount of the tea flavors, then:

The first problem: different categories have difference steeping times and temperatures. Does that mean you can only mix teas in the same category? Only if you mix them before steeping. I don’t see a reason for that. So just mix the teas after steeping. Problem solved.

The second problem: this skill is just like a cook’s instinct (and experience): you just have to know how to mix and match flavors. You must be able to picture the tastes, what each tea has, what it lacks, its dominant flavor, its aftertaste, and based on that, you find its complement.

My first mixing: Jasmine White Down and Sencha

Why? Because Jasmine white or green tea lacks a tea taste but has plenty of aroma, and sencha has plenty of taste. The jasmine is very overpowering, but its floral strength is more expected of a tea than the dark, thick seaweed aroma of sencha. And because it is so overpowering, only jasmine can dominate the sencha smell. Next, about the taste, the white or Chinese green tea dilutes the sencha, so the sencha becomes clearer, less muddled, and less oily.

Result? Mary and James, not knowing what was mixed, thought it was an oolong. I would say it resembles most closely the Yellow Gold in taste. Esther thought it was good. Sam was skeptical the whole time, and claimed that “it is interesting,” but I think that’s his brain hardwired by the purists refusing to agree with his palates. I thought it was good.

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