Park Hyatt Washington Hosts a Tempting Tea Tasting with a Master
Not knowing what to expect at a tea tasting, or knowing much about tea, I was curious to see what the Winter Tea Blend Tasting was like. It was part of Park Hyatt’s annual Masters of Food & Wine and in a word, it was spectacular. It reminded me a bit of Horton’s experience when he first heard the Who.
Unlike Horton, we had an excellent guide, Roderick Markus, master tea blender and CEO of the Rare Tea Cellar, for our foray into the hidden world of rare teas. He is a passionate teacher with an encyclopedic knowledge of tea, and his calm, Buddhist-like confidence was simpatico with the setting—Park Hyatt’s one-of-a-kind Tea Cellar, a space he created in collaboration with renowned architect Tony Chi.
It embodies Tony Chi’s design philosophy of “invisible design,” in that design should evoke visceral responses without the design being overtly obvious, or as he says, “what touches you rather than what you see.”
Bracketed by shiny chrome and glass, the Tea Cellar is a harmonious blend of natural stone and wood surfaces. It’s a Zen-like, minimalist nook perfectly suited to preparing, serving, and enjoying a cup of tea. Its ambience invites you to escape into the depths of an expertly blended tisane, or one of the Cellar’s 50 rare, single-estate teas from China, Sri Lanka, Japan, or the Himalayas.
Although the seminar primarily focused on winter tea blends and unique tisanes, Mr. Markus introduced us to the history, cultivation, and aging of tea, in addition to finer points such as:
- All tea, white, green, or black, comes from the same plant and contains caffeine.
- Processing, and the place where the tea is grown, influence why one tea tastes different from another.
- A tisane, or herbal “tea,” doesn’t contain tea or caffeine, it’s a blended infusion made with herbs, spices, fruit, and other plants.
- Water for tea isn’t boiled. It’s brought to 205 degrees Fahrenheit.
During the seminar, we tasted two tisane blends and five teas sold by Rare Tea Cellar. The Gingerbread Dream Rooisbos tisane was like a warm Christmas memory with its comforting mix of ginger, vanilla, the South African herb called Rooisbos, and a secret blend of spices with notes of cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. This tea is a powerful antioxidant and stress reducer.
Mountain Chrysanthemum was a white flower tisane famous for its cooling, restorative powers, and despite it’s clear color, was aromatic with hints of wild flowers.
Cider Spice Noir was an inviting tea made with high mountain Ceylon and Indian black tea blended with freeze-dried apples, cinnamon, allspice, coriander, cardamom, and cloves. It tasted of baked Granny Smith apple pie and was a lively boost of caffeine.
In the mysterious world of tea, none is as rare, valued, or difficult to procure as Pu-erh tea. For more than 1,700 years, Pu-erh has been famed for its health benefits, and among connoisseurs, it is regarded as “the King of Teas.” It comes from Yunnan province in China, and is the only vintage, aged tea in the world. We tasted three during the tasting including a 1978 vintage worth $10,000 a pound, and two Pu-erhs from 1999. Each one was distinct and possessed varying degrees of earthiness, barnyard, hay, and loam.
By far, the most inviting and lovely tea, however, was the Freak of Nature Oolong. A Taiwanese-style of tea made with high mountain oolong, Magnolia Blossom oolong, and Competition oolong, its delicate, scrumptious, floral notes and flavors of buttery shortbread make smelling and drinking this tea a contemplative pleasure you’ll want to savor again and again.
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