March Southeast Tea Meetup

Photo credits: Bryan C and Jess K (thanks, you two!) 

It was a great day to have tea in North Georgia on March 24, and our little group of tea heads strewn across the Southeast converged once again at Aristeacrats in historic Downtown Lawrenceville to drink ourselves drunk on tea.

If you're ever in the area, stop by Aristeacrats! It has a great garden for spring and summer tea drinking!

2006 XZH in the cup, Jess's notes

Jess K took cupious notes (har har har) on what we drank, which was mostly pu'ers and oolongs. After that photo was taken, we had a 1980s hei cha from Guizhou province.

Shah8, aka Darius, a buddy of ours from the teachat forum and frequent commenter on this blog, was able to join us and brew the 2006 Xizhi Hao nu'er tea. This style of pu'er, at least lately, contains smaller tips and buds, and supposedly is modeled after the kinds of tea the ethnic minorities of Yunnan would use as dowry, picked by the maiden and given to her husband's family. With some of the tribes being matrilineal, maybe sometimes it was the young groomsmen picking the tea for the family of his betrothed?

Darius described the tea as being mild, but it turned out quite punchy and strong, but very sweet to finish; he used more tea than usual, and although the strength of the tea concerned (consternated?) him, the tea actually performed better than I expected, and I quite enjoyed it.

Bryan brewing

Bryan took the helm, too, brewing a pu'er while Jess took over camera duty. I don't think we had a tea we didn't like.

More pictures below. Bryan and Jess did such a great job with the photography, I can't help but share!

Jason brewing

Too pretty not to share!

And our obligatory group photo!
Left to right: Bryan, Jess, Darius (Shah8), Jason, Davin