Ivan the Tea (I). The way to the sources or the sea of flowers

For several years already I've been thinking about making "Copper Tea" myself ... There is not simply to brew in a teapot, from a store or pharmacy package, and from the very beginning, from collection and to a hot cup of this fragrant drink.

And this year, finally, I lost my laziness and went to the preparations for the city.

There should not be any problems with the preparations. Ivan-tea or kaprej is narrow-leaved, probably the most widespread plant on open spaces of our country. Maybe not everyone knows what a willow-tea looks like, but clearly everyone saw fields or lawns of pink color, reminiscent of the lavender fields of Provence, only in their wild form.

So we went, just outside the city without having a definite end point. Approximately half an hour on the highway and ten minutes along the woods we got a small clearing with a willow-tea.

In live it all looks much prettier. And here we began to spoil this beauty. But a little bit, cutting off only the uppermost young leaves.

After picking up almost half the bags from Auchan, they found out that a bit more deeply into the forest, the spray is twice as high and the leaves are juicier and thicker. Apparently this is because of the shade of the trees. And the bulk of the leaves were collected there.

I think the whole process is not very interesting, so in this first part I'd better show a little photo and briefly tell an interesting story.

In recent years, tea has started to gain popularity and may give the impression that this is something new. But everything new is well forgotten old. And it so happened that the Copper tea was forgotten as successfully as the rest of our history. But the Copper tea is mentioned in chronicles long before the 17th century when "Kyakhta", Chinese tea appeared in Russia.

What is interesting, originally Chinese tea in Europe, when he only appeared there, was called "Russian." Perhaps because it was delivered from the east, through our territories. And maybe out of habit, because before the Chinese tea, the Copra tea was widely spread.

In those days, Ivan-tea outstripped even furs, gold and hemp in terms of export volume, that is, by today's standards, almost that the oil business.

In the 19th century, the Copper tea still constituted a great competition to Indian and Chinese teas in Europe. So tens of thousands of poods were sent to England every year. And the British, being the largest supplier of Indian tea in the world, nevertheless preferred the exquisite fruit taste of Ivan-tea, and not the one that they themselves traded. Ostensibly "the taste of Asian tea resembles hay with manure"

Finally, the industry of Copper tea declined with the outbreak of the first World War, when all contracts for the supply of this tea to Europe were broken. And only now interest in him began to return.

I have already tried many varieties of Ivan-tea up to this point, but they all liked it, but they left feeling that something was wrong. And this tea can and should be different. Just the history of tea and the recipes for its preparation are lost. I admit I have not studied the topic of tea in Russia thoroughly, but the multiple contradictions and strains of the official versions suggest that you can "dig up" a lot of interesting things.

And so I decided to conduct an experiment with the preparation of such a tea, which would eclipse Chinese Shen and Shu-puer, and also Oolong.

Running ahead I will say. It almost happened. In any case, for a month, I have not bought tea in stores and do without puer. I think next year, taking advantage of the developments this year will be able to make "vaschschesche" masterpiece)))

In the meantime, this was the whole preface to how I was preparing Ivan-tea, not even him, but huang-puer))) And he began, with the fact that he poured out all the leaves on the balcony to sort them out and slightly podvyat.

P.S. The etymology of the word "tea" is interesting. The version of the Chinese "Cha" is certainly there, but it is worth considering the Russian root "cha", it has a lot of interesting and possibly the name of the famous Chinese tea province "Yunnan" will sound different)))