Evangeline Lilly has always been interested in social causes. Since age 14, she has been involved in everything from children’s causes to missionary work in the Philippines, but she always dreamed of becoming an actress. When she was approached by the Ford modeling agency in Kelowna, British Columbia, she turned down Ford’s first offer, electing instead to pursue charitable causes.
Evangeline worked as an airline hostess and waitress for a brief time. She eventually agreed to a modeling contract in order to pay for her tuition and receive her international relations degree from the University of British Columbia. Since starting her acting/modeling career, she has appeared in episodes of TV shows like Smallville (2002), Tru Calling (2003) and the miniseries Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital (2004). Evangeline also appeared as a model in the 2003 film Stealing Sinatra and as a corpse in 2005’s The Long Weekend.
Evangeline is now the star of the sci-fi television drama Lost, which scored a huge hit for ABC, and she was named the second sexiest woman in the world by Maxim magazine in 2005. Evangeline also has many other talents: she speaks French fluently and enjoys outdoor sports such as ice skating, snowboarding, kayaking, and rock climbing.
Lilly was born in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada to a devoutly Christian family. Her father is a home economics teacher, and her mother is a beauty consultant. Lilly also has a younger sister, whom she has described as “the actor in the family.” During her childhood, the family did not have a television.
Before leaving the city of Fort Saskatchewan at the age of 10, she attended three elementary schools. She briefly attended Fort Elementary, Rudolph Henning and James Mowat Elementary. During a phone interview with the local paper, The Record, Evangeline was quoted saying, “When I was a kid, the Fort was tiny. I could ride my bike at five years old from one end of town to the other … To me Fort Saskatchewan holds a lot of really great memories. I just consider it a little happy hideaway.” She also recalled a favorite memory saying, “I remember that there was a drunk driver who was wheeling through town. I remember literally the men sending the women and children into the homes. Then they gathered themselves and ran after this truck. They actually jumped into the cab and jumped onto the window and forced the guy to pull over and go to the cop shop.”
Lilly served briefly as a foreign missionary and lived in a grass hut in the Philippines at the age of 18. She was offered a missionary post there for two years, an offer she nearly accepted but eventually declined because of her parents’ wishes. She founded and ran a world development and human rights committee while studying international relations at the University of British Columbia. She has been a volunteer for children’s projects since she was 14. Lilly is a former flight attendant of Air Canada, and speaks French fairly well.
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A city is an urban settlement with a particularly important status which differentiates it from a town.
City is primarily used to designate an urban settlement with a large population. However, city may also indicate a special administrative, legal, or historical status.
In the United States, “city” is primarily a legal term meaning an urban area with a degree of autonomy (i.e. a township), rather than meaning an entire large settlement (metropolitan area). Outside the United States, “city” implies an entire settlement or metropolitan area, although there are notable exceptions, e.g. the term City of London. In the UK, a city is a settlement with a charter (”letters patent”) from the crown.
Overview
Present-day cities are products of the industrial revolution and are generally distinguished by land area and population. Large, industrialized cities generally have advanced organizational systems for sanitation, utilities, land distribution, housing, and transportation.
A big city, or metropolis, is usually accompanied by a subcity; for example, Aurora, Colorado is a subcity of Denver, Colorado. Such cities also contain large amounts of urban sprawl, creating large amounts of business commuters. Once a city sprawls far enough to reach another city, this region can be deemed a megalopolis, or a cluster of urban areas.
Geography
Older cities appear to be jumbled together, seemingly without a structural plan. This quality is a legacy of earlier unplanned or organic development, and is often perceived by today’s tourists to be picturesque. In contrast, cities founded after the advent of the automobile and planned accordingly tend to have expansive boulevards impractical to navigate on foot.
Modern city planning has seen many different schemes for how a city should look. The most commonly seen pattern is the grid, favoured by the Romans, almost a rule in parts of the New World, and used for thousands of years in China. Derry was the first ever planned city in Ireland, begun in 1613, with the walls being completed 5 years later in 1618. The central diamond within a walled city with four gates was thought to be a good design for defence. The grid pattern chosen was widely copied in the colonies of British North America. However, the grid has been around for far longer than the British Empire. The Ancient Greeks often gave their colonies around the Mediterranean a grid plan. One of the best examples is the city of Priene. This city even had its different districts, much like modern city planning today. Also in Medieval times we see a preference for linear planning. Good examples are the cities established in the south of France by various rulers and city expansions in old Dutch and Flemish cities.
Map of Haarlem, the Netherlands, of around 1550. The city is completely surrounded by a city wall and defensive canal. The square shape was inspired by Jerusalem.
Other forms may include a radial structure in which main roads converge on a central point, often the effect of successive growth over long time with concentric traces of town walls and citadels - recently supplemented by ring-roads that take traffic around the edge of a town. Many Dutch cities are structured this way: a central square surrounded by concentric canals. Every city expansion would imply a new circle (canals + town walls). In cities like Amsterdam and Haarlem, and elsewhere, such as in Moscow, this pattern is still clearly visible.
What is City Planning?
The profession of city planning is concerned with the physical development of communities, and the interaction of that development with the social, economic, and environmental well-being of communities. City and regional planners, also called urban or community planners, seek to guide growth and development, and direct the arrangement of facilities and programs to achieve long-term community-based goals and objectives.
Where do Planners work?
Planner find careers in a variety of workplace settings, including local government offices, non-profit housing and community development agencies, urban design firms, real estate development firms, and private consulting practices.
Most professional planners work in the public sector where they help local officials make decisions relating to social, economic and environmental concerns. They often confer with land developers, civic leaders and other public officials, and are called upon to present their ideas to governing bodies, at civic meetings, or before legislative commissions.
What kind of work do Planners do?
The kind of work a planner does depends on his/her workplace setting and whether he/she has a particular specialization.
Land Use planning is the most traditional venue for planning practice. Some land use planners work on long-range comprehensive plans, developing policies to help communities achieve a future vision. Others develop and implement land use controls, such as zoning regulations, to guide development in the short-term.
Environmental planners work to manage and protect natural resources. They measure the impacts of development on the community’s physical environment, and develop policies to mitigate negative impacts.
Transportation planners develop infrastructure to efficiently move people and goods within and between communities. Because of the link between transportation networks and development patterns, there is a great deal of overlap between transportation planning and land use planning.
Neighborhood planners work to preserve or revitalize neighborhoods and provide a foundation for positive social change. Neighborhood planners commonly work with citizen groups and community development corporations – non-profit agencies that coordinate neighborhood-based housing and community development programs.
Economic development planners analyze the strengths and weaknesses of local economies. They develop policies and programs to improve the economic well-being of community residents. Others planning specializations include, growth management, capital facilities planning, housing, and historic preservation.
Many planners are generalists, with a broad range of knowledge about the impacts of physical development. Good planning involves a great deal of coordination among experts from various fields and agencies. Generalist planners help to facilitate this coordination.
What is City?
- a large and densely populated urban area; may include several independent administrative districts; “Ancient Troy was a great city”
- an incorporated administrative district established by state charter; “the city raised the tax rate”
- people living in a large densely populated municipality; “the city voted for Republicans in 1994″
- CITY-TV (Citytv Toronto) is a television station based in Toronto, Ontario. Owned by CHUM Limited, it is Canada’s third-oldest UHF television station and the flagship station of the Citytv system.
- City are a German rock band, formed in East Berlin in 1972. They are best known for the song “Am Fenster” (At The Window) from their 1978 debut album.
- City is an electoral ward in the Metropolitan District of Bradford.
- City is a piece of earth art located in Garden Valley, a desert valley in rural Lincoln County in the U.S. state of Nevada, near the border with Nye County. The work was begun in 1972 by the artist Michael Heizer and is ongoing
- City is a Finnish free-of-charge magazine in various cities in Finland.
- City is a slab-serif typeface designed by Georg Trump (1896–1985), and released in 1930 by the H. Berthold AG type foundry in Berlin, Germany. Though classified as a square serif, City displays a strong modernist influence in its geometric structure of right angles and opposing round corners
- A City in the context of New Jersey local government refers to one of five types and one of eleven forms of municipal government.
- City is the second studio album released by Client on September 2004. It features guest appearances by Carl Barat and Pete Doherty of The Libertines and by Martin Gore of Depeche Mode.
- City is a 2001 album by Jane Siberry.
- City is a 1952 science fiction fix-up novel by Clifford D. Simak.
- City is the second album by Canadian Thrash/Grindcore band Strapping Young Lad. It was released on February 11, 1997. It received very good critical reception and some critics still hail it as the band’s best album.
- A classification based on the respondent’s judgment. (See Urban/ Rural Location.)
- The town, city or village in which the spill occurred
- (E): Large towns in common parlance. In the urban planning definition, towns with a population of one hundred thousand or more.
- A type of incorporated place with legally established boundaries and powers. In California, there are two kinds of cities: charter cities and general law cities.
- a place where a large number of people live in close proximity to each other; more formally, a place incorporated as a city and therefore having specific political and administrative functions
- the city of the address.
- The city in which the car was operating under the owner and car number listed.
- A city is a unique government entity with its own special charter. Cities are not subdivided, except into neighborhoods which are informal geographic areas.
- Business address of the Hauler, Tire Dealer, Generator or End Use Facility operator.
- There are three classes of cities in the Philippines: the highly urbanized, the independent component cities which are independent of the province, and the component cities which are part of the provinces where they are located and subject to their administrative supervision.
- The name of the city, town, village or other municipality in which the site is located or incident occurs. If the site is not located or if the incident did not occur within such a jurisdiction, the name of the nearest geographical place is used.
Don Quixote is the world’s best book say the world’s top authors.
Don Quixote, the tale of a Spanish knight driven mad by reading too many chivalric romances, was yesterday voted the best book of all time in a survey of around 100 of the world’s best authors.
“If there is one novel you should read before you die, it is Don Quixote,” the Nigerian author Ben Okri said at the Norwegian Nobel Institute as he announced the results of history’s most expansive authors’ poll. “Don Quixote has the most wonderful and elaborated story, yet it is simple.”
Around 100 well-known authors from 54 countries voted for the “most meaningful book of all time” in a poll organised by editors at the Norwegian Book Clubs in Oslo.
Voters included Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka, Seamus Heaney, Carlos Fuentes and Norman Mailer. Isabel Allende boycotted the exercise on the grounds that she objected to “book surveys”.
The Swedish children’s author Astrid Lindgren managed to vote just before her death in January, and her book Pippi Longstocking made the list.
Lessing said the authors aimed to spark a thirst for reading in a young generation that preferred TV and Playstations. “They should be called educated barbarians,” she said.
Miguel de Cervantes’ tale of misguided heroism gained 50% more votes than any other book, eclipsing works by Shakespeare, Homer and Tolstoy.
Ten authors got more than one book on to the list, which was not ranked. After Cervantes, Fyodor Dostoevsky emerged as the most worthwhile read with four books listed: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov.
The only Shakespeare plays the authors agreed on were Hamlet, King Lear and Othello.
The Bard was matched by Franz Kafka, who was virtually unknown during his lifetime. His three angst-ridden tales of grotesque alienation on the list were The Trial, The Castle and the Complete Stories.
Three works by Leo Tolstoy made it: War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories.
The American William Faulkner and the Briton Virginia Woolf both scored twice, along with the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who declined to vote.
Living writers were few and far between . Notable examples were Doris Lessing - whose Golden Notebook featured - and Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison.
Alf van der Hagen, an editor with the Norwegian Book Clubs, said: “The unique element to this list is that we didn’t just ask authors from Europe or the US, we took a worldwide survey for the first time.”
He said more than two-thirds of the 100 titles were written by Europeans, almost half were written last century and 11 were by women.
Don Quixote
Often called the first modern novel, Don Quixote originally conceived as a comic satire against the chivalric romances. However, Cervantes did not destroy the chivalric ideal of the romances he rejected - he transfigured it. The work have been seen as a veiled attack on the Catholic Church or on the contemporary Spanish politics, or symbolizing the duality of the Spanish character.
Neither wholly tragedy nor wholly comedy Don Quixote gives a panoramic view of the 17th-century Spanish society. Central characters are the elderly, idealistic knight, who sets out on his old horse Rosinante to seek adventure, and the materialistic squire Sancho Panza, who accompanies his master from failure to another. Their relationship, although they argue most fiercely, is ultimately founded upon mutual respect. In the debates they gradually take on some of each other’s attributes.
During his travels, Don Quixote’s overexcited imagination blinds him to reality: he thinks windmills to be giants, flocks of sheep to be armies, and galley-slaves to be oppressed gentlemen. Sancho is named governor of the isle of Barataria, a mock title, and Don Quixote is bested in a duel with the Knight of the White Moon, in reality a student of his acquaintance in disguise. Don Quixote is passionately devoted to his own imaginative creation, the beautiful Dulcinea. “Oh Dulcinea de Tobosa, day of my night, glory of my suffering, true North and compass of every path I take, guiding star of my fate…” The hero returns to La Mancha, and only at his deathbed Don Quixote confesses the folly of his past adventures.
Plot Overview
Don Quixote is a middle-aged gentleman from the region of La Mancha in central Spain. Obsessed with the chivalrous ideals touted in books he has read, he decides to take up his lance and sword to defend the helpless and destroy the wicked. After a first failed adventure, he sets out on a second one with a somewhat befuddled laborer named Sancho Panza, whom he has persuaded to accompany him as his faithful squire. In return for Sancho’s services, Don Quixote promises to make Sancho the wealthy governor of an isle. On his horse, Rocinante, a barn nag well past his prime, Don Quixote rides the roads of Spain in search of glory and grand adventure. He gives up food, shelter, and comfort, all in the name of a peasant woman, Dulcinea del Toboso, whom he envisions as a princess.
On his second expedition, Don Quixote becomes more of a bandit than a savior, stealing from and hurting baffled and justifiably angry citizens while acting out against what he perceives as threats to his knighthood or to the world. Don Quixote abandons a boy, leaving him in the hands of an evil farmer simply because the farmer swears an oath that he will not harm the boy. He steals a barber’s basin that he believes to be the mythic Mambrino’s helmet, and he becomes convinced of the healing powers of the Balsam of Fierbras, an elixir that makes him so ill that, by comparison, he later feels healed. Sancho stands by Don Quixote, often bearing the brunt of the punishments that arise from Don Quixote’s behavior.
The story of Don Quixote’s deeds includes the stories of those he meets on his journey. Don Quixote witnesses the funeral of a student who dies as a result of his love for a disdainful lady turned shepherdess. He frees a wicked and devious galley slave, Gines de Pasamonte, and unwittingly reunites two bereaved couples, Cardenio and Lucinda, and Ferdinand and Dorothea. Torn apart by Ferdinand’s treachery, the four lovers finally come together at an inn where Don Quixote sleeps, dreaming that he is battling a giant.
Along the way, the simple Sancho plays the straight man to Don Quixote, trying his best to correct his master’s outlandish fantasies. Two of Don Quixote’s friends, the priest and the barber, come to drag him home. Believing that he is under the force of an enchantment, he accompanies them, thus ending his second expedition and the First Part of the novel.
The Second Part of the novel begins with a passionate invective against a phony sequel of Don Quixote that was published in the interim between Cervantes’s two parts. Everywhere Don Quixote goes, his reputation—gleaned by others from both the real and the false versions of the story—precedes him.
As the two embark on their journey, Sancho lies to Don Quixote, telling him that an evil enchanter has transformed Dulcinea into a peasant girl. Undoing this enchantment, in which even Sancho comes to believe, becomes Don Quixote’s chief goal.
Don Quixote meets a Duke and Duchess who conspire to play tricks on him. They make a servant dress up as Merlin, for example, and tell Don Quixote that Dulcinea’s enchantment—which they know to be a hoax—can be undone only if Sancho whips himself 3,300 times on his naked backside. Under the watch of the Duke and Duchess, Don Quixote and Sancho undertake several adventures. They set out on a flying wooden horse, hoping to slay a giant who has turned a princess and her lover into metal figurines and bearded the princess’s female servants.
During his stay with the Duke, Sancho becomes governor of a fictitious isle. He rules for ten days until he is wounded in an onslaught the Duke and Duchess sponsor for their entertainment. Sancho reasons that it is better to be a happy laborer than a miserable governor.
A young maid at the Duchess’s home falls in love with Don Quixote, but he remains a staunch worshipper of Dulcinea. Their never-consummated affair amuses the court to no end. Finally, Don Quixote sets out again on his journey, but his demise comes quickly. Shortly after his arrival in Barcelona, the Knight of the White Moon—actually an old friend in disguise—vanquishes him.
Cervantes relates the story of Don Quixote as a history, which he claims he has translated from a manuscript written by a Moor named Cide Hamete Benengeli. Cervantes becomes a party to his own fiction, even allowing Sancho and Don Quixote to modify their own histories and comment negatively upon the false history published in their names.
In the end, the beaten and battered Don Quixote forswears all the chivalric truths he followed so fervently and dies from a fever. With his death, knights-errant become extinct. Benengeli returns at the end of the novel to tell us that illustrating the demise of chivalry was his main purpose in writing the history of Don Quixote.
Everything About Tea
Camellia sinensis is an evergreen plant and grows in tropical to sub-tropical climates. In addition to tropical climates (at least 50 inches of rainfall a year), it also prefers acidic soils. Many high quality tea plants grow at elevations up to 1500 meters (5,000 feet), as the plants grow more slowly and acquire a better flavor. Only the top 1-2 inches of the mature plant are picked. These buds and leaves are called flushes, and a plant will grow a new flush every seven to ten days during the growing season.
Tea plants will grow into a tree if left undisturbed, but cultivated plants are pruned to waist height for ease of plucking.
Two principal varieties are used, the small-leaved China plant (C. sinensis sinensis) and the large-leaved Assam plant (C. sinensis assamica).
History of Tea
Tea is so much a part of everyday life in Britain that we might never stop to think about how a unique plant from faraway China became the nation?s favourite drink. But the history of tea is fascinating, and in this section we can follow its story from the earliest times in Imperial China right up to its present place at the heart of British life.
Read about the exotic beginnings of tea ” the legends surrounding its origins as a drink, its popularity among the Chinese emperors, and the cultural significance of the Japanese tea ceremony. Discover how tea was brought to England by a seventeenth century queen, and how important the tea trade was to the British East India Company, one of the most powerful commercial organisations the world has ever seen. Learn how the phenomenal popularity of tea in the eighteenth century led to widespread smuggling and adulteration, and about the murderous lengths smugglers went to to protect their illegal trade. Read also about the Boston Tea Party of 1773, which sparked off the American Revolution, and how rivalry between the English and the American tea traders in the nineteenth century led to the excitement of the Clipper races. And trace the social history of tea in Britain, from the early debates about its health-giving properties, to the rise of the tea bag, via the great tradition of the London Tea Auction and the role of tea in boosting morale in the World Wars.
Tea Facts
- Drink your way to the top…
- 80% of office workers now claim they find out more about what’s going on at work over a cup of tea than in any other way.
Big in India…
- Apart from tourism, tea is the biggest industrial activity in India.
A long time ago…
- Tea was created more than 5000 years ago in China.
The first book…
- The first book about tea was written by Lu Yu in 800 A.D
Arrived in Europe…
- Tea firstly appeared in Europe thanks to Portuguese Jesuit Father Jasper de Cruz in 1560.
How many cups a day…
- The number of recommended cups of tea to drink each day is 4, this gives you optimal benefit.
Bag it up…
- 96% of all cups of tea drunk daily in the UK are brewed from tea bags.
As you like it…
- 98% of people take their tea with milk, but only 30% take sugar in tea.
A cup of tea to keep the dentist away…
- Tea is a natural source of fluoride that can help protect against tooth decay and gum disease
And the doctor away…
- Tea has potential health maintainence benefits in cardiovascular disease and cancer prevention.
Good for you…
- Tea contains half the amount of caffeine found in coffee.
Everyone’s favourite…
- By the middle of the 18th Century tea had replaced ale and gin as the drink of the masses and had become Britain’s most popular beverage.
Tea break time…
- Tea breaks are a tradition that have been with us for approximately 200 years.
Everything brewed from the leaf of the tea plant is tea.
Everything else is something else!
We will use here the term tea for the “real” tea, otherwise mention the origin (herbal, fruit, Mate etc.)
All tea comes from the same plant. It was thought at one time that green and black teas were made from different plants. In fact it is only the different plucking and processing methods that produce the different types - green, black, oolong, white, yellow, Pu-erh or scented.
Many different varieties within each category result in hundreds of teas from all over the world.
The leaves are plucked as the new shoots or “flush” are beginning to grow (two leaves one bud). These tiny young shoots and their thin, unopened buds produce the most delicate and flavourful teas. Picked and processed by hand only these delicate young leaves go into the making of a premium tea.
Black tea is the most common tea in Europe. Although the first tea that came to Europe was green, black tea seems to be more suited for our taste and has displaced green tea almost completely.
The picked leaf undergoes a full fermentation process composed of six basic steps - withering, rolling, sorting, fermenting, firing (or drying) and grading.
1. Withering
The leaves are exposed to hot air for several hours in order to reduce their water content by 50% to 60%. This step starts to free up the enzyme responsible for oxidizing the leaf (fermentation). It also softens the leaves, preparing them to undergo subsequent operations without breaking. The leaves must not be broken or bruised (except for oolong).
2. Rolling - The leaves are rolled (by hand or mechanically) allowing the essential oils to spread and to impregnate the buds. The aroma of the tea depends on these essential oils.
3. Sorting - A calibrated screen is used to sort the tea. The smallest leaves go directly to the next stage, while the larger, tougher ones undergo a second rolling.
4. Fermentation - This entails the chemical reaction of the leaves and their components (polyphenols) with air, humidity and heat. This is a crucial moment, one in which the aroma, bite and colour of the tea (turns coppery red) are determined. If this step is stopped too soon the tea is greenish and can have a metallic after-taste; if it is fermented too much it becomes sweetish and loses both quality and aroma.
5. Firing - The characteristics of the tea become fixed at this stage (colour of the leave turns black). Drying the leaves in the oven stops the fermentation process. If the leaves are not dried enough (if more than 12% humidity remains), the tea may be attacked by mould. If they are dried too much (if less than 2% to 3% humidity remain) the result is a tea without aroma since the aroma-carrying elements remain largely insoluble.
6. Grading - The leaves are separated by size or grade. This operation also cools and aerates the leaves.
Once this process is complete 100 kg of fresh leaves will have yielded 20 -25kg of black tea.
Soluble tea is a black tea that has undergone the usual production steps but that is dried even further and reduced to powder. This type of tea has the advantage of being easier to crate and ship for export. It is also ideal for the two tea innovations of the 20th century: iced tea and the tea bag.
Green tea is often referred to as “unfermented” tea.
- Firing - The leaves are placed for 20 to 30 seconds in large iron basins heated to about 100° Celsius. This operation destroys the enzyme that causes fermentation. The leaves then remain green. In Japan this process is accomplished by exposing the leaves to steam.
- Rolling - As for black tea the smaller and more tightly rolled the leaf the more robust the tea as more components are released.
- Drying - This allows some evaporation of the water contained in the leaves to prevent mould.
- Sorting - This is the step where the grades are separated out. Just as for black tea the process uses sieves or screens of different calibers (see our range here) .
Oolong means “black dragon” and is generally referred to as “semi-fermented” tea.
It is produced only in China and Taiwan in similar way as black tea (withering, rolling, fermentation, firing). The difference is that the leaves are wilted in direct sunlight and then shaken in bamboo baskets to lightly bruise the edges.
In the next step only the bruised edges are fermented the core of the leaf is still green hence half fermented.
Oolongs are always whole leaf teas, never broken by rolling.
They have a distinctive peachy flavour (Wu Yi Yan Cha Oolong).
White tea is produced on a very limited scale in China and Sri Lanka.
The new buds are plucked before they open and allowed to dry. The curled-up buds have a silvery appearance and produce a very pale, straw-coloured tea with a fine, aromatic and mild character (unfermented).
This used to be the tea for the Chinese Emperor. It is said that only white dressed virgins were allowed the pluck the buds with their mouth in the early morning to keep the tea as pure as possible (White Bud).
Yellow tea is only produced in China, often made from the leaves of wild growing tea bushes.
In the past monkeys were trained to pluck the leaves because they often grow in inaccessible terrain.
It is best placed between green and Oolong tea.
The making of yellow tea is similar to green tea (unfermented). After firing and rolling the leaves are stored in small piles in a room with a constant humidity for about two hours. During this procedure the leaves get their yellow colour.
The range of sorts is very limited and there are only small quantities available.
The aroma of Yellow tea is famous, with hints of chocolate and coffee (Huan Chan Mao Feng).
Pu-erh tea is originally from South-China (Yunnan). The production is different to this of black or green tea.
- A basic tea is produced (Qing Mao). The freshly plucked leaves are wilted, then slightly roasted, rolled, shaped (to bring it into leaf form again), dried, rolled, shaped and dried again.
It is fermented with water (which includes certain necessary bacteria) over a period of 40-50 days.
- The little piles of tea have to be turned and watered regulary and the right mix of temperature (under 60°C) and humidity is crucial.
- The fermentation is stopped by treating the tea with hot air (150°C) which also kills the bacteria.
Pu-erh is often sold in different forms (nests, squares, biscuit). Due to its unique manufacturing process Pu-erh tea posses a distinctive earthy flavour (Pu-Erh lemon).
Scented tea is created when the additional flavourings are mixed with the leaf at a final stage before the tea is packed. For Jasmine tea (the oldest existing scented tea, invented in China), whole jasmine blossoms are added to green, black or oolong tea. Fruit-flavoured teas are generally made by blending the fruits’ essential oils with tea (for example Earl Grey is black or green tea mixed with the oil of the Bergamot).
Apart from the classical teas the brewing of parts of a plant was and is practised all over the world. Here are some “non classical” teas:
Mate tea comes from South America. It was found in ancient Indian graves and has a long tradition there.
The leaves are plucked from the mate bush (Ilex paraguayensis St.- Hil.) and briefly heated for dehydration.
Afterwards the leaves are fermented for about 30- 45 days and finally dried.
The result is green mate with a slightly sweet-sour, smokey taste. A certain percentage is being roasted to a stronger, smokier taste (roasted mate).
Mate tea is very popular in Argentina, Brasil and Paraguay.
It contains 0.5-3% caffeine which has a coffee like effect due to the absence of tannic acid (unlike green and black tea).
In South America a little pumkin is filled half with mate leaves and then filled up with boiling water. The quite strong brew is sucked in through a tube. In Europe mate is brewed like other tea (max. 5min brewing time).
Rooibush tea is made from the leaf and bark of a South African bush (Aspalathus linearis, in Afrikaans: Rooibos).
The name “red bush” comes from the fact that the plant turns fire red in the seventh year and dies. It was discovered in the 19th century north of Capetown.
Rooibush is choped, fermented for 8-24 hours (turns into red-brown colour) and then dried.
The taste is fresh-fruity and there is no acid or caffein in Roibush tea. It’s alkaline nature and high percentage of vitamin C and vital minerals makes this tea an ideal drink for children, expectant women and it is perfect to drink at nighttime.
Most Roibush comes as scented tea (Roibush Applestrudel).
The brewing time is 5-10 minutes and it is made like normal tea.
Lapacho tea also comes from Sout America.
Lapacho is a tree (Tabebuia serratifolia, up to 20m with beautiful red blossoms) whose bark is used to brew tea (boil for 4-5 minutes, brew for another 15-20min.).
The list of essential, healthy ingredience is long. Lapacho is detoxicating, blocks inflamation and cancer growth, strenghtens the immune system and wound healing, lowers high blood pressure and fever and is used against depression.
Herbal tea is a infusion of one or multiple herbs and/or spices.
In the past they were mostly used as medicine. With the progress of medical science herbs fell into oblivion. Nowadays herbal infusions are re-discovered. They do not contain caffeine but minerals and vitamins instead. Best known are camomile, nettle and mint infusions (see our range here).
Fruit tea is made from fruits of all kind. The range of these teas is virtually unlimited. The basis is usually hibiscus, hawthorn and apple enriched with different fruits and flavours. They can be drunk hot and cold and at any time of the day.
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