商品簡介
The "agony of the leaves" is the century-old phrase used in the tea trade to describe the transformative moment in preparing tea: when the oxygen of the boiling water allows the tea leaf to release its flavor. The leaves "may appear tormented and miserable, like autumn leaves in a storm, but they may also look dancing and fanciful", writes Helen Gustafson. She has been living in this moment for as long as she can remember.
Widely famed as the tea guru of Berkeley's Chez Panisse, Gustafson is sought after as a lecturer, writer, and irrepressible tea personality. In The Agony of the Leaves, she creates intersections between her own life and her experiences with tea - from domestic tea rituals in her Saint Paul, Minnesota, upbringing to her Irish honeymoon where she encountered Barry's of Cork tea to her first meeting with the venerable Mr. Twining, of the Twining tea empire, in search of the incomparable Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary black Yunnan tea.
Gustafson's approach to the minutiae of the tea experience is a magically macroscopic one - she makes the subject of tea as ecstatic ritual come alive through biographical detail, storytelling, recipes, and reminiscences. This charming little book reveals a true gourmet's sensibility, rendered brilliantly in her particularly warm, insightful prose.
作者簡介
Helen Gustafson is regular lecturer on the history of tea at the University of California at Berkeley and Mill College in Oakland.
