Silver needle is a wonder, when the preparer has decades of experience.

A good friend was such a master, and I had the joy of learning how to prepare Silver Needle with mastery. I had brewed it hundreds of times, but when he did it, it was inexplicably different. Same leaves, same water, same vessel. White tea is a portal to a world of subtlety that I had never experienced previously, and have rarely encountered since.

I helped open Tao of Tea in Portland in the late 90s. We had over 250 fresh loose-leaf teas with which to experiment. Paradise!

Thank you for tao of tea. They introduced me to Puer, which became my go-to for a long time.

Tao of Tea gave me a cigarette beetle infestation through their edible parchment pound bags. But otherwise, I like their tea.

Zoiks! We didn't have anything like that in the early days, but I hope they made things right for you.

Alas, I doubt that I will ever meet a brewer of such skill.

I have only met two. My connection at Tao of Tea (incidentally, the original 'tea master' there), has vanished into the clouds again it seems. How astounding it would be to connect with him somehow. The other was an elderly man named Joe with an eternal smile, who was proprietor of Ten Ren in Seattle. As a gift, he gave me the teapot he had used through most of his life, which sits before me today. I suspect that he has since passed on.

Both were 'drunken masters'. When they brewed, they did it with no concentration - the mastery flowed through them. Joe, actually, was quite sloppy at the tea table, never talking, always smiling. It would be hard to describe how impossibly different tea was when brewed by these two.

I dedicated two years of my time in an adventure to possibly reach the lowest rungs of this kind of mastery. I think I may have hit it here and there, but never consistently. These were perhaps the most useful and educational years of my life.