Gongfu…Cowboy Style

Jorg, our host in Trondheim, suggested that when we get back to Oslo we should check out Le Palais Des Thes. It’s a nice French outfit with great selection. Anyway, we really hit it off with Voung and Ane Marte, employees of the shop. They showed us some Jin Xuan, a truly special oolong from Taiwan. Voung prepared it with a method he called Gongfu…cowboy style. That was simply his way of brewing with basic gongfu techniques, but without ceremony and ritual.

Cowboy style is such an appropriate name for how we often prepare tea. I love sitting down on a leisurely Saturday morning and breaking out the kit for a full gongfu tea service. When I have guests over, I enjoy treating them to the show and the traditions and the stories. But we don’t always want to engage in the full pomp and circumstance. Sure, I brew my pu-erh in a tiny Yixing pot, but I’ve been known to use the first four brews to fill my travel mug before heading into the office. This is the heart of cowboy style. It’s a fast and loose tea preparation that follows your current whim and needs.

When you study under a tea master, or at least the tea masters I’ve met, they expect you to follow their proscribed method and ritual without deviation. Only after achieving the status of master, are you allowed and expected to develop your own style. This is a bit difficult for most of us Western tea enthusiasts to swallow. I think cowboy style is our response. Even in Asia there are plenty of people brewing up excellent pots of tea without following the ceremony of any specific gongfu master. Cowboy style is a nod to the traditions in a way that is suitable for every day tea drinking. In some ways it makes the full gongfu process more special because it separates the ceremony from our everyday experience.

I think its time for another pot of tea…cowboy style.