Just to Clarify Candle

Eight in the morning, two glass pots on the table by the window. Green tea in the first. Growers in Japan steam the leaves within hours of picking and roll them into slim needles, and in hot water the needles open back into whole leaves. The liquid runs pale green and smells of cut grass and steamed spinach, a keen high note that hits the nose first.

The second pot takes black tea from Assam. Same plant, but the pickers spread the leaves out and let the air darken them, the way a cut apple turns brown on the counter. This cup pours deep amber and carries malt, a heavy base note that sits low on the tongue, faintly bitter as it cools.

A few drops of bergamot oil in the second pot make it Earl Grey. The lemon rests cut on a saucer, and when you bend a strip of peel over the cup, oil bursts from the skin in a fine mist you can feel prickle cold against your lip, a sharp citrus note climbing over the malt. Someone peels an orange at the far end of the table and that scent finds you across the room before the tea does.

Professional graders judge a tea by eye before taste. They call the brewed liquid the liquor, hold the cup up, and score what they see. A fine tea earns the word bright. A poor one is called muddy. You lift the first pot toward the window, and morning light passes straight through the green.

By nine the cups rest rinsed and upside down on a towel, the porcelain still warm under your palm. The soap at the sink is sandalwood. Distillers steam the oil from heartwood cut after twenty-five years of growth; the scent is creamy and mild, a low woody note that clings to your hands through the morning, slow to fade against the fresh, sour ghost of the lemon.

Notes: Bergamot, Lemon, Orange, Green Tea, Black Tea, Sandalwood

40 Hours - 5oz
80 hours - 12oz