SPRING OUROBOROS – 50 Gms

The plum you’re going to eat next summer doesn’t exist yet; its potential lives inside a tree you’ll never see, in an orchard you’ll never see, will be touched by a certain number of water droplets before it reaches you, by certain angles of light, by a finite amount of bugs and dust motes and hands you’ll never know. The plum you are going to eat next summer will gather sugar, gather mass, will harden at its center so it can soften toward your mouth. The plum you’re going to eat next summer doesn’t know you exist. The plum you are going to eat next summer is growing just for you. – Gayle Brandeis

Tony Hoagland ended his poem ‘Special problems in vocabulary’ with “There is no word for waking up one morning and looking around, because the mysterious spirit that drives all things seems to have returned, and is on your side again”. It seems, there is also no word for the seamlessness of Completion and Continuity, no word for fulfilment that comes bearing expectation or the joy in noticing insignificant details.  Maybe that’s why we have symbols – when ambiguity of meaning becomes too large to be contained in words. The Ouroboros – the mysterious, philosophical serpent with its tail in its mouth- marks another full cycle of the Yabukita in the Spring but rather than any closure, it gently draws a circle in the sands of our anticipation, mysteriously whispers of ‘a plum of summer growing just for us’ then spirals on – leaving us both fulfilled and expectant. Fulfilment, it seems, is joyful helplessness in noticing insignificant details – completion is just how insignificant details sometimes appear to be! The 2026 harvest bears the same fulfilment, same completion and the same continuity.

Living season to season one tends to get good at noticing the insignificant details – it’s the day to day that makes us focus on the significant. While we only suggest living season to season metaphorically, the joys of insignificant details can be found in the ‘day to day’ – by following the flavors of Yabukita’s Summer Desiderata, Spleen and Flaneur through the Augury of Autumn and finally to the Spring’s Green Chartreuse and now the Spring’s Black Ouroboros. We wish you try them together – it’s a road less traveled.

Warren Zevon once sang about a magic trick “I can saw a woman in two, but you won’t want to look in the box when I do, I can also make love disappear, but for that I’ll need a volunteer”. While it’s difficult to evoke poetry that turns vulnerable in working out its romantic kinks for a tea that seems equally vulnerable when it comes to delivering its romantic sleight of hand, this less difficult trick of ours should work for now – We’ll take the green of the Chartreuse and turn it black. We won’t make love disappear but we’ll turn its absolving freshness into delightful indulgence of a Spring Black.

While the only way to experience the joy of insignificant details is by brewing the Ouroboros, a narrative of the significant ones might complement the brewing:  It is a strange fruit – the Mildly oxidized dry leaves of Yabukita with its smell of Peppers and Chocolates!  Orange-yellow, it brews into a warm liquor with a dense aromatic fruitiness that gradually turns floral – though never quite gets there. Glycerine smooth and Sugary sweet, the 2026 Ouroboros is slightly more Peppery, more Honeyed. Aroma of Oily Almonds or clarified butter ‘Ghee’ in the brew dulls out the sweetness, making it dense – thick and complicated. The fragrant woodiness with a distinct tangy fruitiness further compliments the ‘Strange Fruit’ imagery – this time with Mangoes or Plums with Pepper and Honey. Cooling down the floral aromas along with what can only be described as a dense Saffron Milkiness make a very discernible and memorable appearance and leave with a great, lasting aftertaste. We cannot stress enough the Peppery Strange Fruit imagery – the palate unmistakably registers and remembers it!

Fulfilment, it seems, is joyful helplessness in noticing the insignificant details; Completion is just how insignificant details sometimes appear to be!