YABUKITA SMOKESTACK – 50 Gms

“Once I wore a dress liquid as vodka. My lover watched me ascend from the subway like I was an underground spring breaking through. I want to stop wanting to be wanted like that”. Ellen Bass once began a ‘Prayer’ like that – one of the few things in life that can claim intensity without losing their essence amongst Joy, Relief, Inspiration, Kinship, Dreams, Gratitude, ‘watching a lover ascend like an underground Spring’, Peated Whiskey and the Blues for days with two nights – that’s when the sun sets and then sets again!  It’s complicated and delicate how intensity and essence blend and then age – not intuitive at all for humans.

This is not intuitive at all – that is to say, one might as well try to get drunk on it. Agreed, she’s about 42.7% shy, now- revealing more of her essence than her intensity- or maybe it was us that was intense back then, when we uncorked the peat-smoke and it rose like a genie out of the bottle, fed on something sinister in the nostrils till the smoke covered the daylights, the moonlights, the stoplights…… and then……then, we tried to drink a river! It’s been a while, since we realized we wanted sinister – and how we stopped.  It’s funny – our vocabulary – how we call something looking for release – a genie, something looking to be cured – sinister; something revealing more essence than intensity – shy; and something needing to stop wanting to be wanted -smoke.

‘Delicious’ or ‘Savory’ do not make up the vocabulary to describe teas that are Smoked, yet they are words, both baffling and befitting of the Yabukita Smokestack, as fulfilment is sought beyond the first cup.  There is nothing mild about the smokey aroma – it’s intensely present in the dry leaves and the brew, yet the smokiness of the brew has no qualms about letting the essence through- Coconut-Caramel of the Yabukita with the Spiciness, now accentuated by the smoke. One could argue, that it’s been ‘benevolently smoked’ to begin with but the choice of large leaves, fully oxidized to bring out the fuller flavors, definitely makes a better argument – a distinctly floral dimension that survives the smokiness, is testament to that. There’s a Salinity – like salt water – that the smokiness adds to the taste, balancing out the sweetness, releasing the notes of Mango and Tamarind through the smokiness. The smokey aroma further settles to the revelation of Toffee and a Smokey-Saline-Sweetness, as the tea relinquishes temperature – this is about the time when one yields to the counterintuition of ‘delicious’ and ‘savory’. We wouldn’t be surprised if you find the smoke itself to be benevolent.