America’s Tea Culture Blossoms

choi

Susan Chira, America’s Tea Culture Blossoms; Restaurants, salons and markets are increasingly capturing the drink’s nuances. New York Times, May 6, 2015 (in the Food section).
www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/dinin ... ng-dating-pool.html
(“The Tea Association of the USA reported that retail sales of tea have soared from just under $2 billion in 1990 to nearly $11 billion last year, and a broad array of brands and styles can be found on supermarket shelves”)

Note:
(a) "Even as Americans discovered fine coffee, with specialty coffee shops springing up across the country and debates over the merits of pour-over and cold brew, tea remained ]note the past tense] a largely pedestrian choice among mass-produced brands."
(i) drip brew
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_brew
(or filtered coffee, pour-over)
(ii)
(A) cold brew
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_brew
(B) Cold Brew. Blue Bottle Coffee, undated
bluebottlecoffee.com/preparation-guides/cold-brew
(the Filtron method; "Cold brew calls for a finer grind")

(b) “When I was growing up, tea was drunk by old people and sick people. It was Lipton and it was terrible.”

Lipton
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipton
(Thomas Lipton)

(c) "In New York, high-end restaurants such as Eleven Madison Park * * * Matcha in particular is in vogue"
(i)
(A) The address of Eleven Madison Park restaurant is
11 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
elevenmadisonpark.com/#/contact
(B) The website says, "The menu is $225 per person."
(C) It does not focus on tea. In fact, It is mostly about wine and beer. Maybe that is why a photo legend of this NYT report says, "Christopher Day, center, runs the tea program at Eleven Madison Park." Just a program, not the whole thing.
(ii) matcha  抹茶
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matcha

The spelling "matcha" IS Japanese Romanization of 抹茶.

choi

(d) "Dr [Andrew] Weil was 17 when he visited Japan in 1959 and discovered sencha and matcha."
(i)
(A) sencha  煎茶
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sencha
(B) history of tea in Japan
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tea_in_Japan
(section 4 Modern Japanese green tea: In 1740, Sōen NAGATANI 永谷 宗円 developed Japanese sencha)
(ii) Why 煎?
The kanji in Japanese language has two meaning: besides the Chinese meaning (such as 煎餅), there is one that is not found in Chinese.
(A) sen 煎 【せん】 (n): "infusing (tea); infusion"
(B) sen-jiru 煎じる 【せんじる】 (v): "to boil; to infuse"


(e) "Restaurants, in turn, are responding both to the demand and to the competition: 'Everyone else has better tea, so I better up my game,' as he put it."
(i) The verb "better" (both vt and vi) itself does not need "up." See better
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/better
(ii) "up one's game" is a phrase, as in "to up one's game," "to raise one's game," or to
"step up one's game": "to improve one's quality"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/step_up_one's_game

(f) "Mr Beckwith, an engaging, unpretentious and encyclopedic tea maven, presides over tea tastings in a spare, serene apartment and office in the Flatiron district. On one wall is an oak pharmacy chest with dozens of small drawers containing tea samples."

Google "pharmacy chest" and you will see many chest that looks like those in Chinese medicine shop in Taiwan or China. (Ignore "Medicine Chest Pharmacy" or "Medicine Chest Pharmacies." Those two are pharmacy stores--ie, proper names.)  

(g) One recent morning, he set out the elements of a Chinese style of tea service known as gong fu cha 工夫茶: a slatted wooden tea tray to catch excess water and tea, a lidded dish called a gaiwan 蓋碗 for steeping, a pitcher to hold the steeped tea, and a few small porcelain teacups. * * * Mr Beckwith set out an oolong, a partly oxidized tea prized by enthusiasts for its complexity of flavors. Picking up the steeped leaves, he pointed to bite marks. They are made, he explained, by a small green insect called a leafhopper. The bites expose that part of the leaf to air, changing its chemistry and giving the resulting tea a distinctive sweetness that has traces of honey."

Oolong Tea with Bite marks.
(i) Tiffany Williams, Stories About My Favorite Oolong Teas. T Ching, May 29, 2012.
www.tching.com/2012/05/three-stories-oolong/
(ii) Oriental Beauty. Hojo Tea, undated.
hojotea.com/item_e/o01e.htm