Tea tasting is the most pure thing, if there is no good incense in the furnace, there is a lack of humor. The ancients not only paid attention to the combination of incense in their tea tasting life, but also liked to add spices when boiling tea, and the poem of the late Tang Dynasty Xu Wei's "Shang Shu Hui Wax Face Tea" said:
Gold troughs and crushed incense sticks, ice bowls lightly contain wisps of green smoke.
The gift of grace knows the most different, and the evening bell should be boiled in the North Mountain Spring.
Wax noodle tea, also known as "lacha", is a kind of tuan cake tea in the Tang and Song dynasties. When decocting, the tea cake is crushed into a powder in the tea mill, and the "golden groove and the milled shen incense powder" describes the agarwood and the lacha as the end, and the tea is cooked. Ding said that the poem "Sencha" also mentioned that musk into tea "slightly into the musk, but boiling like a cicada." Luo Xiao cooked well, and the new taste of the bell was more complete."
In order to taste and drink conveniently, the Song people invented a fragrant tea that combines spices with tea leaves. Cai Xiang's "Tea Record" records that Lacha "those who pay tribute to it use dragon brains and ointment to help its fragrance"; the Yuanren Wang Zhen's "Agricultural Book" has a method of making lacha:
"Wax tea is the most expensive, and the production is extraordinary. Choose the best tender buds, finely milled, into the luo, miscellaneous brains of various balm oil, mixed as the law, printed as a cake. Samples are made in a clever way, waiting to dry, and still embellished with balm oil. Its system is different from the size of the dragon ball and the crotch. This product is only contributed, and it is rare in the folk."
Zhuang Qi's "Chicken Rib Compilation" also mentioned that a kind of Xianglong tea "only uses one dollar per kilogram with the brain, and the aroma is not restless for a long time". Song Dynasty society good herbs, in the process of tea making added dragon brain, or musk, agarwood and the like, so that the tea smell is more special and rich, is the characteristics of the Northern Song Dynasty tea, but also the fashion of the time.
In the Song Dynasty, there is also a special kind of "fragrant tea", which is different from the above-mentioned lacha, which is a tea cake made with tea leaves mainly with various herbs, and the Song Dynasty "Chen's Fragrant Spectrum" has "Jingjin Dragon Musk Tea", "Bao'er Fragrant Tea", "Fragrant Tea One", "Fragrant Tea Two":
One pound of fine tea, half a piece of brain, three or two pieces of sandalwood Agarwood one or two, one or two old ambergris cakes, three or two of shrunken sand, the right is finely minced, with half a pound of licorice, a half-fry of water to take a bunch of juice, into the musk powder three dollars and even, feel free to make cakes.
This "fragrant tea", which is both tea and non-tea, can be brewed with boiling water or chewed directly in the mouth. Used to freshen the breath, relieve impurities, relieve suffering, and appetize, the Song Dynasty Li Tao's "Spring Day Palindrome" poem:
When the tea cake is chewed, it is fragrant and fragrant, and the water is burned with smoke.
The screens are closed and lazy, extremely sleepy on a sunny and rainy day.
The tea cake of "fragrant teeth" in Li Tao's poem should be the fragrant tea cake. Fragrant tea was still very popular in the Ming Dynasty, written in the Ming Dynasty's "Golden Bottle Plum" there are various colors of fragrant tea, the fourth Ximen Qing and Pan Jinlian party, from the sleeve to take out the fragrant tea wood cake, and with the tip of the tongue to pan Jinlian. On the twenty-sixth occasion, Song Huilian, a servant woman who had an affair with Ximen Qing, "often had fragrant tea cakes in her mouth."
Add spices to the tea, too strong aroma will damage the tea taste. The ancients began to try to smoke fragrant tea with spices and fragrant flowers, and in the "Complete Collection of Things That Must Be Used at Home" in the volume of "Zhupin Tea", there are dragon brain, musk and various fragrant flowers smoked "brain musk tea" and "hundred flowers fragrant tea":
As much as the brain goes, use thin rattan paper, put the tea to close, and close the cover. Serve naturally with a brain fragrance. Its brain can be used differently. Take the musk shell and install the bottom of the jar, the natural fragrance is particularly wonderful.
Hundred flowers fragrant tea, wood rhinoceros, jasmine, orange blossoms, frangipani and other flowers are smoked according to the previous method (the method of brain musk tea). In the "Clear Drinking" article of the "Conjuring Class Compilation", there is a more detailed method of smoking Hundred Flowers Tea:
Wood tree, jasmine, rose, rose, orchid, orange, gardenia, wood fragrance, plum blossom, can be used as tea. When the flowers bloom, pick them half contained and half put, the aroma is full, how much tea leaves are measured, and the flowers are picked as a companion. More flowers are too fragrant, and fewer flowers are less fragrant, not beautiful. Three stops of tea leaves and one stop of flowers are called.
If the wood tree flower, it is necessary to remove its branches and dirt, insects and ants, use magnetic cans, a layer of tea layer of flowers to throw to the full, paper basket solid, into the pot of soup boiling, take out to be cold, wrapped in paper, baked on the fire and dried. The flowers imitate this.
Compared with spiced smoked tea, tea made with fragrant flowers and smoked tea is fragrant and cute, and it does not take the taste of tea, which is very popular with the ancients. In the poems of the Song people, it is mentioned that the osmanthus flower makes tea, and the Southern Song Dynasty Wu Xiyu's "Osmanthus Flower" poem says:
Many incense but not many flowers, the sun floats in the moon full of home.
Tomorrow's stone altar is rich in gold chips, and the leftovers are swirled into the dragon tea.
In the Ming Dynasty Xu Chunfu's "Encyclopedia of Ancient and Modern Medical Unification", there is a production method of "Muxi Fragrant Tea", which may be similar to the osmanthus tea mentioned in the song Wu Xi's "Osmanthus Flower" poem:
The Nine laurel flowers bloom, and in the morning they are laid under the tree with a cloth sheet, and the flower head is laid with a staff and put away. About a pound of tea leaves, and one or two of osmanthus flowers, bag it with thick leather paper, and seal it. Bake it repeatedly in a low-heat cage. One day and night, the dried flower tea is kept on fire, not opened, and stored in a bamboo bag.
Take it out when you use it, put it in a bottle, and rinse it with boiling soup, less than a few, and drink it like a new cinnamon fragrance.
Jasmine tea, which is common in our lives today, is also mentioned in the words of Shi Yue's "Buyue Jasmine" of the Southern Song Dynasty:
Play with aromatic flavors and spring roasting swirling smoke. Storage rhymes, water sinking frequency. Pity, lose with the cool night sleeping butterfly.
The Southern Song Dynasty's elaborate "Wonderful Good Words" notes the words of the Southern Song Dynasty Shi Yue's "Bu yue jasmine", which explains: "Jasmine, produced by the Ridge Table... This flower blooms in April, until the time of osmanthus blossoms, there is still a playing flavor, the ancients used this flower to roast tea."
In the Song Dynasty Chen Jingyi's "Quanfang Beizu", it is also mentioned that jasmine flowers are "smoked tea and cooked tea is particularly fragrant".
Ming Dynasty popular drinking loose tea, the play of flower tea is also more common, the easiest way is to "flower bud throwing tea" flower tea with brewing, complex operation is "flower water point tea", first with flowers smoked water, and then with flowery water to brew tea, "Qing Barnyard Banknote" "Jasmine point tea" strip:
"Half a cup of cooked water is cold, lay a layer of bamboo paper, put a few holes on it, at dusk, pick the jasmine flowers that have just bloomed, decorate the holes, and seal them with paper, so as not to discourage them." Tomorrow morning, take the flowers, and the water fragrance can be ordered for tea."
The ancients liked to drink flower tea together, not only because of its aromatic taste, but also because of its health effect. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that jasmine is warm, spicy and sweet, and has the effect of rational qi depression, avoiding impurity and medium. The combination of tea and flowers, both tea and floral fragrance, and has the health care function of the two, which can be described as complementary.
Tea itself also has a health effect in Traditional Chinese medicine, and it is said in the Compendium of Materia Medica that tea "gets the breath of spring rising, although the taste is bitter and the qi is thin, it is the yang in the yin, which can rise and fall." "The ancients summed up the function of tea, which can dispel sleep, refresh the mind, clear the leader, quench thirst and heat, relieve grease and eliminate fat, etc., tang Dynasty Shi Jiaoran "Tea Drinking Song Cui Shi Jun" poem said:
A drink of polyester sleepy, love comes to the heavens and the earth. Drink my god again, and suddenly sprinkle light dust like a flying rain. If you drink three times, you will be enlightened, so why bother to break through your troubles? ”