One of the projects of this year I wanted to write about long time ago was the experiment of infusing tea with hard liqour.
It is uncertain whose idea it was, as I heard it from Shiuwen Tai (http://www.floatingleaves.com), but she refused to take credit for inspiring this project, so I'm assuming that that was a Canadian Santa Claus sitting at her teashop at that time who invisibly slipped in this idea into the conversation during one of the tea club meetings.
For the project I purchased an old cask (seemingly unused, although in a quiet bad condition), seasoned it with straight bourbon and put in the roasted Iron Godess oolong, generously donated by Shiuwen.
As to the present moment it seems that the tea absorbed alot of bourbon flavor, probably even a bit too much, which makes me think of using black tea instead of oolong next time. Puerh for this project seems a bit too tricky because none knows how the bacteria cultures will react to the leftover moisture in the barrel. Also, using of the black (red) tea would decrease the level of disappointment of some people who think that adding alcohol to tea is messing up the tea antioxidants and nutrition; there is a tendency that people into tea tolerate additions/infusions,flavorings to red tea much better than to any other tea variety.
Planning to taste the tea around Chinese New Year, hopefully it will dry to the stable point at that time.
