#tannins

#tannins

Tea is often positioned as the healthier alternative to coffee, but some variations of the brew aren't always the best choice. Black tea, for example, still contains a significant amount of caffeine that can have negative side effects when consumed in excess. Rooibos tea, on the other hand, is free of the stimulant and is chock-full of all kinds of nutritional perks.

For his chocola"tea" mousse, Young makes a "very strong tea syrup by bringing tea leaves and water to the boil". He then strains this and lets it infuse for five minutes before incorporating it into a sugar syrup. The chocolatier explained, "tea and chocolate make a wonderful pairing as they both have tannins in common in their tasting notes". Tannins give foods like tea and chocolate their signature bitter tang and also appear in coffee and wine.

In Japanese aesthetics, shibui describes a felt sense of something that is perfectly what it is: balanced, unembellished, elementally complex but complete without adornment. Shibui can describe many things: a baseball pitcher's clean throw, the grain of weathered wood, or the curve of a handmade bowl. But the concept grows from the original meaning of shibui - the tongue-twisting astringency of an unripe persimmon - a mouthfeel so viscerally unpleasant it became the negative space that defines perfection.