There’s no reason long-term drinking has to be limited to handcrafted spirits. For our Long Now Salon we will serve artisan coffee and tea during the day, but we were looking for something really special, ideally with a relation to time. Neither coffee nor tea tend to improve with age.
Jesse Jacobs, creator of San Francisco’s Samovar Tea Lounge, found us a Long Now-suited exception to the rule: Pu-erh tea, a fermented (non-alcoholic) tea from the Yunnan province of China. The distinctive flavor of Fine Pu-erh actually improves with age, and it pairs nicely with long conversations, because its flavor persists over up to 20 (lightly caffeinated) infusions.
The rare 01989 Suncha Pu-erh that Jesse helped us find for the Salon is literally the last of its vintage. This Pu-erh is a unique blend of cooked tea and the traditionally fermented type.
Those who donate $1,500 or more to the construction of the Salon can reserve a vessel of this rare 01989 vintage Suncha Pu-erh. As it gets better with time, we will keep your 15-20 servings of tea here for you to be steeped whenever you visit. ($500 refill) You also get a Challenge Coin and a special Yixing Clay Tea Flask.
Jesse created Samovar in order to offer people a place, in his words,
“to slow down, unplug, and wake up.”
We’ll be working with Samovar for all the fine teas at the Salon, as that’s exactly the kind of thinking that matches our goal of creating a place for conversation.
Pu-erh Tea for the Long Now Salon by Samovar from The Long Now Foundation on Vimeo.
