wet leaves and drier leaves

in Hamburg looking through the windows at Messmer Momentum's Darjeeling boxes  

Why are most Monsoon tea flush Darjeelings not normally sold outside of their region? Aren't all flushes worth drinking. I've had something called Autumn Flush from at least one company, and it was tasty enough. Certainly not bad. Anything but bad.

Then while I was talking to Michael J. Coffey and Geoff Norman, we got to talking about wet leaves versus drier leaves. Michael was talking about about Taiwanese tea rather than Indian tea, but he made an interesting point.

Apparently, the wetter the leaf is when it's been picked, the lesser quality the resulting tea will be. Now, I'm not a grower. Clearly. Sitting here in my flat in Germany, anything I say about growing tea is based upon very limited information. I read and I listen to tea people more knowledgeable than I, but I'm passing this onto you the way I heard it. My retelling is hopefully accurate.

I found the next thing Michael said to be the most intriguing. Here's what it was:

'There’s a tension between the farmers and the pluckers.  Pluckers want to work early in the morning, because the dew is still on the leaves and they’re plumper. They’ll be paid more for the same amount of work. Farmers know that higher quality tea results from plucking late in the morning.
 Some farmers will make a compromise, and they’ll do both an early and late morning plucking. Afterwards, they’ll sell the two different batches separately; the late morning one being of lesser quality.'

Michael Coffey said that this was true of Taiwan in general, so this doesn't directly relate to Darjeeling tea. The reason I even mentioned my favourite tea growing region of India, is I've often wondered how the rainy season affects the tea grown at that time.

There you have it. Wet leaves = ok, but not necessarily the best. Waiting until later in the morning to pick the leaves makes the resulting tea even better. Well, that's great because I was hoping to sleep in anyway.

Teai Boynoy? Huh?

Teai Boynoy? What's that?

First of all, it's been just a bit hectic here. There was a time when I posted something on the teablog everyday because I read somewhere that if you want to build readership, you should consistently have new content. Although I enjoyed doing it, the result was that I wrote a lot about tea, but I incorporated things going on in my life and how they (often tangentially) related to tea. If at all.

Then there was a time when I posted every second or third day, and that's actually more my goal. The last post about predicting someone's taste in tea based upon their other tastes is going to be a recurring theme. It's something that interesting to a lot of people and that hopefully will create a bit of dialogue.

After writing it, I realised that tea sellers must do this sort of thing all the time. Someone wanders into the shop, says that he's curious about tea, and the tea seller has to decide what might be the best option for this stranger. What does one do in that situation?

So because I write quite a bit about luring people over to the leaf-side here, and because I talk with quite a few non-tea people over on twitter, I get a lot of questions. For example, at the weekend there was an urgent message from a blogger I know called Jim. It read, 'quick! At the store...Name a couple of good commercially available teas for a tea virgin to try.'

I asked him my questions about how he took his coffee and whether he liked spicy food, and he responded with, 'coffee bold/rich cream and a bit of sugar, food spicy'. Now we were getting somewhere. He gave me a list of what was available, and I told him the brand I knew best.

But in the process I mentioned it on twitter, and of course there were people who responded to my query with pleas that Jim not go the way of teabags. That he wouldn't get the full experience and that it'd turn him off of tea entirely.

But there was Jim, standing in the aisle, not knowing where the tea filters were, or if there even were any, and not much more time to bother with hunting for tea. I'd gone to the website of the brand I knew best, and recommended the nicest loose-leaf teas I could imagine from their selection, but ultimately it was just too much. A package of English Breakfast blend was chosen, and I think it was the right choice.

My position on all of this is that the less fussy we are at the outset, the more an individual can develop his own tastes. I've suggested Jim try a sip or two of the tea before he adds any cream or sugar, but I actually think that drinking his English Breakfast blend with a bit of cream and sugar will slowly get him used to the taste of tea.

Why do I think that? Well, that's how I got into tea. I didn't start out by walking into a specialty tea shop and walk straight over to the High Mountain Oolong. Not sure how I would've responded to all that in the early days, anyway.

So the photo up above is something I've written about briefly in you needn't climb a mountain. It's not Teai Boynoy in English...that's actually Greek Mountain Tea. I'm rarely ever ill, but I've had a light cold and held onto this package for just such a situation. Unlike Geoff Norman (@lazy_literatus), who drinks his with proper Greek honey, I've had to settle for good old German honey. With a bit of Vitamin C powder for good measure.

Here's the package turned round to display the script you can likely more easily read:

brain is on holiday with the rest of me

Christmas tree in front of the Neues Rathaus in Munich

Don't think I did any sort of Christmas post last year, and I'm not sure why. For one thing, they really celebrate Advent here in Germany right up until Christmas Eve. The tree typically doesn't even go up until the 24th. Then you keep it up for the whole Twelve Days of Christmas. It's how things are done.

What tea-related thing am I up to for these festive days? Well, for the most part my tea consumption carries on exactly as it always does. But I made a mince pie earlier and as it was nearly ready, I thought to myself, 'Which tea would go well with this?'

Then I remembered...the first Rooibus I was introduced to was during the holidays. I always associate these festive times with this Rooibus with caramel pieces. Actually, I like it so much on occasion that I often have a little package of it sitting waiting for me year-round.

It's also one of those things I reach for when I have a sore throat and want to add a lot of honey to my mug. You don't think I'm going to ruin a cup of genuine tea for that, do you? Absolutely not.

But here I am not remotely ill, nibbling on a piece of mince pie, and sipping away at this caramel-smelling concoction. I do like the taste of Rooibus. It is a nice change every once in a while.

I've been reading limitless articles and blogposts about the holidays, and to be perfectly frank, as nice as they all are, I just can't bring myself to pile this one on top of them.

I was really touched by Geoff Norman's Tea Gift Gratitude, and I really racked my brain trying to think of some ideas to help Rachel Carter manage to review all of her tea samples. You can read about it in Vacation, Resting, Relaxing, Tea Drinking, Tea Reviewing, Need Your Ideas-Please, and if you have any thoughts on that, please let her know. It's like my problem solving brain is on holiday with the rest of me.

Have just realised my mug of honey-soaked goodness has run dry. Before I go replenish my Rooibus, I'll wish you all a safe and peaceful Yuletide.

all the same teablogger

Jo Johnson suggested in a blogpost that Robert Godden and I were the same person.  Here's the whole post: World Tea East - Finale.  She was joking with VL Hamilton, as she describes it, and VL assured her that there was no way that we were the same.  Like I say, I'm sure that this was an offhand joke, but what better place to start off a blogpost.

First of all, Robert and Geoff Norman and I have joked that we're the Beasts of Brewdom.  We not only interact with one another on twitter, but we find ourselves blogging in tandem and doing what little we're able to for the sake of masculine tea drinking.

But I've taken the funny off-hand comment and wondered to myself what sets us apart.

Robert's blog which is called The Devotea's Tea Spouts is a collection of musings and curiosities that he's written and he's particularly good when he's somehow riled up and/or got a score to settle.  One of my favourite of these is Carry On Up the Spout.  Try it you'll like it.

And Geoff has included his explorations with tea, as well as cultural ponderings.  One of his better recent posts was Iran So Far for...Tea.  All about tea in a part of the world about which we get such murky information.  Periodically, he'll go on a tear and write a piece of tea-fuelled prose that is immensely entertaining.  Watch for just such a piece of fiction.  It's worth the wait.

What am I doing here?  What's the purpose of a teablog?  Partly, it's a documentation about my love affair with tea.  It's a place I like to record the minutiae and the tangentially tea-related.  I've also purposely tried to make this blog as accesible as possible for tea newcomers.  I joke about bringing people over to the leaf-side, but it really has been a pleasurable avocation of mine to attract curious people to try good tea.

More on that soon.  Much more.  But in the meantime I'll simply say that to be confused with the likes of The_Devotea or even Lazy Literatus is not such a bad predicament to be in at all.

you pay more for appearance

I'm imagining someone shopping for tea in an excellent tea shop.  The customer is relatively new to tea, and has only recently gotten up the nerve to actually ask to smell the tea leaves before he decides which tea he'll take home.


Although he has a selection of quite a few different sorts of tea, he's been on a bit of an Assam kick lately.  He even forces himself to drink the other tea in his tea cabinet, but he's a bit concerned that he'd actually reach for the Assam every single time (day and night) if he thought it would be ok.  He's not at all sure it's ok.  


This customer's still quite uncertain when it comes to all of this tea and its paraphernalia. He loves so much about what he's learned about loose-leaf tea, but he has to force himself not to bolt out of the tea shop when there are too many other customers present or even worse when the tea seller asks him even the simplest questions.  


So he goes into the shop at times when he hopes no-one else is there.  Today's just such a day, and the nice thing is that the tea seller is the only other person in the shop.  He asks for 100g of his latest favourite Assam, and asks about several others.  The guy behind the counter happily opens each canister for the tea to be smelled.  And then the question.  This question comes eventually.  Every tea seller knows it'll appear sooner or later.


'Why's this tea more expensive than the others?'


Well, the easiest answer is that this tea demanded more at the tea auction.


Really?  Is that it?  That's the only reason?

Actually, no.  There're so many things that go into the pricing of tea, and it's quite byzantine all the rules and machinations that are involved.  When it comes to this Assam, people seem willing to pay more if there are little golden tips on the leaves.


Don't the little golden tips on the leaves make the tea taste better?


Not necessarily.  Interestingly, how they process the tea to create the golden colour might not even be the best way to process tea for the best taste.


Hm, that's a bit odd.  This tea that's entirely black might actually taste better than the more expensive one that's black with little golden-tipped leaves.  Is that right?


It might.  It's not as if all golden tea tastes bad.  And some tea with golden-tipped leaves can be really quite exquisite.


Well for the time being, I intend to buy my tea based upon how it smells and tastes not how it looks.


sidenote


This blogpost began when I considered a conversation I overheard on twitter between Geoff Norman (@lazy_literatus) & Michael J Coffey (@michaeljcoffey) about this very topic of whether the golden colour in the leaves actually made the tea taste better.  Here's exactly what Michael said over on twitter:


'Short answer: "best" flavor may require wide range of processing req's, gold color req very specific processes....Therefore, if you process for gold color, you limit what you can do with flavor...BUT people pay $$$ for color.'


Wanted to bring up the topic partially because I'm fascinated with the way tea is priced and also because I like explanations that are quirky and counter intuitive.  This one has plenty of both of these things.

Who would put milk in their Darjeeling tea?

There was a lively discussion this morning about polluting Darjeeling tea with milk. Robert Godden (you might know him as The_Devotea over on twitter) mentioned in passing that his wife insisted on drinking her Darjeeling with milk and sugar. It's Australia. They don't necessarily stand on convention in the distant reaches of civilisation.

For a few brief moments we had a Beasts of Brewdom situation. Almost immediately after the offhand remark about milk and sugar in Darjeeling, there was shock and dismay coming from up in Portland, Oregon. Lazy Literatus, who's also known by his given name Geoff Norman, could be heard spitting up his tea upon hearing how the Darjeeling was being mishandled.

Well at this point, another Australian (Verity Fisher also known as @joiedetea) quietly admitted that she'd uncharacteristically added milk to her Darjeeling that morning because she'd over-steeped her tea and the milk cut down on the bitterness. I was worried Geoff might have an aneurism at this point. She assured him that it wouldn't happen again, but I'm not entirely sure he believed her. Only time will tell.

I have an Irish friend who's been ordering Darjeeling in bulk for decades from the Tee Kampagne, and he's been putting milk in his tea since he was small. Or smaller. He wouldn't give a damn what these tea obsessives on twitter thought about how he took his tea. He doesn't idealise this high mountain delicacy like we do. It's simply another black tea for him. Simple.

So what about you? Are you more like Geoff, whose precarious health status seems to have recovered from the original shock, or me even? Would you sooner pour used motor oil in your Darjeeling than destroy it with moo juice?

Or are you a bit of a Philistine on the whole 'milk in my Darjeeling' debate? It's just tea, after all.