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.

you don't really want to know how this tastes, do you?

autumnal background to go with my Karakorum Cha

Have been stewing about something for the last few days and rather than try to be clear and measured, I'm going to scrawl a bit.  

A few nights ago, I stayed up relatively late so I could do another Google+ Hangout with several tea people.  And something Michael J Coffey said got me thinking.  We were talking about the physical properties of tea.  Specifically about the way the chemicals in tea react in different people's bodies.  

And the next thing he said was something I'd considered but not heard anyone ever mention.  Similar to this variety of chemical reactions to tea, there's also the fact that what you taste might really be unique to you.  The example he used was that you read a tea review and it says that there's a taste of something (let's say peach) but no matter how much you try, you just can't taste any peach.

I can't tell you how many times I've read about a tea, whether it was a similar tea or the exact one I'm drinking, and the description was so wildly different from what I was tasting.

This isn't a complaint about the phenomenon.  I actually like the fact that two people drinking the same tea can have wildly different opinions of what they're tasting.  

I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm questioning the whole prospect of tea reviews in general.  I do understand that there are strong flavours that some tea has that everyone drinking that tea might agree on.  I also get it that if I'm excited about, or even disgusted by, a particular tea I've drunk, I want to write/talk about it as descriptively as possible. 

The idea of tea reviews in general makes sense to me.  But the actual practice is sometimes another matter.  I read a blog recently that questioned if people reading these reviews actually read other tea blogger's reviews.  I wish I could link to it but try as I might, I just can't find where I read it.  

So many teablogs.  Information overload.  

I can already hear some of you: I not only write tea reviews, I read them, as well.  Really?  Does it affect your future purchases?  Do you care about the way it's written, or do you just want the information?

And as long as I'm putting words in your mouth, here's what you say next:

Why is this irritating you so much?  You're getting hot and bothered about something that really isn't such a big deal.

Well, a few posts ago I mentioned that I'd be reviewing Karakorum Cha.  The truth is that I've been drinking it on and off for months.  It's a tea that can easily get quite bitter.  So I've been toying with it and finding the best way to get the most flavour without too much puckering.

Actually, that'd probably be an interesting thing to document.  How difficult it was at the outset to make this tea not too bitter.  But describing what it tastes like?  Do you really want to know?

I'm really wondering how useful that information is.

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.