Promenade dans les Jardins de Gaïa

One of the things I really enjoy is learning about new tea companies. So last week I went to a Bio Messe, which is an organic food trade fair, and mentioned that I hoped I'd find something tea-related. Soon after saying this on twitter, I get this response from Xavier:

@lahikmajoe At this Biomesse, you will be able to find a French tea company based in Alsace, Jardins de Gaïa.
— teaconomics (@teaconomics) February 17, 2012

Was very happy to hear it, and off I went to Nürnberg. Was there on other business, so once I got that out of the way I started hunting for tea. I was particularly interested in finding the company Xavier had mentioned. Sure enough, without much difficulty, I rounded a corner in the section where many French companies were, there was les Jardins de Gaïa.


Here's their website if you'd like to know more about them:


les Jardins de Gaïa


The woman I talked to was very helpful and serious about her love for tea. I tried to explain how I'd heard about the company, but I think trying to explain who Xavier was and how he informed me that they'd be at this fair...my story just made me look like a madman.


The French, as a rule, seem to know how to handle awkward situations such as this, and this was no exception. I was served a cup of very nice Korean green tea, and told that it was made in the style of a Japanese Sencha but with a much more reasonable price.


I got the distinct impression that not just fair-trade, but economic development in tea growing countries is very important to this company. It would be one thing to pay this topic lip service, but as I looked through their catalogue I saw plenty of emphasis on this aspect of their business.


As I was getting ready to leave, I was asked if I'd like a sample of one of their teas. I'm a tea blogger for goodness sake - I'd love a sample. She opened her crate of tea, and while I peered over her shoulder, I hinted, 'I do like a nice Oolong.'


'Oh, in that case,' she responded, 'I've got just the thing for you. It's a nice lightly-oxidised Oolong from Vietnam.' This is just the sort of thing I like to try.


Here's what the website said about the Trà Kim Tuyên:

'Cueilli sur les hauts plateaux, ce thé aux feuilles d’un vert intense, peu oxydées, est proche du thé vert. Sa tasse brillante, fraîche et fruitée couleur anis, rappelle les Oolong de Taiwan. Son bouquet aromatique est dominé par des notes d’abricot et soutenu par de légères pointes de mangue et de fruits exotiques. Original et Rafraîchissant!' (this is a lightly oxidised High Mountain Oolong with bright green leaves...it's very similar to a green tea. A bit like a Formosa Oolong, the cup is fresh and fruity and the colour of licorice. The aromatic bouquet is dominated by apricot notes with peaks of mango and exotic fruit. Original and refreshing)

That sounds ok, doesn't it? It's actually a surprisingly good tea. I've now gotten quite a few infusions out of it, and I plan to continue steeping the same leaves tomorrow. It'll be my own version of Good Morning Vietnam.


Oh, and here are the leaves before I had my way with them:

it's not a tea problem, it's a Darjeeling problem

a kilo of the good stuff

A while back I talked about how impressed I was with Günter Faltin and his Teekampagne. Actually, in the US it's called the Boston Tea Campaign, and I wrote about it in tea entrepreneur. While I promised I'd come back to the topic, I couldn't talk about it in any way but theoretically. The unavoidable truth was that I'd not had the tea. No matter how good it might be, I couldn't say so without personal experience.

The thing is I have quite a bit of Darjeeling in my possession. People know this stuff is my weakness, so they send it to me. Even when I already have plenty of Darjeeling, the thought of more increases my heart rate and I'm pretty sure my eyes even dilate. I don't have a tea problem. I have a Darjeeling problem.

That's why as excited as I might be about this extraordinary company, the thought of actually going out of my way to get this stuff was really impractical. Just didn't make any sense. That is until my friend Dermot reminded me that he's been ordering this tea for nearly as long as they've been sending it. If you want to know about the Boston Tea Campaign, go take a look at their American website. Really, go check it out. The vision as well as the history of this organisation is very well explained.

Decided to take this opportunity to do a very informal interview with Dermot and ask him how he learned about Teekampagne, as well as some other tea-related things that you might enjoy reading. It's not a very German name my friend has. If you guessed that he was Irish, you'd be right. You've likely heard this, but the Irish drink a lot of tea.

His description of how tea was prepared when he was a child in Ireland would make some of you tea obsessives recoil in horror, but we have to go there. This teablog doesn't just deal with the light and pretty aspects of tea. When it's ugly, I intend to show it in all of its gory detail. If you're sensitive about steep times and such matters, you may want to avert your eyes right now.

It's actually very simple really. Add tea leaves and boiling water to teapot, let it steep, and then drink the tea till it's gone. Don't take the leaves out. They stay in the pot to the bitter end. Literally.

I asked him if the tea was a sludgy abomination by the end of the pot, he insisted that no. It never took that long to finish said pot of tea. That made sense. Not so gory. Those who looked away can come back now.

How did Dermot learn about this source of Darjeeling goodness? He said he moved into a Wohngemeinschaft (shared flat) years ago, and that they already ordered their tea from Teekampagne. Even when he moved away, his taste for this stuff had developed.

Evidently, he has a tea problem, as well.

He told a funny story about going to his doctor years ago, and devising which medications he could take while still drinking coffee. He came to the conclusion that it was easier just to switch to drinking this above-average Darjeeling than have to worry about duelling medications.

He insisted that what he liked most at the outset was Teekampagne's economical price and convenience. If it'd cost more for the fair-trade status, he truly doubted that he'd have become such a loyal customer. I got the impression that only later he realised that the quality of the tea was so noteworthy.

What about the fact that the tea changes from year to year? That each season's tea really has it's own character? 

He smiled from ear to ear, and assured me that that was in fact the very best part.

overly satisfied customer

from a humble tea company

The last few mornings have started with an Assam Sephinjuri, which I adore. I wrote about this tea here last year, before I very lightly mentioned the issue of fair-trade and sustainability.

My tea supplier in Hamburg says this is an ideal tea for the morning. I've certainly been following his advice. Every morning, as I said. No idea why I like this tea so much. It's not nearly as expensive as an Assam from Mangalam or Hatamari, but there's something simple about it that really pleases me.

Says it's a first flush as well. Had no idea Assam was divided into categories of flushes like Darjeeling, but why not.

Did a rudimentary search to see what I could find out about this region of tea growing in Assam, and I found about Camellia Plc, which started out as The Sephinjuri Bheel Tea Company Limited. I'm certainly not doing any advertising for this company (I don't know any more about them than what they say on their website), but I do like the idea of a modern company involved in many things that started out as a tea company.

But now that I look at it in a bit more detail, they're involved in Agriculture & Horticulture; Engineering & Manufacturing; Food Storage & Distribution; as well as Private Banking & Financial Services. Goodness...that's quite a variety of things, eh?

Wonder what the founders of the tea company would think if they saw all of that today. They'd likely be very proud.

tea entrepreneur

Some weeks ago, Neil from Neil's Yard told me a story that I'm sure I've heard before but not in such detail. The way he explained it was that there was a business professor in Berlin who wanted to show his students an example of entrepreneurship. He also happened to really enjoy drinking tea. Darjeeling tea to be exact.

If you've read even a little of my blog, you know that this story quickly got my attention. The professor's name was Günter Faltin and his company is called Teekampagne. He was fascinated with how inexpensive products were in their country of origin, so he resolved to sell Darjeeling tea in bulk with nearly no markup. He was offering fair-trade long before it was the done thing. Here's how he describes how his rationale for not charging more for fair-trade:

'The education reformer Ivan Illich who I got to know in the early 1980s, used to argue vehemently against charging extra for fair trade. In this practice, he argued, the customer pays not only for the product but also contributes to an invisible “charity box,” a modern version of buying “indulgences” (paying money to save your soul) – a trade that Martin Luther was already inveighing against. Although charity has some positive effects, it does NOT challenge the business models that put pressure on commodity prices in exporting countries and inflate prices for consumers at the other end. Since it does not represent a systemic change of business practices, it is also not sustainable: it may stop when the charitable giver’s attention is drawn to
another urgent need. We practice fair trade with a different method: we do not charge the consumer so that we can feel good about ourselves; instead, we challenge costly conventions, and the savings benefit everyone. '

That's just one interesting point he makes in a lengthy article called “Citizen Entrepreneurship” for a Meaningful Life. There's enough here to make several meaty blogposts, which I intend to write, but I wanted to quickly introduce him to those of you who might not have heard of him or his company yet. Teekampagne is Germany's largest mail order tea company, as well as the biggest Darjeeling importer in the world.

If you're in the US, you might know his company as Boston Tea Campaign. In Japan, it's called Teeidee. Can't wait to dig in deeper to this guy's ideas.

With full force? Huh? Yeah, ok.

Know I said I'd keep on with Ceylon, but I tried an Assam today and have to write about it. This specific Assam is called Sephinjuri.

The blurb in my tea dealer's brochure says that this is a great morning tea. It's heavy/with full-force, or at least that's my poor translation of what it says, which is odd because my first impression was that it was fruity and light. After a few sips, the description I read was right. This is a dark tea.

Assams are named after the region in India where they originate. It's the only place outside of China where tea is indigenous. There's a botanical distinction between the plants in China and India, but you very likely aren't looking for that here. This region of India, Assam, is in the east. North of Bangladesh. It's the biggest tea-producing region in the world, according to some sources. If you drink non-descript "black tea" from tea bag, you're probably drinking a mix of Assam and Ceylon teas that couldn't be sold any other way. Not bad tea. Just not noteworthy. This Sephinjuri is in an entirely different league.

A few places I've looked have mentioned workers on tea plantations not earning a fair wage. I suppose I should get into that here, albeit lightly. In India, this is probably a more contentious issue than in other places because of the colonial history. But even as I write that, I think, "Wait." Being underpaid would be disenfranchising in any situation.

I know there are at least two sides to any debate about wages. If you sat down and looked at the books of any business, I'm sure the enterprise is more expensive to run than people might assume.

Am also incredibly skeptical about fair-trade products. Theoretically, the idea of the consumer paying more to assure that the growers earn more is laudable. When you look at the extra amount the growers ultimately get, you become aware that the price increase has only one true function. To make the person buying fair-trade tea feel better about himself. Sweeping generalizations are dangerous. Maybe fair-trade has to start out miniscule and grow. I'm still hopeful that this is how things turn out.

Which brings me back to the original question:

How does one know/make sure that the people who grew the tea are being paid reasonably? One doesn't.