Greetings from the North Pole. I’m not joking. That’s where I am as I write this. Well, thirty-five thousand feet above the Pole, actually, on my way from New York to Hong Kong. I’m taking a long-postponed vacation and going to China for a couple of weeks (Dr. Brent makes me work on vacation, too). I am told that China’s wine production is the sixth largest in the world and all of my clients are interested in breaking into the growing Chinese market for imported wines. So it might seem obvious that I will be writing about wine from China. But I’m on vacation so I am going to write about tea instead.

Tea is my other favorite beverage and if I had to give up wine (perish the thought), tea would be somewhat of a consolation. The two have a number of characteristics in common. Both provide infinite variety despite the fact that they are each made from a single ingredient. Just as wine is simply fermented grape juice, so tea is simply the leaves of the camellia sinensis. Also, like wine, the quality of tea can range from mass produced junk to rare specialties that only a few wealthy and powerful collectors will ever taste. Like wine, and unlike coffee, tea can enhance food.  But most importantly, tea, like wine, is an expression of the soil, climate and culture and people that produces it.

While I have loved tea for years and know more about it than most casual drinkers, I know it only as an imported product. Once I get off of this endless flight (I’ve been up here for about five hours with ten to go) I will start to learn about tea in its native culture. I started looking at wine differently when I started visiting vineyards and cellars, and I hope to have a similar experience with tea over the next two weeks. I’ll tell you all about it.

When I mentioned writing about tea, Dr. Brent’s reaction was “that sounds fascinating…I really don’t like tea very much.” He then added that he probably had never had really good tea. Most people haven’t. It’s not that good tea is hard to find or make.  But good tea lags behind good coffee in America and it probably will until someone invents a convenient tea machine that can be programmed the night before so that one can wake up to a fresh pot. Teabags are to tea as instant coffee is to coffee, an unacceptable substitute for the real thing and to brew a decent cup of tea still requires a little more time and effort than most people are willing to give it.

As I mentioned above, tea is the dried leaves of the camellia sinensis. Anything else — mint, chamomile, lemon verbena or yerba matte – is not tea, although we often use the word for convenience to describe any beverage made with any dry leaves. And all tea, whether green, white, black, oolong, Darjeeling etc., is made from the same plant. The difference is all in where it is grown and how it is treated after harvest.  The younger and fresher the leaves, the better the flavor, so the harvest involves cutting only the leaf-buds and the two leaves below. This happens every ten days to two weeks from spring to fall. Great value is placed on tea from earlier in the season (first and second “flush”) and quality diminishes toward the end of the season

Another indicator of quality is the condition of the dried leaves. Whole leaves make better tea because they take longer to re-hydrate. In that longer time, they infuse flavor and aroma into the water before they start to release much tannin (oh yes, tannin, another characteristic tea has in common with wine), which makes the tea bitter and harsh.

If you pack a bunch of dry leaves into a box, or a sack, some of the leaves will be crushed, leaving a residue of dust and small leaf fragments at the bottom of the container. That’s basically what’s in teabags, no matter that they may have a fancy, English sounding brand name. Whole leaves can’t be used because they need too much room to expand, so teabags are made with scraps and with chopped up leaves from the end of harvest that can no longer be sold as loose tea. This tea has very little aroma or flavor and lots and lots of tannin.  Recently, some “whole leaf” teabags have appeared on the market. They are in an attractive pyramid shape that allows for better water flow and expansion, but they are prohibitively expensive and only sold in fancy stores.

So, now let’s talk about real tea. Once the leaves are harvested, they are treated in one of several ways to determine the style of the tea. The most common style in the west is “black tea” so called for the color of the dry leaves. The Chinese call this style “red tea” because the beverage made from it is a rich red color. To produce black tea, the leaves are passed through rollers to thoroughly bruise them. This starts a process of enzymatic oxidation that changes the color of the leaves from green to brown. In the tea business, this process is called fermentation but the word is not accurate as there is no microbial action (a few kinds of tea actually are fermented, but we’ll get to that another time).  When desired oxidation is reached, the leaves are dried in kilns. Common varieties of black tea include Keemun, from China (also called English Breakfast) Assam, from India (sometimes called Irish Breakfast) and Darjeeling, which some people consider the finest tea in the world (but not when it is in a teabag!)

For green tea, oxidation is avoided. The leaves can be dried immediately upon picking, but more often they are steamed to neutralize the enzymes that cause the process. Steaming also make the leaves flexible so that they can be rolled into various shapes (little pellets or thin needles) that further slow the brewing process for greater aroma and flavor. Finally, steaming preserves the bright green color of the leaves. Green tea is especially popular in Japan, although China produces quite a lot of it and one can sometimes find a green Darjeeling tea.

In between black and green tea is Oolong tea, a specialty of China. Oolong is slightly oxidized and thus is between green tea and black tea in flavor and color with some tending more to green and others tending more to black. The leaves are lightly bruised after picking – classically this is done by tossing them in wicker baskets to bruise – and then dried after a short “fermentation”. Oolong is characterized by floral or nutty aromas without the grassiness of green tea or the heartiness of black.

Finally, white tea is named for the silver-gray color of the unopened leaf buds from which it is made. This requires very careful and gentle harvesting; so white tea is almost always expensive. White tea is all about aroma, there is very little flavor and it is really a connoisseur’s drink. Almost all white tea is Chinese.

And then there are flavored and scented teas. Scented tea can be any kind of tea that has been tossed repeatedly with flower buds, such as jasmine chrysanthemums or roses, which are discarded immediately lest they rot and spoil the tea. The dried flowers you sometimes see in scented tea are only there for decoration and you will not see them in the best examples. Good scented tea can be costly, as it takes quite a lot of jasmine or roses to give tea a strong enough aroma. Lapsang Souchong is black or oolong tea that has been scented with the smoke of a wood fire. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but I love it.

Flavored teas can also be any kind of tea to which fruit or fruit oils, spices or herbs have been added. Some famous examples are Earl Grey tea (black tea flavored with oil of Bergamot) and Indian “Chai” (black tea with aromatic spices). Like everything else, you will pay more for an Earl Grey that is made with good tea and real bergamot peel (bergamot is a citrus fruit) than one that is made with leaf scraps and industrial grapefruit oil. However the additional flavor or aroma can hide poor quality in the tea, so Earl Gray or Jasmine teabags may not be as terrible as those of pure tea.

OK, enough for now and I’ve only just begun. I need to take a nap. More soon.

If you want a source for excellent teas of all kinds, I recommend Serendipitea. They are great people and they have great products. You can find them online at www.serendipitea.com and I always receive my order within a day or two.

See what Ross learns next on his Beekman 1802 tea excursion to Hong Kong.  Click here