Tea Geek Blogs

Well, Lu Yu (陆羽) the so-called “God of Tea”, must have been watching over me.  Strangely, without a sound in the night, the hornets’ nest vanished.  Well, not vanished exactly…something or someone took the nest away without damaging the tea plant at all.  The only evidence left was a few trampled irises and a short trail of wasp-paper flakes.  Strange, but I’m not going to look a gift wasp-free tea plant in the, er, mouth?

Many a tea geek has found themselves introduced to the world of tea through in one of the tea books of James Norwood Pratt, either the original Tea Lover’s Treasury or its second edition, New Tea Lover’s Treasury. He has been interviewed on radio, TV, and in at least two films: “All In This Tea” and “The Meaning of Tea” (both of which will be shown at the upcoming Northwest Tea Festival). Now it’s Tea Geek’s turn to interview him!

TG: What’s your favorite tea?

JNP: I must have several dozen favorites at any given time. This year it’s even more, because of the fine crop everywhere. I’m enjoying wonderful First Flush Darjeelings from Goomtee and Makaibari, Ceylons from Lumbini and Pettiagala, Nilgiris from Chamraj and Korakundah, half a dozen great Taiwan oolongs from Hou De, Teance and others, and half a dozen superb China Green Teas which have just arrived– Longjing, TianMu, Lushan Yunwu and an amazing Gu Mao Jian from Hunan.
This is before I even BEGIN to answer in depth or detail!

TG: How did you start on the path to tea geekdom? Briefly describe your history of tea exploration.

JNP: I came to tea after writing a book about wine–the ideal preparation. My first tea book appeared in 1982 and actually helped spark the Tea Renaissance that began that decade. So I’ve been eagerly exploring every new avenue to open up since then.

TG: What aspect of tea do you find most fascinating?

JNP: Everything about tea fascinates me, but nothing more than the spiritual aspect, if that’s what to call it. Field-Marshall Montgomery of El Alamein said the British soldier would do anything asked of him as long as his officers provided mail from home and plenty of tea. Japan’s proto-shogun Hideyoshi had said pretty much the same thing about his soldiers four hundred years earlier. Quite apart from the caffeine, what is it about tea that keeps us going even under hellish conditions? What is it about tea that opens our hearts to beauty and closeness? How does it manage to make us always feel a bit more civilized?

TG: Who have you learned the most from?

JNP: For millenia now, Tea is Something Handed Down. In Asia they have a keen appreciation of each “Way” or tradition, and a keen awareness of each lineage transmitting the Way down to one’s own time and self. My very first teachers in tea were Karen and Augie Techeira, proprietors of Freed Teller Freed in San Francisco, and Michael Spillane, their importer and owner of G.S.Haly Co. Outstanding among the many teachers I’ve had since are Devan Shah in India tea, Roy Fong in China tea, Manik Jayakumar in Ceylon tea, omitting any mention of many others.

TG: What tea resource (book, website, person, etc.) would you recommend for a tea novice?

JNP: Well, I wrote JNP’s NEW Tea Lover’s Treasury to fill this very need–an in-depth Tea 101 for newcomers which should repay regular re-reading every year or so by the more experienced. But a little experience beats a lot of reading. Find a fellow tea enthusiast with better connections than you have and start comparing!

TG: And what’s your own favorite tea resource, potentially for more advanced tea geeks?

JNP: Unfair Question! How can I mention one friend and omit a hundred? We now have a large and savvy enough list of internet sources to explore on our own—the hunting is good and gets better every year!

TG: What does tea mean to you?

JNP: Let me suggest you see “The Meaning of Tea,” the film by my friend Scott Hoyt (in which I appear briefly, by the way, but it’s first-rate anyhow).

TG: Name your biggest pet peeve in the realm of tea and tea drinking.

JNP: It continues to annoy me that people call anything “tea” whether it comes from the tea plant or not. If it’s not from the tea plant, it’s an herbal of some sort–NOT tea!

TG: If you could let everyone in the world know or understand one thing about tea, what would it be?

JNP: No pleasure is simpler, no luxury cheaper, no consciousness-altering substance more benign–if I may quote myself.

TG: What’s the craziest/weirdest/most obsessive thing you’ve ever done in pursuit of your love of tea?

JNP: Avoiding the purely personal now, Michael, let me admit to tasting a particular Darjeeling every year since 1986. That year in Paris I bought this magnificent Jungpana Second Flush from Mariage Freres. The package got lost for a while when only half-consumed. When I rediscovered it, I found the tea still wonderful and wondered how long it would stay that way. So every year I carefully make myself another pot. It hasn’t gone bad by any means, but it’s definitely fading. I guess you could say it’s a measure of aging, mine and the Jungpana’s, but I think there’s enough left to last at least til 2020!

TG:  Thank you, Norwood!

It’s harvest time in my back yard. Tea harvest. Or so I thought. (It’s never that simple, is it?) I’ve been growing a tea plant in the back yard for a couple of years, letting it get established before I really start to pick in earnest. When we bought it, it was a couple of years old, too, which gave us a head start on the typical 7-or-so years it takes before a tea plant can be put into production. Last year I did some trimming to encourage branching and to start training the bush. (I have another bush but it’s still inside because I didn’t get it in the ground soon enough for winter. That’s another story altogether.)

Anyway, I went out today because it’s supposed to be sunny and warm today and I want to let the picking wither in the sun. I picked four leaf/bud sets when the wasps (bald faced hornets, perhaps) that had set up shop on one of the lower branches got upset. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’ve got my four budsets in the sun, but that’s not enough for a single cup of tea.

I’ve done a little research on bald faced hornets (which is what these guys look like) and supposedly they’re not aggressive. Unless you get close to, or disturb, their nest. They apparently like to sting people in the face. If only I could pick the leaves without jiggling the plant so much.

Now I know what bears must feel like.

Well, someone out there had a great idea.  My local public television station (KCTS-9) recently aired “The Complete Jane Austin”–dramatizations of all of Austin’s works.  Now they, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, are doing a tea to support public TV.  Next month, they have an event called Afternoon Tea with Jane Austin, in which there will be entertainment, costumes, etc., all recreating the environment of an afternoon tea from the Regency period.  In order to get tickets, you need to pledge to public TV at $150 or more.

Good for them for coming up with a fun way to get financial support, and good for them for using tea to do it!  Maybe some Jane Austin fans and/or PBS fans who don’t drink tea will go to this event, have a lot of fun, and get interested in this most wonderful and tasty drink!

I called myself a tea geek enough times that I eventually named my business after the phrase. However, I’ve never claimed to be the only tea geek. My hope is that through the efforts of myself, in conjunction with other tea geeks out there, the general public will gain more accurate information about tea, a greater appreciation of the teas they enjoy, and improve the lot of the artisan tea farmers around the world by understanding why great tea is worth paying for.

One of the tea geeks I have worked with, learned from, gotten tea-drunk with, and even worked for, is Shiuwen Tai of Floating Leaves Tea. I was at her shop this weekend and was teasing her about an episode that beautifully illustrates what being a tea geek is all about.

Shiuwen was fast approaching the birth of her baby (one false going-into-labor episode had already passed) and I was working in her shop part time to give her some extra time to rest. She called in about something related to the store and was making periodic wincing noises. Apparently, she was experiencing contractions right there on the phone with me!

Then she asked if there was anything else I needed to ask. I mentioned that a couple of boxes had been delivered from Taiwan. She winced again and said, “Oh. Have to go!”

Alarmed, I asked, “Are you going into labor?”

“No,” she said, “I have to go in and taste tea!” And indeed she did come in and sampled the new winter teas from Taiwan the day they arrived. And within two days, her baby had been born as well.

We had a good laugh about this (and other things), tasted some tea samples she’d received recently, and so forth. She told me she’d be closing the shop on Monday–again for a rest and spending time with her little son (well, enormous actually…20+ pounds at 4 months). But I forgot about it until I was calling Floating Leaves on Monday to do a little tea industry networking.

Shiuwen answered the phone. I said, “Wait a minute…weren’t you going to be closed today?”

She replied, “I am.”

“Then what are you doing there answering the phone?” I asked.

“New tea came in,” was her response, in a tone that clearly showed that she felt this was explanation enough for why a mother with a new baby would go to work on one of her few days off…a day off she had specifically planned so she could get away from work.

I think that may become our explanation for any kind of crazy behavior: New tea came in. Why are you going to work while you’re in labor? New tea came in.

Oh, and be sure to subscribe to my newsletter if you haven’t already because I’ll let you know when I get a chance to taste these new teas–maybe I’ll pick up something through her suppliers. Then you’ll have an excuse to order because, well, new tea came in.

To follow up on the theme of Keemun, I did a Keemun tasting at the Perennial Tea Room here in Seattle. I collected eight different samples from five different tea shops (Perennial Tea Room had three represented, Teahouse Kuan Yin supplied two, and I had one each from the Market Spice store, Barnes & Watson Fine Teas, and Floating Leaves Tea).

The teas were divided into three categories: Congou (or unknown grade), Mao Feng, and Hao Ya A. The attendees, including myself, some of the PTR staff, and PTR customers who had signed up, tasted the samples within each category side by side.

Keemun comes from a very small area (Qimen county, Anhui Province…about 870 square miles, with a total county population about a third that of the city of Seattle). Despite this, several people said they found it interesting that the flavors were so varied. Some seemed floral–especially rose–while others were deep and smoky. And this variation could be found within the same grade, not even comparing one grade to another. Just one more reminder not only to experiment with your brewing methods, but also try the “same” tea from different vendors. Just because it says “Keemun” doesn’t mean you’ll get the same flavor from one company to the next.

Something I found interesting was how there wasn’t a lot of consensus about the “best” in any category. Often times at a tea tasting, one or two samples will rise to the top as being better than the others. This time it seemed more to be about people’s individual preferences. Some people liked the rose-like Keemuns, others liked the smoky ones, while another group liked the “plain black tea” samples. Some preferred the simple-but-bolder flavors, while others went for the lighter-but-more-complex.

Here are my own quick tasting notes:

Congou or Unknown Grade

A: (MS) Pretty good Keemun–not fantastic, but enjoyable.

B: (PTR) Ranked lowest of this grade for me. Kind of mineral/metallic tasting.

C: (TKY) Second favorite. Better flavor than A or B, but less interesting than D.

D: (B&W) My favorite–more smoky like a Hao Ya.

Mao Feng

I apparently got caught up in the experience of tasting because I don’t have any notes on either of the Mao Feng teas.

Hao Ya A

G: (PTR) The basic flavor was more chocolatey, but less complex than sample H.  My partner Loren chose this one as his top choice of all the options.

H: (TKY) I liked better because the mouthfeel was smoother and had a bit more complexity (though admittedly that flavor was less like chocolate and more light a light smoke).

I recently offered a tea tasting where participants compared different Keemun teas. We compared grades (gongfu/congou, mao feng, hao ya) with each other, as well as different vendors’ products of the same grade with each other.

In preparing for the class, I tried to fill out the Keemun article on the Tea Geek wiki. As I researched, I kept coming up with additional questions that I wanted to know. In the end, I got enough information for an informative class, and at the same time was appalled at how little good information there is about Keemun in English.

Here are some of the things I could NOT find information about, in question format. If you happen to have a line on good answers or information sources on any of these, I’d love you to post a comment or send me email.

1) Keemun Black Tea (Qimen Hongcha or Qihong) is supposedly made only from a particular varietal–kind of like Tie Guan Yin. Is this true, and what’s the name/classification/genetic identifier/ etc. for the varietal/cultivar/clonal?

2) Many tea vendors say that Keemun is one of the only sources of a substance called myrcenal that imparts some of the rosey/toasty flavor unique to Keemun. Yet I can’t find other references to it other than by people who are using this “fact” to sell tea. Is there such a substance, what is it, and is it indeed unique to Keemun (and oil of bay, as mentioned in James Norwood Pratt’s New Tea Lover’s Treasury)?  Any other chemical or biological points of interest?

3) Are there technical classifications that can be easily described and differentiated to explain Hao Ya A, Hao Ya B, Mao Feng, Xin Ya, and Congou? Are there other grades? Is there really a Keemun grade that is rolled like Gunpowder? (I’ve seen claims that there is, but never seen a picture or real-life example.)

4) Any good descriptions on the production methods? Statistics on amounts of genuine Keemun? Statistics about counterfeit Keemun production?

5) Geography–I can find Huangshan City and the Yellow Mountains to the north in Google Earth, but so far haven’t had much luck with other geographical information specific to Keemun tea. Is there much to know other than that the area is gorgeous? 🙂

6) History–what reliable information is there about She Ganchen / Yu Quianchen / Hu Yuanlung or whoever started production of red tea in Anhui? Can the oft-repeated date of 1875 be verified? Can the mysterious inventor of keemun be actually tracked down to being a failed civil servant or other particular biographical information?

I’ve been getting all kinds of spam about tea. Oprah’s weight loss tea, amazing properties of green tea, Critical Health Information!!! — some of it is ridiculous. Of course, it’s dangerous for me because I have real email sent to me all the time about tea, and it’s sometimes hard to tell the spam from legitimate tea-related emails.

Apparently I’m not alone in that assessment. I just got an email that used the word “T3A” instead of “TEA”–my guess is that spam filters are starting to use the word “tea” as a red flag for spam…and the spammers are using their tricks to make it through the filters.

However, this means that legitimate emails about tea are likely to be more difficult to get through. That’s a sad thing.

I offer this post merely as a heads-up, too. If you’re on my mailing list (and if you’re not you can join on the front page at www.teageek.net), or on other tea lists that are delivered by email, be sure to add the sending address (or domain name) to your “Safe Senders List” or “White List” or whatever the filter calls its list of folks who you want email from.

For those of you who will be in the Seattle area at the end of April, the film All In This Tea will be showing at the Seattle International Film Festival, April 23-24, 7:30pm.

I saw the film a few months ago and while it certainly isn’t a comprehensive look at tea in general, and is a little personality-focused (it’s about David Lee Hoffman of Silk Road Teas more than it is about tea), I can heartily recommend it for tea beginners.  For the more advanced tea geeks, there may still be a few “Oh, that’s cool!” moments unless you’ve already got experience trying to buy large quantities of good handmade tea from China.  That is, in essence, the quest that Hoffman is on during this film.

If you’re in the area, check it out!  Also, you can pick up literature for the upcoming Northwest Tea Festival, which is co-presenting the film with SIFF.