Tea Chemistry

In honor of the Chinese New Year here's a cool video on tea chemistry with a New Years angle. It covers some very cool aspects of tea chemistry that I think even the non-geeks out there can enjoy.

EDIT TO ADD -- PS -- Teance is having a two-day, free-shipping sale on orders over $60. Enter the code "CNYFREE" on January 30 and 31 for free shipping. They recommend the following as Chinese New Years gifts:

Yunnan Gold
Yellow Gold Oolong
Osmanthus Oolong
Flower Bouquet
Pu-Erh 15 Year Aged

New Starbucks Drinks

Starbucks is getting in on the tea trend with a new line of tea lattes and non-dairy infusions. You can read about it on World Tea News or Yahoo Finance. Excerpt from Yahoo:

The gourmet coffee retailer said all but one of the new drinks are less than 200 calories for a 12-ounce, or tall, serving.

The new lattes are made with steamed milk and Tazo full-leaf tea bags. The new varieties include the Black Tea Latte, the Vanilla Rooibos Latte and the London Fog latte. The company already sells a chai tea and green tea latte.

Starbucks will also launch new Tazo Tea Infusions -- nondairy drinks made with Tazo black chai tea and fruit juice. The company will offer a Berry Chai Infusion, made with berry and black currant juices, and an Apple Chai Infusion, made with apple juice. That drink is 250 calories, the company said.

The latte drinks will be priced between $2.85 and $3.50 for a tall, depending on the location of the store. The infusions will sell for $2.40 to $2.70 for a tall.


Very interesting. I'm curious to see what happens with the balance between convenience and quality in Starbucks' move and the overall tea trend in the U.S.

New Vee Tea Article

Due to a recent dearth of internet access in my life, I somehow managed to not tell you that I have a new article out until, well, it's over a week old. Whoops! Here it is. Better late than never, right?

Who's the Right Tea Vendor for You? is, as the title indicates, a guide to finding the best tea vendors for your business. It was fascinating to research, as each vendor has completely different offerings and practices. The article covers areas as diverse as quality, customer education, stability during growth, custom blends/private labeling and green business practices. Read more on World Tea News.

Nestea

Did you notice that Nestea revamped their teas? I guess all the RTD companies are improving tea quality now. Great news for America's growing population of tea-drinkers!

You can read more on Nestea's changes on Beverage Spectrum Magazine.


PS -- Today I'm starting classes at Urasenke Chanoyu. Exciting!!!

New Vee Tea Article

There's a new Vee Tea article up on World Tea News! It's part two of the American tea palate series. Excerpt:

Despite the shift toward “pure” teas, blended teas are holding strong. Most sources linked flavored teas’ popularity to palatial accessibility, but Pratt offered a more practical reason: “Flavors are essential in places like most of the American West, where the water is so bad, real tea flavors are undetectable.”

Flavored specialty teas are here to stay, but sources said they are undergoing radical changes. According to Harrison, “In the past, low-quality black tea was a carrier for an artificial fruit flavor. Now, there is an understanding for intelligent tea blending that goes way beyond fruit and fannings.”


Read the rest on World Tea News!

Tea Samples, Plus Tea Art Tonight!

One of the great things about the World Tea Expo is the samples. They can really help you find unique, quality products for your tea business. At this point, I've tried many of the products that are being exhibited, but here are a few samples I'm looking forward to trying for the first time:









I often find that flowering teas in the US are sub-par in flavor, so I'm always on the lookout for hand-shaped teas that taste as good as they look. Perhaps some of these will fit the bill!

I'm also thrilled about the new Silver Green from Makaibari and I'm looking forward to trying the Le Palais du Thes samples.

PS--Michele Brody will be performing a tea art piece tonight. I've met her several times and seen some of her work before. If you enjoy my blog, I think you will also enjoy her work. The piece she will be performing is related to issues of immigration, work, ritual, communion, and (of course) tea. It will be tonight from 6-8 and Saturday from 1-4 at Henry Street Settlement's Abrons Art Center at the corner of Pitt and Grand Streets. For more information, visit Michele Brody's portfolio site or call Michele at 646.522.9924. Here's an image from a piece of hers I recently saw that deals with technology and nature.

Full-Leaf Tea Production on the Rise

It looks like the surge in popularity of full-leaf tea in the US, Russia, and Europe is making a major impact on producers' behaviors. According to a recent article from Reuters, orthodox tea production in India is on the rise and is being encouraged by the government-run Tea Board with a subsidy of 3 rupees per kg of orthodox tea produced. At present, many tea plantations in India (particularly those in Assam) produce CTC tea. Orthodox production involves the hand-plucking of tea leaves, which means that the whole leaves can remain intact and that the best new shoots can be plucked without also plucking older leaves and stems. CTC can produce a stronger flavor with a shorter brew time, but is generally a less nuanced and a much lower quality tea.* Most Indian CTC tea is consumed within the country, whereas most orthodox tea is for export.

*Despite this difference in quality, innovative Indian cooks can do amazing things with CTC! I had the best masala chai of my life when I was in Kolkata, and most of it was made from CTC. At one hotel near Darjeeling, I talked tea with the "tea boy," who had created an extensive, widely varied, and delicious tea menu out of both CTC and orthodox teas, as well as blends.

All this talk about Indian chai has me even more excited about my upcoming tea tour to India! More details on that soon to come...

Single Serving Teas for Coffee Makers

The Keurig coffee maker (known for its single-serving ""K-Cup" coffee portions) is releasing a line of single-serving Celestial Seasonings teas for use with their coffee maker. The flavors are: Sleepytime, Decaf Green, and India Spice Chai. (Full story.) Convenient for those with a Keurig? Definitely? At all tasty? Probably not. (Decaf prepackaged/basically bagged green tea steeped with boiling water? *Shudder*) I doubt that it will get many coffee drinkers to try out loose leaf any time in the near future.

Tazo Profile

When I worked at Whole Foods, Tazo was a customer favorite. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed when they were bought out by Starbucks. However, when I was India, I saw the extensive nonprofit work they were doing on fair trade tea plantations in Darjeeling and decided to rethink them a bit. Here's an interesting company profile I came across in my research. Enjoy!

Excerpt:

"...tea is making a comeback, with U.S. sales of $3 billion in 2006, up from $2 billion in 2001, excluding restaurants, according to the market-research firm Mintel.

The U.S. market is dominated by three brands — Lipton, AriZona and Snapple — with smaller players like Stash and Numi growing fast.

Specialty tea companies had trouble with rapid growth in the past because tea growers were not producing enough high-quality tea for them, Jage said. That is changing, with more growers providing top-quality teas now that they see sustained demand for it."

New Ready to Drink Teas

Bigelow and Arizona are working together to put out a new line of RTD (Ready-to-Drink) hot teas this Winter. Flavors include Mocha Chai Latte and Vanilla Chai Latte. Arizona is also launching its top flavors in teabag form. Two questions spring to mind: Why are so many hot RTDs chais? (Subquestion: Or is that just an excuse for massive amounts of corn syrup?) And did Arizona manage to fit powdered corn syrup into a teabag, or are they opting for stevia/Equal/Sweet-n-Low instead? Seriously, though... if you're going to brew your own tea, why would you want it to taste like a hot version of Arizona's fave three? I find this to be vastly perplexing. Has anyone tried it? Thoughts?

Read the full story here.

Bottled vs. Fresh-Brewed

Whole Foods answers a question on bottled vs. fresh-brewed tea. Excerpt:

When you brew tea yourself, you can control this steeping process in a way that will maximize the polyphenol content of your tea. When you buy a bottled tea, however, you may or may not get a tea that has been carefully brewed. In addition, you are likely to get a tea that includes other ingredients and is not simply 100% brewed tea.


Isn't that the truth! Most of the bottled teas on the market have sweetener, flavorings, and all kinds of other additives. Of course, there are a few exceptions to that, but I usually prefer to brew it myself.

Ito En Teas

I recently placed an order with Ito En. (I live in NYC, but I've been too busy to make it to the store since I got back from India, so I decided to take the easy way out and order online.) My order consisted of:

2 oz Dragon Well Qing Ming
3 oz Lapsang Souchong
3 oz Organic Makaibari Estate Silver Tips
2 oz Taiping Houkui
1 oz Uji Gyokuro
3 oz Ureshino Tama Ryokucha
1 oz Yame Gyokuro

Thoughts so far:

Dragon Well is one of my favorite teas of all time, and this one is no exception.

I thought the Lapsang Souchong would be a good choice for the fall chill we have going on up here and, boy, was I right.

I knew the Makaibari would be great because I was drinking it daily for a while there in Darjeeling. An excellent choice, as always.

I'd had Taiping Houkui (a.k.a. "Monkey King") before, but this one is really special. The flavor and aroma are superb and the imprint of the cotton cloth adds to the visual aesthetic quite nicely.

The gyokuros are a gift for a friend. I haven't tasted this batch, but I've had them before and they were exceptional.

The Ureshino Tama Ryokucha was new to me. It's a Japanese pan-fired tea, like houjicha, but it tastes more like a mild sencha or gyokuro. Vegetal, mellow, lightly sweet... I'm really glad I ordered this one without waiting to try it elsewhere first. Three cheers for new tea!!!

Happiness is a hot tea?

In her blog "The Happiness Project," happiness-guru Gretchen Rubin wrote:

Pay more for healthy food. It’s a sad fact that fruits, vegetables, and healthy food are more expensive than fast food, but eating healthfully will pay off in the long run, in terms of your good health and energy.


I couldn't agree more. Paying a little extra for foods that improve your mood, health, and productivity is extremely rewarding. Also, as you develop your palate and (potentially) your chef skills, you can find a lot of joy in cooking and eating your slightly-more-expensive culinary creations. With tea, this could mean making the leap from bags to loose leaf, shelling out the cash for the first flush, buying organic instead of conventional, or getting into matcha. (I just realized that the matcha thing sounds like a drug reference. Then again, matcha is delicious and rejuvenating to the point of being addictive, so it makes sense.) Back to the point! Good tea is worth the money. Go ahead, make your day: buy yourself some quality tea.

Darjeeling

Today I visited Happy Valley Tea Estate and The Mayfair Hotel, and I learned a lot about tea politics.

After a breakfast of momos, I walked down the mountain a bit to Happy Valley Tea Estate. Happy Valley is not particularly known for its tea, but the estate itself is in most of the India guidebooks because it is so convenient to Darjeeling proper and because (until recently) it offered tours of the field and factory. I navigated winding roads, narrow paths between houses and sharp drops, slippery stone stairs, and a rocky trail through the estate grounds to find a group of men milling about outside the factory. I asked them if I could take a tour and (after some discussion amongst them in Nepali) a young man stepped forward, eyes darting about. Halfway through the "tour," I discovered that the tours had been discontinued and that I wasn't supposed to be there without permission from the manager. "May I see the manager and ask him?" "No. He has seen you with me already. He'll be angry." So, I didn't get to see the factory and the information on the fields was limited. However, I did learn Lesson One: Always ask who is in charge.

After the "tour," I stopped by the "cafe," which is actually a tiny house with a snack stand operating out of the kitchen and a "tearoom" in the bedroom. I drank Happy Valley tea, which is "the world's best tea" ... or so I'm told by the woman selling it. Her reasoning? "It brews in only five seconds." I know what you're thinking, right? "No way." Well, let me tell you this: It DID brew in only five seconds. Maybe even less. And it tasted pretty good. How is that possible? She used about 1/2 cup of FTGFOP1S (Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe Top Grade) tealeaves per cup of water. ... Yes, really. The other tourists in the room with me were eating it up. Lesson Two: Don't believe everything you're told, especially if you're a tourist.

Over the course of my visit to Happy Valley, I spoke with several employees. Each one told me, in no uncertain terms, that Happy Valley is, well, not so happy these days. They USED to be, but a recent change in management has caused a lot of strife. Complaints ranged from bureaucracy and hipocracy to cuts in sick days (from 14 days per year to 3 days per year if I remember correctly). Lesson Three: "Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our PAST behavior." (Empahsis added.) I hope things get better soon.

After the trek to (Un)Happy Valley, I walked back up the big hill to The Mayfair Hotel for afternoon tea. Just as I was starting to feel very cynical about tea in Darjeeling, by luck, I was recognized and caught by Nalin Modha, a tea professional who was the youngest estate manager in the entire Indian tea industry. Over tea (with freshly baked butter cookies and cucumber sandwiches) and (later on) dinner (which was delicious and enormous), I learned Lessons Four through Four-Hundred from Nalin. We talked about tea education, workers' health, the tea market, the ecosystem, and numerous other things related to tea and (generally) to politics. He's very knowledgable and I am glad to have run into him here. Tomorrow, I'll be meeting him to see some of the surrounding area. Exciting!

New Article!

There's a new article on Vee Tea today. It's all about determining tea quality, but don't worry-- it doesn't get into grading and all that. It's for tea consumers rather than for industry use. Here's an excerpt:

"There is a complex system of tea grading that is used in tea auctions, processing, and blending, but for everyday buying, determining tea quality can be a simple affair. All you have to do is look, listen, smell, and taste.

Look

A good, fresh tea has a pleasing luster. White tea should have fine hairs on the surface. All teas should have large, uniform leaves and be free of foreign matter. If the tea is flavored (like Earl Grey, for example), pay special attention to the appearance, because flavors are often used to try to cover up a cheap tea's bad taste.

If possible, watch the leaves as they are brewed. Did they expand uniformly and slowly sink as they infused? If so, it's good quality. Also, look at the brewed tea. The liquor should be clear (unless, of course, it is a powdered tea) and free of any particulate matter after it is strained. If you are viewing a green tea it should be emerald or golden in color. If the brew is dark brown, it is stale."

For the rest of the article, click here. Enjoy!