A local tea vendor in Assam contacted me about trying samples of his Assam teas, Vivek Sharma, under the business name Bharat Industries (which has other online contacts under development). I just looked that up; Bharat means India. That's a different paradigm than I'm usually in touch with, trying teas from a small reseller versus a producer or co-op. It could interesting to try some different versions of Indian teas. There is a degree of randomness involved with buying what someone is turning up through typical domestic wholesale sourcing, versus knowing a lot about the origin of teas as that goes when obtaining versions more directly.
Since this does raise the issue of types of sourcing this would be a good place to pass on my impression of some alternatives. I'm not going to dwell on pros and cons here, advantages and risks, just skim across some option ranges instead.
I have a lot more to say about the subject of the last post, completely off the subject of tea, about how my son Keoni is doing as a samanane / novice monk, but I'll hold off on that until a longer update post.
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my heart is on this subject, but I'll write about tea instead |
Mail-order tea sourcing alternatives
Small resale vendor in a producer country: this case I'm covering in this post. It's not something I've done a lot with but I did review tea from a small private seller in Nepal before, the Himalayan Tea Shop (with a FB page here), but in that case that business owner also had close ties to tea production. I personally don't see anything wrong with buying tea from a foreign reseller, but as with any multiple-resale step option the details about the products (organic versus not, etc.) tend to become hearsay.
To some extent that's always true, since even if someone can produce an organic certificate it's hard to tie back the tea you are brewing to what is certified. But it is possible to identify who is probably telling you accurate information, to sort out who to trust. It just helps to have a lot of experience with buying teas and trying teas, and to get a lot of input from people who have even more experience (quite a bit more experience than I have is best, really, but it might not work to try to find an ultimate expert "tea master").
Small resale vendor in the US or Europe: this represents a lot of the resale options by volume, by count, and physical shops mix with online versions for these. Such vendors often make claims about direct sourcing (buying from farmers versus wholesale sales supply chains), and in some cases have trip photos to show related to that. Again it takes experience and careful sorting to know what to make of claims and product descriptions. A business developing sophisticated and extensive online content doesn't necessarily mean the stories they tell are true (and one name comes to mind related to that, but best to keep this positive here). No matter where someone has been or what they've seen they're ultimately trusting other upstream suppliers, so the reliance shifts to their judgement.
Curator vendor, higher end specialty tea seller: this category overlaps with the last. Some vendors really are selling "tea that never makes it out of China," or whatever it's supposed to be. More positive source names come to mind but it's as well I don't cite much for examples, to trade off clarity for minimizing favoritism, guesswork, and the potential error that would also drag in. I'm intending this as a positive classification (which may not be clear to everyone), but to the extent you really are buying better tea paying full retail for it would probably come up.
With tea pricing depending on quality level, and quality level extending to ever higher ranges, there is next to no top end for a fair retail price. $1 / gram, or much past that, is out of most people's budget range and ability to appreciate differences, but some tea costs more than that. It's quite possible to pay double normal retail level for tea that's not as good as advertised, or maybe not even what it's supposed to be.
Overseas shops: more overlap with those other categories. I'll cite a paradigmatic shop that tends to get mentioned, and it'll be more clear what I mean (not that I'm claiming this is the best example, or a good value, or the tea is great; I've not tried any tea from them): Chawang Shop, in Kunming, Yunnan. Physical shops tend to add extra overhead in comparison with online sources, with the extra value factoring in related to being able to talk to people in person, and try teas. If a physical shop does enough extra business through online sales there's no reason one couldn't be competitive with online-only sources.
Larger distribution center vendors: one of these stands out so clearly I think there won't be much error involved with naming names: Yunnan Sourcing. They sell everything under the sun, but are best known for pu'er. I've reviewed different products from them and had mixed but generally positive results with their teas. And you tend to not even hear any discussion of whether or not their pu'er is what it's supposed to be, if you get what you intend to buy, the actual described product, which is a main concern with a lot of online sources.
It can help sorting out what is what by checking reviews in a place like Steepster but that just shifts problems with interpreting what a vendor says to the same thing related to individuals with varying preferences and levels of experience. There's one trick to help with that: find a tea you are familiar with reviewed by the same reviewer, and their impression matching your own is a very good sign. It's not just about descriptions being accurate or wrong; personal preference is a main factor in what is appealing about different types of teas.
More direct sourcing: one of my favorite options, but a range that also gets complicated, and overlaps with the others. I wrote a blog post on what I mean by that, citing lots of vendor examples in it. It's very rare that tea farmers sell tea online through websites, although some plantations might be a good counter-example, and different interesting exceptions or somewhat direct options can be good alternatives.
I'm not saying one of these categories is really the way to go. There would be better and worse examples of different types of vendors, with different people looking for different kinds of teas. Issues like the organic concerns really throw a wrench into the works for determining quality. You couldn't necessarily taste if a tea is produced using the worst possible farming methods related to final food safety. Using a "trusted supplier" only helps with that related to how good you are at assigning trust appropriately, to reading between the lines, and evaluating implications.
To me it works well to buy most tea from sources that seem like they would sell good quality tea, those "trusted vendors," and beyond that to use variety to offset risks related to using a narrow range of sourcing. To make that clearer: the worst case might be buying a few kilograms of a tea you aren't completely confident in the sourcing history of, and drinking only a lot of that tea over a long period of time, maximizing the potential risk related to contaminants in that particular example. I have no problem with gambling on teas from some sketchy looking random Chinatown shop, which sell tea based on providing next to no sourcing details, but I wouldn't drink only that tea for a period of months.
The teas he sent
Vivek sent a black tea, described as Assam orthodox, but a bit broken up, and a green and white. The white looks most interesting, a lot more oxidized than those tend to be, with buds smaller than typical as well. The character should be interesting. I'll start reviewing with the black tea though, the most familiar ground.
It includes some bud material, the processing just tore up the leaves a good bit. It could be a variation of orthodox processing, it's just not a typical presentation, not what one would expect.
Due to the timing all of these really have to be last year's teas. It won't make much difference for the black tea but I'd expect the green and the white to have changed in character over most of year since those were made. People make a bigger deal of that than I tend to. Green teas lose their freshness over the first few months to half a year; I can agree with that part. They're just not completely ruined if well-stored, in my experience. Keeping teas in Bangkok changes things a little because most of the year is so hot, and the same would apply to most places in India, some even more so.
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that black tea; a bit broken, but with a good mix of buds |
Review
It's really in between what I'd expect from an orthodox Assam and a CTC version, not just in appearance but also aspect character. It's earthy and malty, of course. It's astringent compared to more whole leaf orthodox versions, but less so than I've experienced in more ground up CTC versions. I used water pretty close to boiling point and based on those microwave water trials backing off that temperature a little would moderate that astringency effect, soften it. Or adding milk would, it's just not the page I'm usually on.
I actually did try a CTC Thai black tea with milk and sugar with breakfast in the past week, the first time I've prepared a tea like that in memory. It might've been a couple years since I've drank black tea with milk and sugar. Those microwave water / tea bag tea trials started me thinking about that range, and I'd bought some last Christmas to make a holiday theme blend. Oddly it wasn't what I expected, not as astringent, not malty, without that unique mineral blend in Ceylon. It was a lot earthier, a bit softer, more towards wood or forest floor / autumn leaf. It was Thai tea; I probably shouldn't have been surprised that the character wasn't what I expected from Indian or Sri Lankan teas.
This tea has an unusual dryness to it, a familiar input from bud-heavy black teas. It overlaps a little with the Halmari Assam range, those are just quite different in other ways, with a lot more pine / citrus sort of range. Those included more pine than citrus aspects, as I remember, with some aspects just a little towards fruit.
This includes a warm earthiness in the range of wood, and a mineral component that reminds me of iron rust (not necessarily intended as negative as that might sound). At first that was a little off-putting, as a foreign aspect in the tea, but after drinking it that becomes familiar. It's interesting; different. Softer Chinese black tea drinkers probably wouldn't be on this page at all but it works; it's not so astringent that it's undrinkable as a plain tea, and those aspects fall into a pleasant enough balance.
My own preference does lean towards those softer Chinese black teas, variations of Dian Hong, or nicer unsmoked wild plant Lapsang Souchong, or even a nice Jin Xuan based Taiwanese black. I like teas that include cocoa as an aspect, or that one familiar baked sweet potato or yam range. That Assam Teehaus Assam version worked well for me because it was softer, sweeter, and clean in effect, as those tend to be.
Second infusion
I tend to prepare teas Western style using a higher proportion and more limited times, so that they make three strong infusions instead of two, and perhaps four depending on the tea type. To me that's still Western style brewing, not a hybrid approach, but I guess the process labeling doesn't matter as much as results matching preference. This second tea infusion should soften a bit and maybe transition some but I'd expect it to be similar.
The astringency and related rust-mineral earthiness backs off a bit and it becomes softer and cleaner. It wasn't exactly "off" in the first infusion but that range would be outside of some people's preferences. There's still plenty of pine-like range, and the sweetness picks up a little. It's not a soft black tea but as CTC versions go it is. Malt is still the main flavor element; it's strong flavored.
This is probably what some people are looking for in an English Breakfast Tea. For others they'd really be seeking out the balance of combining multiple types of tea, that strong malt flavor intensity supported by more mineral range from Ceylon, and so on, more depth versus limited-range flavor intensity. I'd expect that a lot of people new enough to black tea to still be sorting out what they like would have trouble describing what they really prefer, and would have less luck understanding what single tea or blend mix would get them there. In tea discussion groups people new to tea tend to say they want flavor intensity (which they express in different ways), but describing a tea as "strong" doesn't really clarify much.This tea is strong flavored, in one sense. It works much better this second infusion, a bit cleaner in effect, and slightly sweeter, balanced better. That pine dryness remains after you drink it, but it's not intense enough that it takes over the tea. The separate maltiness is plenty strong but the pine, sweetness, and other mineral balances well enough. It's not great tea, per my preference for aspect range, but it's good for the type it is. For someone else it could be just right.
Comparison with other versions
For what it is this is nice. It has plenty of earthy flavor and the balance works. That pine offsets the wood and rust-mineral aspect set nicely. I've been drinking enough Assam lately, in the past half a year or so, that it seems most natural to compare it to other versions, but it's limited how well that's going to work from memory. I last drank that Assam Teehaus version a week ago, which helps with that.
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Assam Teehaus version, for comparison |
That Assam Teehaus tea was softer and sweeter, less earthy and less astringent. It tasted more like a conventional orthodox black tea. Without tea bud content (it was a fall tea) it lacked that dryness and pine-like range, so it was a bit less intense and in addition to covering a different flavor range. As Maddhurjya described I'd expect that spring teas from him would be more similar, in a sense, and probably a bit more intense, and perhaps just slightly better.
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Halmari Orthodox Assam, their standard version |
Halmari's teas were closer to this, in one sense, for including a lot of bud content, and also related to also being spring teas. They were a bit brighter in flavor, less earthy, with less mineral range, and perhaps slightly sweeter. Pine stood out more in those. I really loved their oolong best, which to me seemed nothing like a Chinese oolong (of any type), but it did draw closer to the style of a second flush Darjeeling.
I've been exploring a lot of Assam to see what range is out there, as much as for versions matching current preference. This is an interesting and different version. I think better similar versions could come across a bit cleaner, swapping out some mineral tone for sweeter range, or even citrus and other fruit. This might work well for some as a daily drinker, depending on personal preference. It's definitely a step up from typical CTC Assam versions.
It will be interesting to see how that white tea from them works out. I expect it and the green tea both transitioned a good bit over the past 9 or 10 months or so. With white teas that type of change can be positive, but green tea aging changes typically aren't seen as such.
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I'm seeing a lot of Snow White Barbie pictures on my photo back-ups |
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I suspect this is the photographer |
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