The middle of the tea experience curve

 First published in TChing here and here.

One year ago I wrote about intermediate level themes in tea, about people exploring brewing options and diverse types, or higher quality versions of one category.

Lately something related keeps coming up, about the experience curve itself, the order in which people explore tea, once they move past tea-bag and flavored blends introductions.  Of course everyone has their own path.  One new online contact / friend is completely jumping in, moving past initial Constant Comment / English Breakfast tea by exploring basic green, black, white, shu, hei cha, and even sheng, in one large Yunnan Sourcing sample order.  That's a great way to do it.  Ordinarily I wouldn't recommend even trying sheng pu'er before sorting out some other range but in her case I did suggest trying an inexpensive tuocha, to see what it's about. 

a smaller-scale venture into trying some hei cha and shu

Eight years or so ago, before I started a blog, I tried a set of 20 or so types from a Chinese vendor, an individual selling tea.  I don't remember much about those, but it was definitely a launching point for diverse exploration.  By chance a vendor sent a first sample set of Darjeeling versions around then, when I first started a blog (thanks much to the Lochans, who produce and sell novel versions of Doke teas).  You next learn that one step in any given direction isn't really the generality you might've imagined, that one sample never captures a type character, but still your tea journey is off and running.

Groups tend to see people bunching up according to preference, where they are on an exposure curve, or even by pattern.  Gong Fu Cha and Puerh Tea Club are at one end, Tea Drinkers at the other (where Harney and Sons is a main staple), with the one I moderate, International Tea Talk, settling on an outlier diverse member location theme.

It's interesting seeing people make their journey / exploration public, as bloggers do.  It's a funny thing, how there is no real threshold to arrive at before starting to write and share ideas and experiences.  Even now, some years later, I tend to point out that I'm nothing like a tea expert.

Liquid Proust comes to mind as an interesting case.  That vendor, Andrew, explored novel forms of blends, then jumped straight into aged sheng, one of the main natural end points (maybe only drifting through aged oolong along the way).  He was selling both of those; exploration rarely works out like that.  For being different than what most experienced tea enthusiasts drink the blends sounded good, teas like rum infused pu'er, and "French toast" Dian Hong.  His sheng pu'er taster sets help people take a similar step as he did, onto some complicated and diverse range.

To me exploring horizontally, across a diverse range, makes sense, minding per-gram tea price to enable covering a lot of ground and seeing what you like.  It's interesting how some people start with a flavor or character profile and go from there instead.  In discussion one guy just mentioned liking earthy tea range, shu pu'er (of course), and heavy black teas, exploring via flavor aspect range.  Hei cha would work along with those.  Another mentioned liking cigars and Scotch, and some types of roasted Wuyi Yancha and sheng pu'er mirrored that interest, related to profile.  Hei cha might not, so much, at least related to funky and earthy brick teas, but a mineral-intensive Liu Bao might resonate.

comparing compressed white teas of different ages, a good exploration tool

Pace is an odd component, not just related to making a broad start, or exploring a range quickly, or working towards the highest possible quality level versions.  On the positive side exploring moderate cost but diverse teas can add a dimension of change to a daily routine.  It's potentially negative that one could instead experience a constant state of lack, related to not getting to most of what is out there, or competing with countless others to experience what seems like a typical range or amount of exposure.  For me personally it's helpful to limit scope.  For example, I don't explore teaware or Japanese teas, just to keep the range more manageable.  Budget constrains that, mainly, but even aside from that exploring all there is for tea is problematic.

What about reducing scope to what is found in a grocery store?  What I say tends to discount that is valid, defining it here as just prior to a middle-level range starting point, but to an extent it's not.  It was disappointing for me to learn that grocery stores never stock teas that matched my type and quality-level interest at one point, a step that led to that vendor sample set evaluation.  That's not as true in China, and Russians seem to have access to better Ceylon in grocery stores, but in general grocery store tea isn't "good."  Not everyone needs to ever get to the middle of an experience / exploration curve though, just as for many sticking with box wine or Budweiser suits them.  Those are fine for what they are, with some thoughts here on where Lipton stands in relation to the rest, with input on some better black tea starting points.