This meetup was an interesting variation on talking to tea vendors at different stages of business and tea perspective development. An Indian friend living in America, Poorvi, has started selling tea, still early in that process. Her own interest and learning curve took a familiar form, moving from exploring other range to taking a class, discussion in groups, talking to vendors and trying samples, on to considering different business themes and forms, starting with selling tea at local farmers' markets. This post won't do justice to all that she experiences, or her current business form and direction, but a sample of some ideas could still be interesting.
Of course one of my meetup social group friends is Indian, Suzana, active in online group development and in-person tastings and tea contact development. Another online contact joined, April. From here on maybe I'll just call every contact a friend, since I see them all that way, without trying to justify a distinction. April is experiencing an earlier form of the process, but still way beyond what the average person would ever be exposed to in relation to tea. She had lived in India for years, now back in the states, so her cultural perspective is broader than most, to say the least.
It's interesting considering how people might develop from lower quality black tea or commercial blend interest (Tazo or Harney and Sons) onto better Indian tea, versus other ranges being appealing. When I suggest to people good first steps past tea-bag tea or grocery store flavored versions transitions to better plain tea I usually recommend either rolled oolong (Tie Guan Yin) or flavorful and approachable Chinese black tea (Dian Hong is my favorite), but Indian teas also work. Decent Darjeeling, better Assam, or other harder to find source area versions are so approachable and pleasant anyone could appreciate them, and so diverse and high in quality that any tea enthusiasts also could.
I should switch this back to talking about what Poorvi expressed, or main discussion themes. We talked about perspectives on tea, and preference patterns, about Indian tea style changes, and better tea development, and how consumers see all that. Better Indian tea is under-appreciated in current tea enthusiast circles. Maybe 8 or 10 years ago Darjeeling was as well regarded as most other kinds, and it hasn't really been downgraded since, or seen as less desirable, but focus on Chinese teas evolved, and attention to Indian teas didn't. Trends related to appreciating white tea, Nepal tea, gaba, and lots of other things have came and went since. Chinese hei cha (dark tea) was always that close to being taken up as a trend, but it never quite got there.
Since we've talked to Rishi of Gopaldhara in a meetup (a Darjeeling producer), and most of our group has tried their teas, and Poorvi has also, we focused on them and their development focus as much as any other. Really Gopaldhara making better whole-leaf versions is only one of many starting points for Indian tea improving, or appreciation for better traditional versions developing. We didn't focus on Indian tea history; but it came up that the Indian tea tradition includes range that's not really appreciated that's also not new. There is currently an Indian derivative of sheng pu'er being produced, and lots of experimentation on styles similar to or drawn from oolong processing. Indian tea is diverse, and the quality and positive character doesn't really fall short of Chinese tea.
That's true in only a limited sense, I guess. Developed, appreciated, sophisticated main styles of Chinese teas have pushed beyond what almost any other production areas can achieve. There is nothing like the best Wuyi Yancha, sheng pu'er, and Dan Cong coming out of any other countries, with Taiwan and Japan as possible exceptions. Indian teas can be great but it's hard to argue that they are that great. To me that's a meaningless difference, to an extent, because if someone loves high quality Darjeeling or novel and better quality versions of Assam, or teas from other regions, it's more about personal preference than hitting a high water mark for objective quality level. The problem isn't that, it's that awareness of and demand for these best-case, best quality examples isn't well developed. So how to change that? We talked a lot about that.
It's difficult to change perspectives on tea types. Awareness of better Indian teas is spreading, slowly, but with better Chinese style teas being so trendy now, among tea enthusiasts, good Indian tea demand might be "turning over" fans as fast as new people learn of them. There has to be a way to tap into a very large, very developed group of people who drank, or still drink, teas from vendors like Tazo, Teavana, T2, David's Tea, Harney and Sons, or even to Celestial Seasonings and Twinings. Many must be ready for a next step. We did more with brainstorming about patterns in preference transition than how to really drive a change.
More direct vendor sales threatens the model of small vendors like Poorvi. Probably Tea Box is selling medium quality tea versions at somewhat high markup, and large vendors like Golden Tips aren't quite there yet for pushing into the most novel and interesting new Indian variants, but one or two new producer outlets opening in Amazon cuts off the role smaller vendors had been playing. This isn't a pattern or theme that's unique to tea; this kind of transition and challenge is common across most retail range. It more or less killed off earlier major retail players like Sears, it's just a different form of challenge to home-based online tea vendors. But those small vendors can find other ways to add value, by expanding offerings, or pairing content and information offerings with novel product sales.
Suzana is visiting family back in Meghalya now, the area where the Shillong tea production is based, which brings up a range of other themes, about how all this can relate to other traditional tea production in India. One might wonder how these themes map over to traditional Indian tea preferences, and to new forms of types awareness and demand. Indians mostly drink inexpensive tea, masala chai and such. That's true of Americans too, that there is no comparable market for better sheng pu'er or oolongs in relation to the volume that Lipton sells. But development of interest in flavored tea and blends seems to serve as a gateway into changing that, which is probably not as developed yet in India. Older local traditions can relate to drinking local teas, but that's something else.
Kind of a related tangent, it has long since seemed fascinating to me how US tea enthusiasts are eager to learn about and experience diverse and better Chinese teas, but the range of what makes it to the US is vanishingly small compared to what is produced and consumed in China. The limited set of producer areas and types on the "Western market" is the tip of the iceberg. One could argue that what are known are probably the best quality and most appealing versions produced in China, but most people would be making that argument from a position of relative ignorance, making it just a guess. Over time trade from some areas evolved, and demand probably pushed continued quality refinement as much as those types were ever better originally. Of course that's just another guess.
I've recently reviewed Sergey Shevelev's "Geography of Chinese Tea" book that covers a range of other producing areas, but even according to him that area scope covered is still incomplete. It doubles the location range of best known areas descriptions, including all of them and that many others, but Sergey says that he has only visited 20% of all the counties in China that produce tea, which took 10 years of active tea sourcing to get to. For sure lots of really good and very novel tea is out there.
One of the earliest better teas I ever experienced was a pine-needle shaped green tea version that I bought in a Shanghai market 8 years ago. I could look up what that probably was in Sergey's book (I think I even saw it reading through), but the point here is that the types are out there, some of which I've even experienced. Someone just gave me a sample of cha gao, tea condensed down to something that looks like hashish, not at all a new theme in China, but one that only tea enthusiasts have ever heard of, and I've yet to try (I should get on that). I should try out hot-knifing some for old times' sake.
It's interesting how relatively organic supply and demand and awareness spread sets up how much export, import, appreciation, and consumption of different tea types occurs. Internet groups and information sources act as a catalyst, but only to a limited extent. 100 people might read this blog post, or possibly more if some people decide to share links, but it won't change general tea awareness at all, as the entirety of what I've ever written won't, maybe except in a few hundred isolated cases. Or is it thousands?; this blog is at 600k total views, surely counting my loyal bot readers. I've also co-founded one of the largest Facebook tea groups, International Tea Talk, and write a Quora Space about tea, and at some point those kinds of trickles of information exchange might add up.
How can a small online vendor add to those information sources, or use them to support their own business? Again that's problematic. The success stories are about businesses contributing something completely novel, not only doing that effectively but to some extent also being lucky. Maybe Yunnan Sourcing goes beyond being an example of this, one of the main online Chinese tea vendors, but at one point that's what it was, a small business heading in a new direction. What-Cha might work as a better example, for not moving on to dominating a sub-theme, but being quite successful. But then they already focus on offering good quality, good value, diverse teas from different tea areas, so they would already sell the same teas we are discussing from across parts of India. How to keep going and keep shifting theme is tricky.
We discussed how to pair other themes with tea, possibly adding teaware options. It would take a very developed, original, and well thought out effort to pull it all together into a concise and successful new tea business plan. At some point other ideas would have to support the rest, discussion of sustainability, organic themes, about supporting small producers, and so on. Online content issues, packaging, logistics; the list of related concerns would be formidable. It would have to be a labor of love, as it is for Poorvi.
New social sub-group connections to tea could support development. The shape of that is open to still being developed. It is yet to be seen how food interests or cultural background could tie into developing tea preference. This also relates to the theme of tea as a trendy social movement, the routine announcement that "tea is having a moment." It's not, but eventually it will. People like Poorvi, my friends, and the people we've been talking to in meetups will make that happen, but it might take another decade. Her tea business needs to see it occur to a lesser extent in the next year or two, with business failure one of the distinct possibilities.
It will be interesting seeing how this plays out. I'm a fan of tea producers and tea culture, obviously, and of people trying to make a difference in such a way, even though half of the motivation is financial gain, along with personal subject interest. That's fine; that's what brought tea trade to the rest of the world hundreds of years ago. British people would be drinking a mix of local tisanes if it hadn't, or having water with their afternoon break, which would be sad. Now we just need to help more people learn that better tea options are out there. I'm interested in helping producers and vendors but I'd really like to share how tea has made a positive difference in my life for the benefit of consumers, so that more others are also able to also experience how it's not just a pleasant drink, it can also be about continual exploration.
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