Covid status in Thailand

 

I've not been on this subject lately, how the pandemic theme goes here.  I wouldn't say that it's interesting in the same way Olympics news or space flight developments might be, but at least it might be informative of how that theme goes in other places.  

In talking to people during meetups it often came up discussing their local experience, especially related to my friends living in India, Vietnam, and Germany.  I'll keep this mostly about Thailand.  And I'll not settle into research points much, although all the issues point back towards that context.  I was just talking with Ralph about the new concern that the Sinovac vaccine may not be as effective against the Delta variant, but it seems like there's not enough data to really tell yet, with only one new study mentioned when looking around a bit.  All those details will be clearer as the stats become available, in some cases too late for related decision making, but in general underlying uncertainty is just the typical context for a pandemic.

We're in the middle of what I view as a third pandemic wave in Thailand.  I suppose people could view those larger summary conclusions differently, as any number of different counts of waves.

It almost looks like there wasn't a first wave at all last year, doesn't it?  The one that shut the country down in March through May 2020 related to daily case numbers not so much over 100.  December's second wave, which ran into January, approached 1000 per day; that was much worse.  This plateau is at 8000 cases per day.  At the start of this current wave in April there were still only a few hundred deaths in Thailand from covid.  That number of deaths closes in on a total of 3000 now (2791, as of July 13).  That's a former daily mortality rate in a number of the hardest hit countries.

All the same the country has been closing in stages over the last two months.  Restaurants just closed a week ago, malls the day before yesterday.  Those restrictions aren't stopping the increase.  The faster spreading delta variant is the obvious main cause, but it might not only be that.

About six weeks ago there was talk of the virus gaining a foothold in poorer neighborhoods, where people are crowded together more, where once it became entrenched there would be no way to ever clear it.  I suspect it was far too late before this wave even started, back in March (2021).  Looking back all of March was a flat looking wave; interpreting that is tricky.  It seemed like the virus went nationwide back in December and it wasn't ever going to work to end the spread, as occurred last year.

Onto what life is like here now.  People aren't necessarily panicked, but restrictions do get old.  It was funny talking to my mother about how they were relieved that the virus experience was wrapping up in the US, while case counts and deaths were still far higher than in Thailand, even taking into account the four times higher population level.  They're finally on par now, per person, maybe with Thailand edging ahead.  Or at least that was true prior to the recent uptick in US cases.  

But we are "locked down," probably to a degree that many people never were in the US.  Or maybe it's more similar in both places than it seems; last year people went out once a week, and only once a week, to buy groceries, and you still see people out buying food for that day and the next.  My wife goes to a grocery store a few times a week, and doesn't avoid other errands.  We do work and go to school online; there's that.

in a closed mall (the grocery stores in them stayed open)

A mostly online friend, who I've only met once, is here now, in quarantine to enter the country.  That's unique to only some countries.  Using such an approach Thailand kept the country disease free over the span of time from May to December 2020, by isolating everyone coming in for 14 days, with almost no exceptions.  Then undocumented foot-traffic border crossing is what brought the pandemic back, at first widespread within immigrant communities, but soon after nationwide.  That friend had been in Cambodia, which is now experiencing a renewed pandemic outbreak.

It can be hard to place stats in relation to what might be getting missed.  Thailand has leveled off number of tests at 60,000 per day or so, and up until recently Cambodia's were even at 6500 per day.  Thailand has 8 times the number of current cases, and 5 times the population; it seems worse here.

A recent spike in number of tests conducted there, over the past week, could be a main cause of the case count spike over the last week.  Thailand kept finding new virus "hot spots," places like prisons, manufacturing facilities, old markets, and construction sites, where a round of new local testing would turn up hundreds of new cases.  Or thousands; the prison system was so impacted that for awhile the stats for case counts in prison rivaled those found elsewhere.

It's interesting checking the US daily testing count for comparison; it's at 385,000 now, trending down, but at the last level over a million daily tests were conducted from February to April.  The opposite of what we're seeing here for escalating testing leading to increases in cases could work backwards.  The positive rate just doubled there in the US, under 2% for awhile to approaching 4% now.  In Cambodia that had been holding steady at 15% and in Thailand it doesn't show stats.  I guess if the average tests conducted were just over 60,000 for three months and a daily average was 4,000 (hard to average, given it's upward slope) positive percentage should be in the range of 6%.

This seems to keep mixing between daily life experience and those stats.  The two pair together more than it might seem.  I've had no daily life impact from the case count increasing from 2500 a month ago to seeming to move past 8000 now but the feel of the pandemic depends on those numbers.  If I had been going to malls and restaurants my life would've changed a lot over the last week.  If I owned a restaurant the change could be extreme, maybe the difference between financial losses and bankruptcy, if the restriction stays in place. 

One strange life-experience change:  I started running wearing a mask in the last month.  It's possible to do that; I wasn't as clear on how it would go prior to trying it.  The first day I wore a special running mask designed to hold an N95 mask insert and that was rough, and from there on I just wore the relatively ineffective outer mask part, a kind of thick but open plastic mesh.  Other runners were split on whether to skip the sidewalk and outdoor mask requirement or observe it, which I understand completely.  I was running during the afternoon in over 90 F (35 C range) heat for some weeks, getting the most out of an unseasonal heat wave, some extra heat conditioning training.

Now as we drive around my wife points out more and more areas recognized as hotspots.  Probably all of Bangkok is a hotspot at this point, and soon enough all of Thailand.  The vaccination level and rate is a problem, related to that; about 15% of everyone has had at least one shot, so not so many.

That looks like 4 million "at least one dose" additions to get to the current level of 9 million, and maybe a million and a half more "fully" (or not quite that), so it could be 5 1/2 million shots over a month?  That's a long way to go, covering 70% of 70 million, moving up from 3 million fully vaccinated to more like 50.  The pace will have to change to get that completed this year.

Again the stats side and life experience mix.  Those numbers are a bit abstract but we live out being where we are in relation to them.  My mother-in-law and I have had one vaccine dose, and my wife none yet, so none of us are fully protected.  The country being relatively closed is an extension of all that.

On the cultural side, we don't really have the same type of pandemic denial here.  Some people really aren't so into wearing masks, but even that is more rare.  You have to keep in mind that 2700 people have died here versus 606,000 in the US too; it took about 250,000 deaths there to really get the most opposition-inclined conservatives to give in that there was a pandemic underway.  People here accepted that it was a real threat back when there were 100 deaths; that's why the country was able to eliminate it in about two months in 2020.  To some extent that perspective change is what let it become so widespread now; people know there's a pandemic on, but they don't always care, past wearing a mask and washing hands more.

Last year people made a bigger deal out of being isolated, in most countries.  Not just related to perspective about it, and personal practice; it was more of a thing on a few levels.  As we ratchet up controls and restrictions here we never completely get back to that feel.  Maybe it's just familiar now, or the relative risk is easier to place?

One might wonder, how does all this relate to the generalities one encounters about cultural perspective?  Are Asians, and Thais, really less individualistic, less concerned about personal freedom than Americans, and do they accept cultural norms better?  Sure, but it's just not quite that simple.  On the Thai side perspective on the pandemic is also a personal theme, not uniform across an entire country. 

There's no completely equivalent liberal / conservative divide here, and people move on to basic understanding faster (that there is a pandemic), but perspectives are still diverse.  In the US there did seem to be that split in perspectives, with the liberally oriented locked down hard last year, and conservatives following whatever views and practices they happened to embrace.  In the end it's not as different as it would seem at a distance, since going out and running errands over the past month hasn't felt so different than it did prior to the pandemic, except for the masks and hand washing.  We get it that the disease really is all around us now, so it's a little different, but after a year and a half of that seeming to be the case, at least to some extent, it just seems normal.

I feel bad for Vietnam; this is going to be rough for them (source)

Thai Qing Fu Cha local Thai sheng (wild gushu, etc.)

 

This is the longest I've went for awhile between review posts.  I'll say a little about that break first and then get on with reviewing a Thai sheng "pu'er-like tea." It's a Thai version of sheng from Qing Fu Cha, presumably from the 2021 season, but I could be clearer on that.

I'm not buying much tea lately and vendors haven't been sending much.  I just wrote a review for one tea a vendor sent but I'll never post that, because the tea seemed a little so-so to me.  When vendors send teas if I don't like a version I won't review it, and if the review seems as negative as positive I'll let them review it and then skip posting it if they choose.  

It's not like a lot gets lost in the omission; someone selling mediocre tea isn't much of a story.  If it's a big name, like Yunnan Sourcing or White 2 Tea, and I've tried a number of versions and find them all lacking then that would be a story.  That wouldn't happen; this other case was just a vendor reselling a decent but ordinary quality tea.  Maybe I shouldn't have agreed to even try the teas, since often enough that's how that would work out.  I actually thought the tea was ok; to me it would've made sense to post that review, but it can come up that vendors expect reviews to look marketing content.  These posts say what I think; even if I like a vendor they content isn't hype.

The reason for not buying tea lately is mostly what one would expect, that my tea budget is limited.  I ran into a high expense paying to get teas through customs at the end of last year, and my wife spent a lot on a temporary boarding school venture, that I've not went into here.  So I adjust to drinking what I already had, which was a number of types (per my wife's take more than ever should have stacked up, which doesn't seem to decrease much while I drink it for months).  I could've did more with reviewing samples I have around, or about how some sheng is aging, but it was nice to just go on break from reviewing instead.  Writing about doing some online meetups was enough.  I've been meaning to get into opinion pieces more, and venture off the subject of tea, which I have yet to get far with.

On a personal update, I just had the covid vaccine the day before yesterday (when doing the tasting and draft), the Astrazeneka version.  It's too much tangent to cover, that background on local pandemic status.  I think my sense of taste is relatively normal, related to that input, but it's at least possible that I'll miss more than I'm aware of, since I'm not yet symptom-free from vaccine side-effects.  And there's the usual noise and chaos around the house, and the tea didn't rest (from shipping within Bangkok), so maybe it would shine a little more under different circumstances.

the story I could tell is about a nasty Delta variant related third wave in Thailand

Review

First infusion:  this is brewed light, after a short rinse, my typical process.  The flavor is a little unusual.  

In discussing tea with someone recently I was reminded that I don't use as consistent a split in terminology between taste (tongue based distinction of sweetness, bitterness, sourness and some other mineral range tied to detecting both salts and minerals) and aroma (aromatic volatile compound based sensation detected in the rear nasal passages).  The actual experience of the two tends to mix to become one experience, and you can sort of "split them apart" in defining and describing experience, but I don't use one set of standard terms to do so here.  There are only a limited range of terms used, but those vary.  Taste and flavor can be used inconsistently, but aroma is standard enough, it's just not always separated out.  Flavor might be used to define both ranges or only aroma; that would vary too.

Anyway, there is a woody sort of earthy tone to this, and a cool root-spice oriented theme, with sweetness that might be in dried fruit range, but it's all so light that I'll describe it more next round.  It's not atypical for feel and flavor aspects to shift quite a bit over the first two rounds, so it's even possible that one I'm noticing for this being so light won't be a main character aspect after one more round.

not really focusing in on the photography aspect this time

Second infusion:  interesting!  I wanted to go far enough with infusion time to be certain to get a clear read, but not far enough to be describing overbrewed tea, so I went with around 10 seconds, a few longer than I would ordinarily see as a likely optimum, but not enough to ruin it.  Sure enough this is a little strong.  Astringency is notable; that stands out first in the experience, along with a bitterness level that's really moderate as young sheng goes.  Astringency is limited as young sheng range goes, to be clear, but still significant.  Flavor is nice.  Some base mineral probably rounds out tongue-based input related to that, a warmer tone version.  

Other aromatic input is interesting.  Floral tone is part of it, and dried fruit, and a warm and somewhat non-distinct range that might be best described as woodiness.  It points towards a familiar tobacco range common to some inferior quality sheng, but it's not nearly as pronounced as that tends to be in more "tastes like a cigar smells" versions.  To me it works.  I could imagine someone being put off by part of that, or the overall balance, but I like it.  It's clean and comes across as balanced and well-made tea.  I suspect that it might be atypical in ways that could affect aging transition potential but I'll say more about that and other causation as the review continues.  All meaningless guesses, probably, but that's how tea blogs can go.

probably a bit oxidized; I didn't get into that

Third infusion:  it's good, relatively speaking.  Intensity is a bit light but what is present is fine.  There's a catchy root spice aspect that works with the rest.  A mild and subdued fruit range is pleasant, just hard to identify.  It's not so far from some dried longan I ate not long ago.  That fruit version of those was amazing, so tasty it was hard to stop eating it, and a good sized bag of it wasn't around long.  Longan flavor is what makes those Chinese ice based mixed-bean deserts so appealing, I think made from simmering dried longan for a good while, versus being processed from a fresh version.

Light bitterness and moderate sweetness both balance well.  Lacking flaws, sourness, mustiness, smoke, odd flavors, works well, but it's hard to appreciate as a range of aspects that aren't present.

Fourth infusion:  I went a little light on timing; it's easy to shift that when the proportion has a range of 8 seconds or so being optimum.  This has lost enough intensity that up to 12 seconds is probably good now, and within a round or two 15 might work well.  Commenting that here isn't about identifying good brewing practice or settling on an optimum, I wanted to make a point about how the balance of what you experience shifts with brewed tea intensity.  

It's possible that someone could appreciate a broad range, and for many tea types stronger, more medium, and lighter infusions would all be quite enjoyable in different ways.  Here I'm saying that brewing this tea for 7-8 seconds on a fourth infusion instead of 12 shifts what comes across.  The tea seems a little thinner, and flavor profile seems to shift.  I suppose it's instead that what comes across in what proportion shifts.

The base mineral tone stays strong, and sweetness is present but slightly reduced, with bitterness probably dropping out even more.  Other aromatic compound range diminishes even more, what people might see as "the flavor."

I never will be able to fully place this related to other "wild" teas, or address aging potential, but saying a little wouldn't hurt.  Related to the second, more challenging teas in terms of a higher level of bitterness and a certain style of astringency seem to have a high potential of transitioning well.  Sometimes that relates to needing a full 15 years to really get there, the Xiaguan / factory tea case.  In more moderate cases you get a sense that a sheng might be better after 3 or 4 years of aging, and then sometimes you wait and experience that to be exactly the case.

This seems quite drinkable now, not really challenging, but also not like the fresh, smooth, mild, and flavor intense sheng versions that more or less need to be drank right away because they'll lose appeal rather than gain it.

The wild or forest tea theme is a funny thing.  I was just reading a Matcha's blog post about that.  The strange part in that post was that he was splitting forest tea as completely separate from wild tea, as two completely different things.  Of course the subjects would overlap, and the idea there seemed to be that plant genetics are central to discussing both.  The implied claim is that some tea plants are very conventional in type but are growing in relatively natural conditions (the "forest" case), and that other plant types are not one of the main Assamica versions used to make tea, or not a part of the continuum of standard types (the "wild" teas).  I think that mostly works.  

The only problem with it is that marketing separation of the types seems to be drawn on as a good source of making a distinction (implied in that post), and per my experience vendors aren't identifying and operating based on a great grasp of underlying inputs and consistent use of terminology.  Wild / forest / ancient tree sources would be used as equivalent, just based on a personal convention by the vendor staff.  Using "forest" or similar description, or just framing, for a tea that "seems like sheng," that seems to be based on a typical Assamica version input, would work, and then splitting off what seems different as "wild."  Maybe that was a main point.  Calling "wild sheng" more of a tisane might be a bit strong but in at least some sense that works too; it can definitely be quite different.

Fifth infusion:  better, for brewing time being more optimum, out around 15 seconds now.  It's not unusual for some sheng types to be so intense that they just drop into a more normal tea intensity range by the fifth infusion, not really thinning.  It's tempting to try to tie that initial limited intensity and faster than average transition to causes but I really would be guessing, and probably guessing wrong.  

That root spice aspect has moved into an autumn leaf range.  I suppose it's tied to the woodiness and earlier trace of tobacco, which I'm not really getting now.  I mean the fragrant, sweet, complex smell you find in a pile of mixed fallen leaves.  I often help my wife's mother sweep up leaves in our driveway, which come from a broad range of tropical plants, or flowering vines, palms, whatever is around, and it's interesting how that scent can be more complex than a tea experience ever is.  It should be; something like 20 kinds of plant leaves are mixing in those piles, and they're actively fermenting and drying from fresh leaf versions, with rain adding a random moisture input.

This tea will keep transitioning, and a couple more interesting minor shifts in aspects will occur.  How the rounds work out in count and later character is also part of the story.  I just don't feel like filling all that in, so I'll move on to some concluding thoughts instead, adding some about how the next half dozen rounds went in the conclusions.

I usually leave out most discussion of processing and leaf input, since what do I know, but that mix of colors could easily relate to differing leaf type material and a good bit of oxidation input, compared to that typically not being the case for sheng.

Conclusions:

This seems to be a kind of tea that could be taken in two different ways.  It could be presented and interpreted as a unique style but average quality "local tea," pleasant but limited in complexity, intensity, and refinement.  Or with a bit more spin that novelty and quality level could be played up, and this could be regarded as a uniquely positive and very pleasant version.  

It's pretty good tea; that doesn't change, but the relative judgement could.  I get the sense that style expectations and interest in novelty both factor into all that, of course along with subjective preference.  It is a little odd how it ends up interpreting the exact same tea as of moderate quality or instead as highly desirable, in both cases a bit non-standard, but framed completely differently.

Then there's the paradigm of someone being a real high-level expert passing on an objective opinion "from on high" that truly places a version.  Obviously I'm not claiming to be such an authority; I started this post by saying that I'm not drinking that much new tea lately, and I've never had a tea budget enabling access to purchase $150-200 cakes, which is just standard good tea range to some.  I've tried lots of South East Asian teas, probably as much range as anyone else, but I'm not sure what that should mean.  

I doubt this version could pass for anything like those higher quality Yunnan versions, which of course would be a range, not one single thing.  Where it stands in relation to what Western facing vendors sell as $80-90 standard above average quality tea is more of reasonable question.  This I did buy for about $20 for 100 grams, implying a claim that it falls around that category (more like $70 for a 357 gram cake, but really selling the tea within a Thai market could change things a bit).  It could be a little high related to only quality level, but then there's not much similar to be had, so supply and demand balance is hard to call.

It's interesting considering how I place this related to gushu in general, or "wild" teas.  Even though this has been has a really slow year for reviewing teas I have written about multiple teas presented as "wild / ancient tree / forest grown," two from China and one from Laos (from Yongde, Mannuo, and Phongsaly).  It doesn't really work to map out consistent patterns among them.  It's tempting to do so, but I'd likely just be identifying what many of the first half dozen I had tried years back were like, later using confirmation bias to reinforce that the rest tend to also be like that, and seeing others that weren't as exceptions.  

If I did that, and again this seems to be stating generalities based on random patterns within my own experience, not in general, I would say that more wild tea versions tend to be less bitter than standard Yunnan versions, and less astringent, more likely to express a range of novel fruity or spice flavor range, versus more standard Yunnan versions more frequently being floral.  Intensity tends to be lower, especially related to flavor and astringency.  Take it for what it's worth.  Some "wild" versions exhibit a really odd sourness, seemingly tied to atypical plant genetics (or it really could be due to processing flaws, or just not drying it enough initially), but normal variation range is something else.

Pegging quality of this version is also problematic, splitting that off from style.  At one point I thought I could identify markers related to quality (and typical gushu character), but now I don't think that.  I do think that conventions related to standard patterns of styles come up, so when people claim that a tea version is objectively however good they judge one to be, they're not necessarily wrong, they are just basing that on common conventions that they take to be universal.  Which may be relatively universal, within a broad set of opinions, related to large groups of producers, vendors, and enthusiasts.  True objectivity is something else though, or rather one might say that a more robust version of objectivity would be grounded differently.  Gushu I've tried (teas presented as such) seemed to have a pronounced mineral base, and the mineral range I've described in this--as a warm tone--was more pronounced than it would've seemed if I'd kept repeating description of it.  If it would've transitioned I would have; then there would have been something new to say.

This tea "brewed out" relatively fast, and never really was very intense, not a great sign.  Plenty of sheng is so powerful that very short infusions still leave it as an intense experience early on (at a high proportion, which I sort of take to be standard, even though it's really probably not).  For starting out really intense and being brewed fast across rounds 10 infusions in a version may still have plenty to offer, and might only fade after a dozen or more.  This isn't like that; by 8 or 9 rounds I was stretching it to get decent intensity, and the character didn't stay as positive.  It did keep producing reasonably flavorful tea well past 10 rounds, but it was kind of a limited range experience, with some base mineral, higher astringency from adding infusion time, and more subdued earthy tones, like cedar wood or something such.

To an extent that sort of "staying power" also relates to how positive the stretched rounds come across.  A really good Wuyi Yancha might be turning thin at 8 or 9 rounds too (they typically would be, depending on brewing approach), but character might seem quite positive across longer and longer infused or "stretched" rounds.  This version kept brewing tea, it just didn't have a lot of pronounced positive character to carry over.

This could easily be an autumn harvest tea; that would add up [see following late edit; it is, but what that means is probably different in the tropics, because there is no true "Spring"].  It would explain why intensity wasn't pronounced early on, or across an infusion cycle, both in terms of how much individual aspects came across and what flavor was present.   I really don't care if a sheng version is called gushu or not, unless there is some particular adjoining reason why a vendor would get that right, and not so much even then.  In a related online "Shopee" sales page there is a description about that part:

...Pick the tops of tea from the ancient wild Assam (古樹茶) tea trees, aged between 500 and 1000 years old. The average tea leaves used to make this tea lot are about 700 years old.

Gu Hua tea is a tea that is harvested during the fall. But there is something more special than general autumn tea. The harvest time for Gu Hua tea is from the end of the rainy season to the beginning of winter. which is a short harvesting period

during this time corresponds to the period when the rice is ripe It is when the flowers in the valley are fragrant. and the fields are golden That's why we call the tea collected during this short period of time as the Valley Flower Tea (Gu Hua Tea)....

On the seasons and "winter" theme here the annual low temperature in Bangkok doesn't fall much below 25 C, or 77 F.  I woke up at 5 AM once half a year ago to go running at 70 F; that was nice, that bitter cold snap.  It's cooler at elevation in the North but it's not really winter; Thais just say "cool season."

Related to plant age claims--which of course could be accurate, or probably much more likely not--I talked to someone not long ago who was surprised about an aged tea type being "faked," and it seemed odd that such a thing would seem odd.  The first time I visited China a local IT vendor guide described how they made fake eggs there, actually in the shell, with a white part and yolk.  If anything can be duplicated in China then it is, and it's not as if things are so different here in Thailand.  To be fair it's hard to tell how old a tea plant really is, and vendors often cite ages for the oldest plants in the area as the material type it's from, even though of course that makes little sense.

Here's what the vendor said about origin:

Gu hua cha is from Wawee mountain, while the other 2 are from Mae Salong.

That kind of rings a bell since I've drank a lot of Thai tea but it's still not especially meaningful.  Mea Salong is where the oolong plantations are, with a reference on both areas here, where my friend Alex Phanganovich has been living (or contact, if you prefer to use that association designation sparingly).

The tea is nice; that's the thing.  Maybe I wouldn't be so clear on that conclusion if I'd had narrower expectations, for it to be some certain way, but within a context of lacking specific expectations I like it. 100 grams might be enough to get plenty of experience of it but if I had bought a full cake's worth I might not be upset.  It would be a cool tea to share with others, since there's a novelty appeal to it.  That relates to both flavor and background, and it helps that although it's not intense (or probably suitable for long aging) it is pleasant to drink.  And it probably will bump a little in intensity once it picks up some rest time, when I try it in a quieter atmosphere (if the kids ever go out of the house again), when I'm not soldiering through a covid vaccine recovery.  

I never really did mention the main likely cause for it being how it is, at least that seems to stand out in leaf and liquid appearance, a likely high degree of oxidation for sheng.  It wouldn't clarify much if I had.  It would probably be like this is, a bit mild, sweet, less bitter and astringent, warm in tone, with floral aroma range dropped back, lacking as much aging potential.  But don't take my word for that; check out this Farmerleaf video on making sheng ("pu'er;" his versions are mostly from Jing Mai, Yunnan, where he lives), which I'm too lazy to rewatch and time-stamp the reference to William saying exactly that.

The next version from this vendor that I'll review is something else again, what they call Bai Hao Mei Ren, and describe as such:

It seems like oriental beauty, but the leaves that we bought to produce is young leaf, and fully hand made.  Normally Dong Fang Mei Ren [OB, which is also called Bai Hao sometimes] is made from summer leaves, and bug bitten, but for this version we used spring leaves.

grilling for the 4th of July recently (Keo gets so tall now)

a better angle of Keo, who pulls off the pandemic look much better than me

Talking to Stéphane Erler of Tea Masters

 

Ralph had a schedule conflict

We've talked to some interesting and amazing people as a part of that social meetup series but this moved on to someone I consider to be a tea expert.  No one is a deeper-level expert than someone with half a lifetime's experience in making tea, or a background in helping found a unique nation-specific tea tradition, as people we've talked to. But the conventional sense of someone putting in long years of study, training, and communication, first learning and then giving back to a well-grounded local tea tradition, all evokes a unique type of respect.

For people exploring tea a decade ago Stéphane Erler would've needed no introduction; Tea Masters was one of those classic blogs that helped define tea experience and culture.  And it still is active; that's unique.  I suppose the multitude of social media channels and the current high level of focus on pu'er as a preference end-point might've diminished that standing, as being one of relatively few points of focus, but not as I see it in relation to the solid foundation and value of the reference.  

I'll add a short introduction here of who I see Stéphane to be, and a bit on how he came across to me (we've never spoken by video call before now).  Then this will move on to a set of tangents, for the most part topics we only barely touched on.  These meetups have evolved to be more personal introductions than explorations of tea themes, which is fine.  When a participant has so much to offer about a subject matter, spanning the entire Taiwanese tea tradition in this case, or how Wuyi Yancha is produced and sold, in an earlier example, it can feel like not much was covered for dwelling on personal background, but those life stories and details ground the rest.  There is no tea tradition without complex individuals having and sharing the ideas and experiences.

I don't have a good intro for Stéphane handy, and didn't turn up one in his own words on his Tea Master's blog or Youtube video channel, or on his blog Facebook page (with his vending page here).  Somehow that seems appropriate and positive, that there is no main 50 word summary version out there.  This will mainly draw on my own impression then.  With some positive bias, kind of a given, but I think that's fine, and warranted in this case.  His own words in a recent blog post about blog anniversary context at least clarifies the context:

This weekend, my live video tea classes on FB will be about gaiwan, gaibei and zhong! It's the Absolute Beginner's tea vessel! As we are approaching my blog's 17th anniversary next week, I thought it would be fitting to mark the occasion by learning more about this fantastic tea vessel. It's the brewing vessel for beginners and experts alike. It's a reminder that despite the years of learning, we remain Absolute Beginners in front of tea.  ...[here posted] on my YouTube channel. 

Honestly, I had no idea that tea blogging would turn into such a long undertaking and a new career for me. It has allowed me to be a 'stay at home dad' and take care of my kids (with my wife) every day for the last 17 years. I'll be forever grateful for interacting with so many kind, knowledgeable and passionate tea friends over the years.

And that captures what I would cover for character, that he comes across as very knowledgeable, able to communicate about different levels of practice and exposure, and as very humble.  To me this continual student of tea perspective captures the positive essence of traditional tea culture.  

On to some discussion points then.  We didn't get so far into Taiwanese tea, or brewing practice, or even that local tradition, but some themes we did skim across were really interesting.

The decline of text blogging

Relevant here too, changes in media forms and preference have led to the decline of text blogging, and reading text in general.  It's nice that Stéphane embraces a video form too, which he has for quite some time (starting 15 years ago, although more regular posts started half that long ago).  Watching those first dozen videos could provide an indirect snapshot into modern tea culture's perspective evolution, since there is far less reference content out there from a decade ago and prior than in the last half dozen years.

We didn't reach any end point about what it means that media and content preferences and consumption are changing; it just is what it is.

Penn State tea club 

We didn't spend much time on this either, but due to being a PSU alumni myself I've found it interesting that tea clubs flourished there.  Stéphane was instrumental in supporting that, regularly visiting Penn State to assist with instruction and guidance, surely across a very broad scope.  He mentioned in this talk that there were multiple tea clubs there, covering Chinese and Japanese scope, extending to one being recognized as an "Institute" for also supporting productive research, resulting in research paper output.

I had forgotten the name of a main founder of one such group, and researcher, Jason Cohen, who went on to develop the Gastrograph aroma mapping application and food research company (with more on that in this post).  As with education and business in general the pandemic has disrupted tea events for the past year and a half, which in the context of a club or group whose members "turn over" every four years would really disrupt direction and leadership, beyond freezing the main group functions.

that app is really set up to be modified, definitely not tea specific

Sheng pu'er in relation to oolongs

Experienced tea enthusiasts would each have their own take on the placement of sheng pu'er versus oolong experience, but something Stéphane said linked with what another oolong-range expert once said, in an interesting way.  He said that sheng is naturally a more intense form of tea experience, so that once one acclimates to that range other tea types would seem to lack intensity.  From the perspective of someone who has drank mostly sheng for coming up on four years that rings true(after earlier focus on oolong, as it worked out).  I had always tended to see it as acclimating to bitterness, and then appreciating complexity, and finding aging changes interesting, and then also experience of a tea reaching a peak of character at an undefined age.  Let's unpack some parts of this.

That other oolong expert--who I hope to mention in a meeting summary, but who can remain unnamed here--placed a very similar idea in relation to the "cha qi energy" of sheng pu'er.  She said that to her sheng experience felt a bit harsh and aggressive, not as calming and pleasant as oolong effect.  I don't "get" cha qi experience enough to place that so clearly, but the other range intensity I can relate to.  Even if you flash brew a moderate proportion of somewhat young sheng it comes across as intense, and for the most part that doesn't drop out with age (although for some versions it would).  Even if taste and aroma range diminish older sheng can often still retain a thickness to the feel, or an interesting way that underlying mild mineral tone supports complexity of experience, and so on.

Next it's hard to say if it's a good thing or a bad thing that many people would evolve towards sheng preference over time.  Maybe neutral?  Before skipping on to that point it's worth considering that tea preference in general has shifted to love of bubble tea in a lot of places, including among young people in China and Taiwan (something we also discussed).  They're not the same thing, but there could be common ground, some overlap.  People tend to cycle through flavored teas due to liking strong flavors and familiar range, then to some extent acclimate to milder and more subtle range in oolongs (at some point; exposure patterns vary), and especially in relation to white teas.  Then maybe it is natural to appreciate intensity and complexity over balance and more subtle aspects in later stages.

This could be unrelated, but I recently wrote about developing a form for analyzing tea experience, for documenting it (so form as in record template), and I omitted "balance" from that version:

"Intensity" was listed as a place to put positive notes in relation to aroma aspects (the split between tongue based taste and nasal receptor aroma / flavor isn't described consistently), and in notes related to flaws and limitations in that draft.  It was never intended as a final version; for actual use someone would need to adjust those categories in relation to how they interpret teas.  I don't use any such formal evaluation or note-taking process myself; I made it up for a friend, and then it also works as a thought-model for the parts that comprise tea experience.

We talked a little about gaba teas, and why I dislike the taste of them (or taste plus aroma experience, or however one puts that).  Again, as suggested by a Russian tea enthusiast, he speculated that it could relate to a feel effect, and that gaba oolong--or oolong and black versions--aren't supposed to be strong flavored or intense.  So it could link back to preferring sheng.  He even said that it would be odd if someone loved sheng best and liked gaba oolong too, which I suppose would also work out for silver needle / tips versions, which also aren't one of my personal favorites.  I like Bai Mu Dan better, because that tends to be more complex and intense.

This could seem like I'm implying that a final preference towards higher intensity means something (which really goes beyond a simple infusion strength issue, as I see it).  It is odd that a typical preference cycle moves from relating to flavored-tea intensity and familiarity, bridges to more sophisticated and subtle scope, then potentially often leads back to valuing a completely different kind of intense and complex experience.  How I think it all maps together is too complex for a sub-theme here, so I'll set it aside.

Relationship between Taiwanese teas and other sources as imports

The subject of Vietnam (and Thailand) producing oolong imported and sold as Taiwanese oolong came up.  That's quite familiar to most people who have been following tea themes for awhile.  I first visited Vietnam awhile back, maybe 10 years ago now, and I was surprised to run across a shop and well developed business producing and selling Japanese style green tea.  I thought it was great that Japanese producers supported a fellow Asian country's local industry in that way, linking up to provide growing and process expertise.  Only later did it occur to me that they were producing tea likely to be sold as from Japan, if not in Japan then elsewhere.

The best of the oolong I've tried from Vietnam was better than the best of what I've tried from Thailand, but neither matched what I've tried from Taiwan, even though I've surely never explored the best high mountain teas from there.  In response to asking what inputs led to that, and how good Vietnamese oolong could be in comparison, Stéphane mentioned that since producers from Taiwan are directly supporting processing terroir limitations might restrict final outcome.  William of Farmerleaf just did a video on a related theme about oolong production in Yunnan, and on the oolong processing side here, directly informed by experience from Taiwan.

There are high mountains in Vietnam, in an area I've personally visited in Sapa, but all the conditions would need to come together, that elevation and temperature, relatively ideal climate and micro-climate (local weather and sunlight / shading), soil type, plant type, processing, and so on.  We never really discussed how far an optimum might go, talking around general background a bit instead.

rice fields instead, in the Sapa area (Northern Vietnam)

the focus then was on family travel, not so much tea themes

Beginner's mind

We didn't explicitly discuss this much, but the one thing that stood out the most in talking to Stéphane was how approachable and humble he was.  He seemed to be comfortable talking about what oolong even is (mid-oxidized tea), or going as deep as one would want to go into cultivars, processed tea characteristics, and brewing practice.  

Stéphane said that his own teacher, Tea Parker, emphasizes giving his students tools to keep improving their brewing practices, and presumably teaware experience and ceremonial forms background, but doesn't lay out rigid structure for how to approach or appreciate tea.  That's admirable.  To the extent there is an objective right and wrong to approach to tea that seems right, embracing flexibility and room for preference and experience development.

Given how interesting those briefly skimmed tangents were it would've been nice to hear more about those topics, and related perspective.  Having no structure in discussion is nice for not imposing limits, with the trade-off that if you talk to a Taiwanese tea expert about Indian and Vietnamese teas for half of a short discussion session you end up hearing very little about Taiwanese teas.  It's an odd part to leave out.  But maybe we can meet again, and put more focus on that.  And it's not as if those other themes serve no purpose, for the people joining to place where their own tea experience stands, and for Stéphane to hear a bit about scope he's not experiencing day to day.