SNSS (Bangkok wholesale vendor) Ceylon review

I'm finally reviewing a Ceylon (Sri Lanka black tea) sample from that Bangkok tea expo awhile back, from the SNSS vendor.  They are really a wholesale seller, with more about all that in this post.

It's a bit odd reviewing a tea as "Ceylon," not considering more about sub-region or plantation, similar to reviewing something as a Chinese black tea or Taiwanese oolong; not so descriptive.  It was labeled as OP 1, per my understanding meaning that the leaves aren't very broken.  The vendor knows where it came from, a plantation source, it just wasn't passed on along with that information.

SNSS isn't really a retail sales vendor, and I sort of picked up a sample in passing at the event.  They weren't set up with lots of retail portions there but in retrospect I probably should have pressed to get a bit more tea, not squeezing them for more samples--full disclosure:  they didn't charge me for this--but just to have more to drink.

The tea is probably going to be what I expected, like decent Ceylon, a bit malty, with some astringency but still moderate related to that, etc., so to mix it up I will try it with and without milk.  I don't remember the last time that I tried adding milk to any plain tea (eg. not masala chai), so that will be different for me.

Review

The tea is nice, malty, with a touch of astringency but not too much, with a bit of mineral below that, as expected.  That mineral is the interesting part, hard to pin down.  Another blogger once said Ceylon tastes like blood to her (Amanda of My Thoughts are Like Butterflies, a cool blog), and that might work for a start, but in a nice sense (not how she was using that description).

I would probably just say "mineral" instead, and not get into rocks or bodily fluids for comparison.

A discussion came up about Chinese black teas seeming astringent recently (and malty too), and this tea isn't overly astringent.  Normally it wouldn't cross my mind to add milk or anything else to it.  The sweetness and balance is nice.

Beyond malt, a trace of astringency,  and some mineral there are mild earthy tones adding complexity,  it's just hard defining them since they really don't stand out.  Maybe it's also a touch woody, like cedar or redwood.  That mineral reminds me a little of a struck match too, maybe more so than any kind of rock.  It's odd that I'm saying that the aspects are nice but these specific descriptions don't sound positive.  As much as a tea tasting like blood, a struck match, and a humidor could taste nice this really does; the balance works well, it's clean in effect, with a good level of sweetness.

Tea with milk

On the next infusion I tasted the tea before adulterating it with milk. The mineral taste was a little stronger but otherwise it was the same.  Then I put milk in it.

It tastes like black tea with milk added; a lot less distinct in character.  Maybe I can tell this isn't Lipton but part of that may relate to already knowing that it's not.  It's hard to pick out anything but "black tea with milk."  It's definitely not astringent, but then it wasn't before.  I might as well add sugar at this point but I won't.  I was thinking that I might still be able to detect some of the character, the flavor, in spite of diluting it, but not so much.  It would probably be better brewed stronger than I drink plain teas, and more astringency in the aspects profile might work better, since this might be a bit too soft with the milk added.


That was pointless.  I could swear that I tried relatively decent black tea with milk some years back and liked it better then, but who knows.  That could relate to preference shift, using a different tea, or just bad memory.  I brewed this tea a third time and the results weren't as good as the first two, a bit woody for stretching the infusion time to maintain the infusion strength (using Western parameters), so all typical enough.

work canteen; the view in my tasting room

Conclusion

I should have more of this tea to keep drinking it.  I liked it better than any green tea I've been trying (my least favorite type), to put it on a scale, but it doesn't match my preferences as well as most Chinese or Taiwanese black teas.  For novelty I'd probably enjoy some more than mid-grade Chinese tea types that match my preference for type better, I just wouldn't want to drink a lot of it.  I could really enjoy 50 grams for trying something different, but 100 would probably stick around awhile, and if I had 200 I'd probably end up giving some away.  I guess it could work well as a breakfast tea, so maybe not.  It's the right aspects range for that time of day, and it's nice having teas that aren't challenging for then, something I don't really feel a need to gongfu brew and focus on for an hour.  Apparently I'm not so into black tea with milk, so maybe I'd stick to drinking it plain instead.


These guys are local but since they're set up for wholesale vending in order to run across more I'll have to arrange to meet them instead of drifting into a shop somewhere.  They import the tea themselves, so there is more information about the sources available.  They bought this directly from a plantation, per my understanding.


I've tried silver tips and gold tips from them too, so they also do carry some more interesting teas, but they do more with supplying local shops with more standard versions.  It works out to be a relatively unique option here since I only know of one other vendor selling better Ceylon in Bangkok, and at a guess they would probably sell a tea that is nearly identical to this one for a lot more.  But then that's how sales from different types of suppliers tends to go.

doing crazy eyes

A Bangkok tea expo; gateways to tea

Bangkok tea expo (media event image from the Impact arena, photo credit)

I attended a Bangkok tea expo at the Impact event arena over the weekend, the second time I've been to that one, and the second such event this year.  It was really a coffee and tea theme, combined with foods, but there wasn't much going on related to tea.  Unfortunately that will be the main theme of this post, that tea-themed expos in Bangkok don't amount to much.  I'll add some about what is going on with tea, related to what I saw, which will fill in some background.

SNSS local Ceylon vendor

At that expo I saw a local business contact who I ran across at last year's event, the Chai Dim owner, and a Ceylon vendor I met for a tasting earlier this year.  Other than matcha, and commercial Thai tea that sells in grocery stores that was about it.  I'm not really into matcha but I almost bought some, just to participate.  I've tried real matcha a number of times, and Starbucks latte level versions more, and ice cream and smoothies, but it's sort of an acquired taste, like beer or coffee, and I've not acquired it yet.  Which I'm ok with.  I don't love green tea so it's not the best natural fit.  I was into adding spirulina to protein drinks when I was a vegetarian (which lasted a bit shy of 20 years, not a short stint), so I have the potential for that range, but my tea habit is enough ground to cover without it.

Chai Dim vendor booth

Where to go with saying I barely drank any tea there?  I can describe what I did try.  I tried a Wuyi Yancha Shui Xian that was ok, not great, but decent for commercial tea.  And I tried a SNSS Ceylon hot brewed tea that was fine, typical for those, better than what one buys in a grocery store, and a version they had prepared with milk and sugar.  That was probably the one interesting high point, tasting milky tea in a range that wasn't completely familiar.  It was good, with enough flavor range it almost seemed like flavored-tea versions, except it was that mineral-intensive and earthy Ceylon range natural flavor.  Still sweetened milky tea though.


At last year's version I first met those two vendors I mentioned and tried a Nespresso machine version of Thai flavored tea, and drank a bit of local Thai tea, and a Dilmah brand sample (decent commercial Ceylon tea, if one is into such things).  Not much going on in comparison this year; the same, just less.


So that's it:  the story of a Bangkok tea expo is that there wasn't much tea there.  I went to a different coffee and tea specific expo version not too long ago and walked back out without seeing an equivalent of those two booths I said some about here.  I tried some watery, warm matcha there or else I'd have not have tasted anything.  Even though it was awful it filled in the experience, a little.

I've been to an organic foods event here in town that's had more tea selection than both events; it really seemed the "coffee and tea" sub-theme would draw out more showing than it did.  At least I bought some cashews, and sausages, and milk-candy for my kids on the walk back out through a different section.

SNSS Ceylon display; I have some tea to review later

Beyond the expo, other related discussion

at the Jip Eu Chinatown shop, looking a little somber

I met another vendor in town for different reasons, Kenneth of Monsoon teas in Chiang Mai, at my favorite Chinatown shop this weekend, Jip Eu.  We talked a little about what he was into (the short version:  wild, sustainable, other-related-plant-type based tea development).  Really that's not as distinct a subject as it might seem.


In one Facebook tea group a long discussion just reviewed how closely Taliensis--another Camellia Sinensis variety--is related to the other two standard branches.  The short answer:  who knows (but different research papers do give longer answers).  And I just reviewed a Yabao tea buds product that seems to be from a plant type that's not exactly the same as those in the other two main branches (Dehongensis instead, although what that is isn't clear).


We were sitting in one of the best places to pick up Wuyi Yancha in Bangkok, maybe the best, and tried a really nice Da Hong Pao there.  Of course "nice" is always relative; probably as good as nicer online shops tend to sell, maybe not quite as good as the average tea version pitched as being in the "never makes it out of China" range.  That Bei Dou I bought from them awhile back probably was on that level, just crazy how pleasant and well balanced (reviewed here).


All that aside, I asked him how it might work to get people into better tea, and his answer was simple:  gateway teas (not how he put it, but how I tend to think of it).  Flavored teas and blends, to be more specific.  On the one hand that's a solid, completely intuitive answer that matches lots of people's experiences.  I started out on tisanes 25 years ago, and maybe only got into normal teas because of that, partly by way of trying out Tazo blends around 20 years ago.


Bit of a tangent, but it makes you wonder how long Tazo has even been around (23 years, per the Wikipedia entry, probably with more on that somewhere on their website).  I had no idea I was an early adopter.  Really I just tried a lot of their line since a restaurant in Colorado carried it, within the first few years the brand even existed, it would seem.  I remember drinking a health-inspired blend from a local health-foods shop called "Immuni-tea" back then; that was an interesting idea to develop a functional blend (even if the validity might be questionable), and got in early with that range of tea puns, but as I recall it tasted a bit nasty.

Peony tea shop in Silom; mostly about blends (2015 photo)

Others experienced or are still experiencing something similar through Teavana, or David's tea, or by trying Twinings versions, or whatever else comes up.  T2 seems to have dumbed down their selection from years ago, probably in part related to being bought by Unilever, but one can only assume the blends sell (or at least the profit margin is good).  Here in Thailand you see mostly bottled (RTD, ready to drink) Japanese theme tea, bubble tea, or Thai tea (spiced black tea, served cold with milk and sugar, the orange one).  Plain black tea with sweetened condensed milk isn't exactly the same but not so different.



Of course a tea enthusiast might well think people don't need to go through all that, they could go straight from a Starbucks coffee habit to any number of plain-tea entry points.  Light oolong (Thai versions) was one of my own, but I'd been drinking green tea in Japanese restaurants before that, and buying an unusual Laos farmer-produced version was another stepping stone.  So was jasmine green tea.  Earl Grey not so much, but that was the luck of the draw, if that restaurant in Colorado had carried it in addition to Zen and the rest maybe the process would have went faster.


At the expo the Chai Dim vendor was saying the same thing; he started selling a whole line of blends in the past year.  That one Shui Xian was the exception, the only plain tea loose he sold (as I remember), with a smoked Lapsang Souchong as a standard flavored alternative.  I probably should've tried that; the smoke balance in versions almost never matches my preferences but I could probably still get into smoked tea if it did.  I reviewed a smoked tea from Japan that was nice not long ago, it just didn't lead me to searching for more, at least just yet.

food and beverage expo meets car show  (photo credit)

Where does that leave plain tea

Would a better plain tea booth at that expo had worked?  Maybe; it would probably depend on the format.  End-customers can and do go to those events but it's more focused on other vendors, so the vending theme would have to be right.  The image would need to sell, to an extent, along with the teas themselves.  The same awareness problems that factor in for end-customer sales also applies to other vendors.

These are issues I've been giving a lot of thought to.  This market is where the US tea market probably was 20 years ago, definitely establishing an opportunity for the right approach.  But then surely lots of US tea vendors have failed in the last 20 years, or continued with businesses that aren't clearly successful.  Awareness on the customer side has to be one factor; the most promising development on the supply side means nothing without the teas being desired and purchased.  The main difference is that Northern Thailand was growing tea 1000 years ago, and a wave of Chinese immigrants (Tai people--long story) were responsible for establishing the Sukhothai kingdom and era right around 1238 (with lots more on that here).  That shop I was in has been around for about a century but that's quite recent compared to the roots of Chinese tea here.


Again and again I post about vendors that are chipping away at the problem, building up awareness and demand in Thailand, but the conditions are just as much a recipe for failed businesses as an opportunity.  I suppose I have more ideas for potential directions than I've shared here but the root of the problem is that although tea awareness isn't non-existent interest in better tea is very, very limited.  There are vendors selling them but people aren't buying them, and online options don't need to be in-country, teas ship from place to place easily.  I've had one idea for a new approach that is truly novel, something I've been biting my tongue about, related to the potential for a darker side of marketing to emerge.  I'll say more about it if I ever see it happening.


There are Thai teas being sold here, of course.  Thai oolong is sold in grocery stores, or in small shops all over the place, or Royal Project stores, and online, in lots of places.  There are closer connections to other Asian countries than in the West, so you can visit Chinatown for tea, or walk into a Vietnamese restaurant and probably pick up some low-end green tea.  It doesn't seem to be serving as a gateway, and I'm not completely sure why not.  Unless you count about one new tea-themed cafe starting up in Bangkok per year, including branches, and then it is on the rise, but that's going to take time to build up to much.  I'll walk by 8 or so booths selling bubble tea or instant tea on the way to the BTS after work (elevated train system); at this rate it will never be on remotely the same level of popularity.

on the way back home from that event; way outside of Bangkok looks like this

Ceylon tea tasting with SNSS (a Bangkok wholesale vendor)

from left:  two black teas, silver tips, and gold tips

Last year I attended a Bangkok coffee and tea expo and tried out some nice Ceylon there, from the SNSS wholesale tea distribution company (with a post about that event here).  To be honest I don't have a lot of depth of experience with teas from Sri Lanka (better versions; ordinary commercial lower-quality tea is a different thing).  I tried a couple of Malou versions at Luka cafe in Sathorn (with posts on that here and here).  Their Ceylon Peony / Bai Mu Dan style tea really did grow on me after buying some and drinking it for awhile.  The taste range was much different than for Chinese teas, or other South East Asian or Indian tea versions, mild but with interesting subtle earth and mineral tones.

I'd meant to get around to trying SNSS's gold tips, which they were out of at the time of that expo.  The idea is that it's white tea similar to silver tips, just different (which is similar to silver needle teas, just different, probably related to processing differences in addition terroir influenced variation).  I did buy a really nice version of a black tea from them then that I seem to have not reviewed in this blog.

So after the better part of a year of infrequent contact we finally set up a time to meet again, the owners and I.  I didn't know what to expect, and didn't realize one of their owners was from Sri Lanka (Poorna Perera).  Not that their nationality changes things, but the closer ties to original sourcing does, which I'll just touch on a little here.  The meeting was set up as an informal private tasting; nice enough.  But a little back-story on them first.  This never does get far as a biographical account, covering who they are, and relations to other existing business and interests, but there is more story there I didn't cover.

They are an importer, with connections within Sri Lanka as a tea buyer there, so not just a reseller based here.  Their focus is providing local shops and businesses with true single-origin Ceylon teas, not large-lot teas blended from different production batches to offset flaws in those.  All familiar ground, right?  They also emphasize freshness as a selling point.  There is no way to know how fresh or old more typical by-the-container-load Ceylon teas sold here are, but SNSS is controlling their own tea sourcing, from the auction purchase step through bringing it here, so they know.

I might have smiled

We talked a good bit about how tea buying and sales go in Sri Lanka, and how importing tea goes here.  It turns out they could also function as an exporter to other countries, given that their range of operation spans the initial sourcing chain.  And it turns out that buying process is very complicated in Sri Lanka, nothing like in Thailand.  It's my understanding that here if you turn up at a plantation you can buy a kilogram of tea or as much as you want, with next to no regulations about the purchase process or resale process, beyond taxes applying.

Import taxes in Thailand are kind of on the high side for lots of things in Thailand, not something it's easy to miss noticing, and that's true of tea as well.  We just visited the States (US), where I'm from, and we stock up on all sorts of things there, some because selection is different, and some because the same products imported to the US and to Thailand cost different amounts due to taxation.  Some examples:  shoes are less expensive there, and toys, bikes, tools, vitamins, lots of things.

Of course Trump is about to try and screw that up, through the US levying additional taxes on the import side, with the resulting trade wars not likely to stop there.  But it's probably as well to stay off the subject of politics.

One other subject we talked a lot about was demand for teas here.  Thais drink a lot of bottled tea and bubble / milk tea, and beyond that lemon tea and "Thai tea" (a spice-flavored variation of milk tea, or some versions are just black tea and condensed milk).  Thailand produces black tea and decent oolong but most Thais don't drink much of the latter, or foreign-imported versions.  One might run across exceptions to that rule in Chinatown, or of course in the Japanese community, but specialty shops selling a normal range of blends and plain teas are slow to ramp up here.  There are some exceptions, which of course I've written about.  As for Ceylon, container loads are surely being brought in and used for those milk-tea versions but few people have ever heard of gold tips or that Ceylon version of Peony / Bai Mu Dan.

On to the tasting part then, how that went.

a bit off subject, but I took a ferry to meet them, like a bus but on the river

Tasting

It was interesting experiencing the format of the tasting, closer to standard plantation tasting practices than I'm used to (with a post related to that here, more formal processes of preparing and judging teas).  We first tried those gold tips and their silver tips, another general type (white tea) that works well brewed using a Western approach.  I prepare tea in different ways, often using a Western style modified as closer to Gongfu brewing, varying how I make each tea based on past experience and preference, or immediate inclination.  In lots of cases I switch that to a more conventional Gongfu approach for reviews to keep it more standard, to observe the range of flavor aspects better.  I more often use Western brewing in the case of black tea, or a variation of it, but I'm not consistent about that.

Gongfu-style brewing Yunnan black tea recently; why not

The gold tips were interesting.  I didn't make notes, and didn't retain enough--or probably pick up enough--to do them justice with a flavor-by-flavor review here, but the general character was along the lines of that Peony.  The tea is subtle, so that at first one might not pick up much at all, and it could seem a little thin, but after even a very short acclimation and expectations shift a range of earthy and mineral tones was evident.  I've had a similar experience with white teas in general, just over a longer period of time and acclimation.  That tea was nice, sort of what one would expect, in between a Chinese white tea and a mineral-intensive black tea, just not astringent.  I think tweaking preparation style to move off a more straight Western brewing approach would work better for me too.  Lets say a little more about that, brewing.

at that Expo last year; they carry a lot of different teas

Per my understanding formal tasting often uses a very rigid and consistent approach to allow for teas to be tasted under the exact same brewing process conditions (see that other post for more details).  The point isn't to adjust brewing to optimize a tea to preference, it's to use a very standard approach to take variables out of the equation.


I've ran across the idea that it's accepted that some standard approach versions "overbrew" tea related to a typical end-consumer optimum, in part tied to the idea of process standardization, and also to allow for stronger infusion to highlight character and flaws in the tea.  One implied premise seems to be that someone could "taste around" that approach and guess out where a different and more optimum preparation might lead, and with enough experience it seems reasonable that could work.


To an end consumer it would be more intuitive to adjust brewing to optimize the tea instead, but that line of thinking would run into problems for consistent evaluation if someone thought they should brew different teas in different ways.  Really a tea buyer could take whatever approach they wanted, within the scope of that working with providers' support.  A reputable source in Indian tea production once mentioned some buyers prefer to do tastings of tea with some milk and sugar added, the opposite approach related to everything I've just said.

Per normal practice that type of tasting is done with a spoon, emphasizing slurping to increase exposure of air-born flavor components within the nasal passages.  All that is familiar ground, something I did more of related to tasting wine a lifetime ago, and some with tea too, but it's a practice I'm out of the habit of.  I could've switched over and embraced it, but instead they poured a bit into cups for me to try as I'm accustomed to.  I had more going on to adapt to as things stood, trying unfamiliar teas brewed using approaches different than I normally would use.

I didn't like the silver tips as much as the gold tips, and the other black teas were interesting.  This led to another deviation from my normal tea-drinking practices:  they didn't have a version of whole leaf tea to try at this meeting (OP, or orange pekoe, versus more Broken Orange Pekoe, with more on those letter codes in this general reference, or a longer version here).  We tried three grades of black tea, here used in the sense of tea wholeness, not the standard English meaning of "quality," but instead of leaf presentation, how whole.  Two looked like well-chopped leaves to me, and the other looked as it was named:  dust.

that Malou Ceylon Peony (really a different subject)

It was interesting that the color and taste varied by a lot more than just due to astringency ramping up the more the leaves were broken, although that did happen too.  I've been drinking some soft and sweet Taiwanese black tea lately, and just reviewed a really good Yunnan black tea, and of course these were nothing like those, ranging from only slightly brisk to downright edgy.  Other mineral and earth tones were part of the other variation.  One tea was quite nice, distinctive and pleasant, another interesting but not as close a match to my own preference, and that dust was a bit rough.

It's hard to steer all of this to some simple conclusion.  I'll meet them again sometime and pick up more of a couple kinds and mess around with them, and do a more detailed review then.  There is surely a lot more range of experience I haven't crossed into related to Ceylon, but then I knew that.  I'm not sure how I see all of this relating to Thai tea drinking practices.  They can sell the less expensive versions to vendors making milk tea, in high demand here, but there is an awareness gap to jump before anyone in Bangkok starts drinking more of those interesting teas.

Malou teas--the Luka cafe supplier--has been chipping away at that, but I'm not sure how much ground they've covered yet.  Ordinarily it would seem odd mentioning a competitor in a blog post, as I've been doing here, but it seems these two vendors really are working on different ranges within one country-origin tea type.  Malou is trying to sell relatively high end teas through established connections, even branching into ready to drink, and SNSS is trying to ramp up business as a general wholesale seller.  Of course there could be some overlap but the core focuses are different.

It remains to be seen if SNSS can push further into having cafes and other resellers join them in supporting consumer awareness and selling better Ceylon, or if they'll stick to being an upstream supplier for milk teas.  I'm a big fan of Chinese teas (and Taiwanese, Indian, Nepalese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, etc., and Thai teas can be ok) but based on trying a limited number of nicer Ceylon those really do deserve more attention.