Keeping tea experience simple

first published in TChing here

I recently responded to a Reddit post question (in r/puer) about use of tasting notes and developing tasting abilities, in "Tea Tasting":   

The basic question was this:

Has you sense of taste developed over the course of drinking tea? If so, has it transferred over to other drinks or foods? If taste is not that important for you, what do you look for in tea? Do you think that people are being pretentious when writing elaborate tasting notes? Have you ever been able to match the vendors tasting notes to yours?

To me it's more a question of how much function tasting notes serve, the purpose, which moves on to considering why they would often be inconsistent. Interpretations of aspects vary; that seems to be the short answer to the second part. I review teas for a blog so I'm comparing my own written description to a vendor version on a weekly basis. Still, the first part is harder to sort out than it first seems, why make notes, or why try to break down the experience to concepts and description.

I think in general there's no reason to create formal taste description, and no added value. As someone explores teas further it's natural to want to place experiences analytically though, to describe what you've experienced at different times, even just to yourself, and concepts are going to help with that. Just deciding if a version is better or worse than what you've tried in the past is going to require some definition, then variations in style and specific aspects all the more. Consideration of flaws or limitations is half of that, beyond describing what is experienced as positive.

Vendors often don't seem to be very good at describing their own teas. I can relate to why they really shouldn't even try, in detail, because the subjective interpretation theme is essentially impossible to work around. But then vendors are either bad at descriptions because that's an aptitude they haven't developed, which seems fine, not really a problematic limitation, or some don't seem familiar with a broad range of teas, or of what makes the tea versions they are selling more positive. That could be a problem, a vendor not being a good judge of tea, apart from the aspect description list theme.

People take or leave a lot of parts of tea experience. Describing experienced aspects is one thing, which can be functional, but then other parts can be included: meditation aspects, brewing ceremony, inclusion and collection of lots of tea gear, a social aspect, including background themes (drinking tea outside, or setting up a tasting zone theme), on and on. Someone could value simplicity in tea experience, and try to leave out as many of these parts as they could, and to me that would actually add something else, enabling more focus on basic experience.

If you do get into reviewing teas one approach that might help is along with trying to identify what a specific flavor aspect is like also consider how else it might be interpreted. That can help you relate to varying descriptions better, and can also help with what I see as a brainstorming or imagination related aspect of tasting and formal description.

All that said messing around with review process, aroma wheels, and description frameworks makes sense to me. It's just as well to never lose touch with the simplest form of the experience, just drinking tea, or to take tea so seriously that drinking it with food eventually seems negative. I usually don't eat anything while I'm tasting for writing tea reviews but to completely lose the experience of tea as an ordinary beverage is something else.  These posts relate to a couple such extra directions:

Tea Flavor / Aroma Wheels Reconsidered

Tea Evaluation Template

they're a bit inactive now, but this wheel is from here, used with permission

An edited version of some additional discussion and later thoughts follows.

I think keeping experiences basic and the internal modeling and description of experience limited works well. There's nothing like a good piece of bread, and in plenty of cases adding butter or eating cheese with that is plenty to experience for complexity, with no need to describe any of that. The analytical side of our selves, our mind, is actually separate from the rest, and forcing the two to mix in experiences can detract from the experiential enjoyment. I think people who intuitively reject formal review and description are onto something.

To clarify that, the same can apply to over-analyzing or describing any life experience themes. People who tend to write a lot--a journal, or something else--might also add a lot of internal or external narrative to their own experience, instead of just being present, and enjoying. I think that's why sports hold so much appeal to so many people, because even if you want to you can't add meaningful layers of concepts to the basic experience, in any way that really changes that experience, which can serve to liberate you from all the concepts. Or being in nature works out like that, and so on.

I didn't really connect this to simple versus complex brewing approach or process, but it's easy to imagine how that would naturally extend, and how I take that.  The less gear and the less steps the better, the exact opposite of how many people take "Gong Fu Cha," formal brewing process.  

It's helpful to keep in mind that gong fu means technique, roughly, or a skillfully conducted activity.  The tea ceremony theme comes up but that's not what "Gong Fu Cha" is, it's about making tea skillfully, and using a higher proportion of tea to water, and multiple infusions, to get better results.  I don't see including more infusion steps as adding much complexity, but someone could.  If experiential results are better for adding those steps then it would still fall under skillful means, no less so than Western style brewing would, which is how I see it.

To me it's best to keep tea experience simple and basic.  It works out better that way.  Of course that's just a statement of personal preference.

Then a lot of other aesthetic range can be hard to place.  What about drinking tea in a wood paneled room, with some plants around, and lots of hand-made teaware?  Or burning incense, or wearing special clothes?  I have no interest in those things, but as separate interests that pair with tea experience they could be fine, and add depth.  I can relate to people appreciating drinking tea outside, in nature, and I do regularly experience a setting related to that.

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.

Tea and the concept of experience economy

Initially published by TChing as www.tching.com/2018/05/tea-concept-experience-economy/

I recently attended an Adobe software conference tied to the theme of experience business or experience economy.  The general idea behind that concept is this:  as economies evolve people go from demanding basic goods (agrarian and then industrial based economies) to demanding services and specific forms of experiences (service and then experience based economies).  The higher the level of value the more that can be charged; “experiences” can command higher pricing than typical services.

It’s not necessarily simple to tie this back to tea.  A bestseller “The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary” outlines how that company built an empire by shifting themes and adding more value. 

Of course we’ve now seen that approach not work related to being duplicated for tea sales.  This World Tea News article from January 2016 explained how all the Teavana cafes were closing, but the retail stores were doing fine, and then in July of 2017 Starbucks announced they were closing all those shops.  I won’t try to interpret that, since related factors were surely complicated, but it probably works to say that sorting out the best approach to selling tea isn’t simple.

Former NYC Teavana café (photo credit)

I’m noticing a divide in experiences related to this theme and tea.  By far the most popular teas sold in Bangkok are bubble tea, or other flavored, sweetened, milk-based take-away versions that might as well have tapioca pearls at the bottom, even when they don’t.  It’s a beverage item and that’s it.  Tea enthusiasts are at the other end of the spectrum.  There can be secondary emphasis on ceremony or collecting gear but it’s mostly about the overall experience.

Of course it’s still about the tea, right?  Discussion arises about teaware, preparation methodology, and even subjects like health concerns, in places like online groups or at events, but in the end it comes back to liking aspects of the brewed teas.  That’s where the experience is, there is just plenty of room left for framing that.

Related to this split there might be a normal experience or preference curve of sorts, as people shift from floral blends, Tazo tea bags, and matcha lattes onto Gongfu--style brewing something like Dan Cong oolong or aged sheng pu’er.  True to the theory, as the demand transitions to a different focus it’s much less about price. 

Focus on minimizing level of cost can even invert.  Someone recently claimed in an online comment to have only spent under $200 on a sheng pu’er cake once this year, quickly qualified as a smaller 200 gram cake.  Bulk order photos are a different form of demonstrating status in consumption level.  $200 orders can look impressive, but then a single cake can cost more, and name-dropping decades old version references trumps any quantity.  A foreign tea enthusiast recently upped even that ante, describing commitment level as best expressed by a percentage of overall income spent on tea.

Wuyi Origin Mi Lan Xiang Dan Cong; better teas don’t need to cost a lot

It seems all this really isn’t describing a general trend into expanding tea as a service-based experience versus a commodity.  The priciest local café here in Bangkok charges over $20 for a pot of tea, for a scant few grams; that’s at least back to purchasing an on-site experience. 

How to build that into the next version of a Starbucks, or did that prove to be a flawed goal?  Are these people focused as much on experience or on displaying status instead, or can the two really not be split?  It’s a bit of a tangent, but I’m reminded of a far more absurd topic coming up in an article about a golden taco:

The world's most expensive taco is specially prepared at Grand Velas Los Cabos resort…  Ordering it will set you back $25,000 — almost the price of a new car.

The taco's foundation is a gold-infused corn tortilla, which is then layered with Kobe beef and lobster. Toppings include black truffle Brie ($100 per ounce) and a dollop of Beluga caviar ($700 an ounce). Then, more layers of gold are added on top to finish… 

I'd take a cheap Tex-Mex version over this any day

Complaining about a $30 pot of tea and people spending enough to buy a car for a taco seem worlds apart.

These diverse threads make it hard to stick to the train of thought of what experiences people might want next related to tea, or what will become popular, and how expenses would factor in.  Seeking out traditional, quiet, feng shui designed cafes doesn’t seem likely to catch on.  Even the committed tea bloggers I read sometimes speak of setting aside the better teaware and complex brewing processes due to just getting busy, maybe taking up a grandpa style approach instead.

I drank Tazo ages ago; I have no hate for tea-bag based blends

All the while in beginner oriented tea groups I keep finding myself arguing the merits of basic, plain, inexpensive loose teas.  In one recent discussion someone asked if mixing peanut butter powder into tea might work (and it might, I guess), and I wondered if that person ever tried a Tie Kuan Yin of any quality level before, or a single example of Chinese black tea.  It turned out they were really looking for Thai iced tea (which can be nice). 

Plain, simple teas can be amazing experiences, but it’s only easy to package and sell the leaf.  It’s not as simple to bring the rest of the experience to everyone.