Wild origin teas, adopting foreign tea styles

First posted by TChing here.

These two subjects came up recently in an online social meetup with Rajiv Lochan, about teas made from "wild" origin forest-source plants, and that of producers adopting and interpreting foreign styles of tea.  Problems can occur with both themes and approaches.

The range of both of these ideas and cases is all a bit complicated.  It can be hard to map out what is occurring or might occur related to using different types of natural growth plant sources, or drawing on local tea processing styles, and draw clear lines in what is typical or acceptable and what goes too far in violating some type of norm.  We didn't get very far with that discussion, so to be clear all of this is my own framing of a complex set of ideas, that we didn't discuss in detail in that meetup.

It's well known that wild growing tea plants are common throughout the Assam area, and other areas in India, and in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.  These Assamica variety plants aren't closely related to Yunnan Assamica, or maybe even to plantation Assamica versions of Indian teas.  Due to interbreeding with other species of Camelia Sinensis the range of what is growing can be inconsistent.  The typical understanding is that these plants are remnants of past use and intended planting by earlier people, not necessarily in ancient times, but as some point in the past.  Within that context the tea plants could be seen as feral versus truly wild, untended but not completely naturally propagated.  All that could be clearer, and to some extent it doesn't really matter.  

natural growth tea plant in the north of Thailand

this shows size better

what that area looks like

One influential tea blogger has claimed that wild tea plant produced beverages are better regarded as a tisane, not as true tea.  To me that goes a little far with applying category judgment, but I get it, and there's a lot to that.  Processed version results are often inconsistent, just less so for Yunnan based versions (or those represented as such).  Two of the main versions I've tried in Thailand ended up being quite sour, and then more other versions presented as such were not atypical of Yunnan Assamica plant based sheng pu'er.  I recently tried an Indian newly-created version of sheng, which was very unusual, as close to black tea in character as sheng pu'er.  It's not "pu'er," which is a region-specific type, but then sheng means "raw," so as I see it using that term is equivalent to calling any tea black (relatively fully oxidized), just a general description.

So again, what's the problem with "wild origin tea," beyond someone preferring to keep the term and range of "tea" narrowly focused?  Inconsistency can be seen as a problem, for products to vary with changes in whatever happens to be gathered.  Some of the plants could really be Camellia Taliensis material, a version that's around in Yunnan, or Camellia Formosensis, a "wild tea" plant in Taiwan.  Or something else, or a hybrid, a mix of types.  It doesn't seem to pose a significant safety issue, that a producer might be poisoning you, but just not knowing what a product essentially is can seem unusual.  Maybe to some extent there is a health risk to be considered; I can't exclude that.

maybe "Shan" versions come up most, not the Formosensis "wild teas" listed (source)

Importing styles from one country or region to another is something else, raising a different concern.  Rajiv expressed how Indians producing something called Longjing or Matcha could be deceiving, whether or not location based designation protection deems that unacceptable or not.  I completely agree.  

This reminds me of a very early experience with tea in visiting Vietnam, trying a version of Japanese green tea there, produced with Japanese support.  I'd be a better judge now of how close the style match was, but I bought some and drank it, and it seemed fine, or maybe just a little rough edged.  At the time I thought it was great that countries and cultures could influence each other like that, to share experience and technology.  Later, after thinking it through and being exposed to more background, I realized that it was likely that the tea was destined to be sold as being from Japan, regardless of where it was finally consumed.  That's different.  The knowledge sharing and alternative product development steps still seem fine, but that last step not so much.

Can we say that Vietnam should not produce Japanese style tea?  It's not as easy to conclude that.  The toothpaste is definitely out of the tube in relation to Vietnam producing Taiwanese style oolong, a lot of which is understood to return to Taiwan to be sold as Taiwanese tea back there.  It would be all the easier for Vietnamese-Taiwanese versions to be misrepresented in other countries.  In the North of Thailand you can buy the same Thai tea packaged as either from local production, what it is, or as being from Taiwan, what it isn't.  That's a hearsay based account, to be clear, related to what has been passed on to me second hand as vendor communication.  It doesn't conflict with how other types of branded products are sold here.

Let's set that aside, and consider that if every product is sold as exactly what it is, should India produce Japanese style green tea or not?  It's hard to find a broad enough justification to say no, but there are clear reasons for seeing that as a negative thing.

What about sheng ("pu'er")?  As I see it we are onto a different kind of case, because at least based on my single related experience the resulting product from India couldn't be presented as Yunnan true pu'er, even if one wanted to do so.  It's too different.  Of course a variation of sheng made just across a border from China could be exactly the same as teas made a few kilometers away.

one year old Ketlee Indian "sheng;" it's dark

So now we are talking about hybrid styles, about one region borrowing processing steps and final tea styles from another.  Is that ok?  To me it is, but I can relate to why some "purists" wouldn't think so.  My favorite Indonesian tea producer, Toba Wangi, has moved to produce tea plant types from other places, made by drawing on foreign processing styles, as novel new tea types.  I think that's fine, but maybe not everyone else would.  It could depend on how the tea plants were obtained, and of course on branding / marketing claims.

early Toba Wangi plantation plantings; definitely monoculture

Nepal tea being sold as Darjeeling is something else altogether; now we are back to a sort of counterfeiting case.  What about a Nepal tea being based on a Darjeeling clone, borrowing as much as possible from Darjeeling processing, grown in conditions chosen to duplicate results, but still sold as Nepal tea?  That seems less clear, and not as clearly ok.  And that seems much closer to what Vietnam is doing with Taiwanese oolong, since all of those steps and factors match in that case.  Even Taiwanese people are brought there to process the tea, per my understanding. As Chinese people are now, and have long since been, training people in Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar to make pu'er-like tea.  

locally produced "wild" Thai "sheng pu'er-like" tea

Vietnam is different related to this case; the tradition of making what they tend to call "sun-dried tea" is not new to them (or maybe really just translated to dried tea, per what I've been told).  Those teas have long since been bought and brought back to China to be blended into Yiwu pu'er versions.  Mind you Vietnam makes a broad range of local styles that don't exist anywhere else too; their tea tradition is very diverse and developed.  Some of it is rustic and rough-edged, and some refined, distinctive, novel, and very high in quality.  Vietnamese teas don't get the credit they deserve, but the more awareness and demand spreads the more pricing inflates, so it's probably not a completely bad thing.

It's hard to end either subject with a clear "in conclusion..." summary.  Varying experiences bring up different combinations of circumstances and final outcomes.  I'm probably a lot more open to producers using different kinds of tea materials and processing styles than some others would be.  I see it as a natural evolution.  The sustainability issue related to using currently growing, forest based plants isn't lost on me; one main (frequent) alternative is for producers to clear-cut forest sections for mono-culture tea production.  That's not better.  Then right up to the edge of tea version counterfeiting I'm fine with producers borrowing styles.

Borrowing tea type names is almost a different subject.  Should Thailand producers be able to call teas Oriental Beauty?  If a type based on Yunnan sheng pu'er is made elsewhere, which is common, and pre-dated the current borders of China and the conventional name "pu'er," per my understanding, what should that be called?  Opinions would vary.  The point here was to raise these issues for consideration, for limited discussion, more than proposing my own take on resolutions or limitations tied to any of these themes.

Thai Oriental Beauty, or at least it's based partly on that type and style

Jin Xuan Taiwanese oolong from May Zest tea, and more about cultivars

One thing I haven't had much luck with is writing a simple review; just saying how a tea struck me and moving on.  I tend to get stuck on research tangents, a tea reminding me of something to look into, like the last post related to cultivar types from Taiwan.  But I'll try to do that for this post; keep it simple.

Seems odd to be reviewing a Jin Xuan oolong (this one provided by May Zest tea; my thanks to them for that) given that I just went on in the last post about how I'm burned out on lightly oxidized oolongs, due to trying too many of them this year, sorting out Thai tea sources.

This was a nice tea though, for what it is, and at least it should be easy to compare it to lots of other examples.  I might add first that this tea type (plant type, and processing type) is relatively consistent, with less range than for some between an ordinary example of the tea and a really good one, and it's more rare to run across a "bad version," although I definitely have before.

looks like a lightly oxidized rolled oolong

Review section:

Nice, creamy, soft, and a bit floral.  "Creamy" is the distinctive characteristic for this tea type, and it's prevalent in this one.  People actually say "milky," and the effect is sort of like that, a feel or even taste like milk.  One hears of artificially flavored versions that bring that out even more through additives but I'm fairly certain such things are rare here (meaning where I live now; South East Asia), maybe because it's already present in the tea, not necessary.  Or maybe just because they run behind in how to doctor up teas.  The taste is very clean and natural, consistent across infusions, with the normal range of variation through them; it seems quite unlikely it was adjusted in any way.

The tea has an unusually prevalent sweet-corn flavor element, along with the typical floral components (which I'm not good at separating out, as I'm mentioned, not up on memorizing those to describe them separately).  In later infusions a stronger mineral undertone comes out and that bright sweetness diminishes a little, and the tea drifts from sweet and floral towards a light wood aspect, but the tea is still consistent, and pleasant.


For people really into Jin Xuan it's a good example of the type.  Better than Thai versions?  Maybe, a little, in general, but sort of the same at the same time.  Terroir and processing changes teas but Jin Xuan is pretty consistent as tea types go, or at least decent versions tend to be.


That sweet corn element reminded me of a comment by a tea-friend that better Tie Kuan Yin she'd tried was really floral and sweet, and more mid-range versions tasted more like sweet corn.  I was wondering if maybe that's because they were really Jin Xuan, but of course I'm not trying to imply they were, just mentioning that as a possibility.  Seems more likely than this really being Tie Kuan Yin somehow, but different examples of the same types do vary.


So this is really where tea reviews tend to go; I've described a tea, no rambling on about some background research.  It seems a little sparse.  Why even bother to have read this, since a lot of other teas taste a good bit like this (although again it is a pretty decent version).


Maybe this type isn't so common if you don't live in a country that grows and produces it.  If this were someone's favorite tea it could be very interesting, and if someone loves oolongs and somehow never tried a Jin Xuan from Taiwan--odd as that would seem--they really probably ought to.  This vendor sells other tea types so it would be possible to try something from them that is a bit less conventional, at least typical from my perspective since they mostly grow Jin Xuan in Thailand, and perhaps nice to try this one as well.


Here is the vendor's take on it; nothing I'd disagree with:


Jin Xuan Tea was put forward to market by Taiwan Tea Experiment Station in 1981. The file no.of successfully bred seed is 12 (experimental code no. 2027). Its flavor has a kind of milk fragrance. Through baking, its flavor turns into fragrance of cane sugar or candy. These are all natural fragrances without artificial spice. The leaf size of Ginshan Tea is wider and bigger than that of Oolong Tea, and its edge has the form of zigzag.


The main leaf vein almost forms straight angle against branch leaf veins. The upper height limit for growing Ginshan Tea is 1600 meter above the sea. As its resistance to cold is weaker than that of Oolong Tea, this height is the altitude limit.  As for quality, the output from over 1200 meter is excellent in both flavor and tasting. 

leaves, as they described

Cultivar research section:

Right, this is the part I wasn't going to include.  Two different people gave a lot of great input related to that last post, Thomas Smith, who I'd mentioned, and the Tea Side company owner.  One part of that is a better reference chart of cultivars and tea types from Taiwan, which I'll add here.


The terms get a bit slippery, seemingly used in different ways in different places, but the basic plant types seems to be one thing, derived through prior ordinary plant cross-breeding practices, then later hybrids seem to be referred to as cultivars.  This reference just calls types "germplasms," which works for me.

Perfect!  Jin Xuan is #12 on that list; no controversy over that.  But what about other plant types that aren't those hybrids?  Here you go:

So there it is!  There are a few details to tie together yet, and it doesn't resolve all the cases of multiple names, but this is a lot more to go on than I've seen before.  I wrote a post once about traditional Thai flavored tea, and semi-wild versions of tea plants.  There has been plenty of debate over that in different places, but since tea has been cultivated for about six millenia the "wild" plants are simply not well tended now, not exactly wild in the sense of not previously tended by people, per a conventional take.  The overlap with research in that blog post isn't clear but there are lots of types those might relate to listed here.  It could relate to those listed as "Shan" tea types, but that would just be a guess.


On to those loose ends then; more about the rest that appears in this table.  This is a reminder about the name of that agency changing, from the last post:


Before 2003 it was called TTES (Taiwan Tea Research Station). 
Since 2003 it's TRES (Tea Research and Extension Station).


On those species / varieties mentioned, the abbreviations in that column:


S:     C. sinensis  var. sinensis, 
A:    C. sinensis var. assamica
SA:  C. sinensis var. sinensis × var. assamica hybrid
AS:  C. sinensis var. assamica × var. assamica hybrid 

F:     C. formosensis
FY:  C. formosensis var. yungkangensis


Wow, right.  That last part is about a different species of the camellia genus--if I'm using those terms right--so not really a tea plant, but related to it.


Oddly enough I just read the same general idea in a Steep Stories blog post on the exact same day, yesterday.  In that case it was about  Lao Shu Dian Hong, a species Camellia taliensis plant used to make something similar to black tea.  So I guess that would be another version of a related-plant oxidized-leaf "tisane."


One column had initials for countries too:  TW - Taiwan, IN - India, CN - China, TH - Thailand, MM - Myanmar.


And then some recommended types:  G green tea, P Paochong tea, O oolong tea, B black tea.


Fascinating stuff, at least to me.  I'll have to get back to what the "Paochong" reference relates to later.