10 years of tea culture changes, and writing about tea

November 2013; the month this blog started, and the most excited I've ever seen him

we met Kalani that day

10 years ago I started this tea blog, or just over that at time of this initial draft.  This whole post could be self-oriented and introspective, about why I did, and my experiences along the way.  It seems more interesting to skip most of that and talk about how Western tea culture changed over that decade.  I could say a little about my own experiences and perspective, but a little of that goes a long way.  

I've been living in Thailand for almost all of the past 15 years, so maybe I'm not the most qualified person to speak for Western culture.  Still I will explore that context here, comparing and contrasting global online perspective and that in the US, Europe, and wherever else.

The first point is more about me than tea culture, about moving towards the further side of an experience curve, and the rest is more general, about those broad changes.

the far side of a learning curve:  it was interesting considering the main classic tea blogger, Marshal N, of Tea Addict's Journal, either stating that he had learned most of what there is to know about tea or that he had covered enough, back when he ramped down blog posting some years back.  I think he literally stated something closer the first point but I took it to mean the second, that it was enough of a more active exploration and sharing phase.  

I couldn't relate then; it seemed like there was too much for any one person to cover half of it all, so you might tap out whenever you like, but it would never amount to experiencing as much as there is left to get to.  Now it makes more sense.  If you were to break down learning and experiential exposure into basics, intermediate range, and more advanced or esoteric scope it wouldn't be difficult to clear through basics relatively quickly (main categories, how to brew tea different ways, basic sourcing, etc.).  Intermediate range exposure would take a long time to sort through, pushing that on to trying most main types, dabbling in range outside Chinese teas, digging deeper into brewing and gear use, being able to identify quality of different versions, encountering the first dozen or two tangents (storage issues, common flaws in tea, basic processing, social trend themes, etc.).  Online discussion would help with that.

It would never be clear when you had moved past these broad category thresholds, which are vague and indeterminate, but at some point you'd be on to range most tea enthusiasts typically don't experience, or even knowledge and awareness most vendors don't possess, potentially broader in range than tea producers encounter.  Then eventually exploration would get old.  Writing and discussion could become tiresome, and even though you would never clear through all the sub-types and location origins, or quality levels, variations, exceptions, etc.  Trying the first couple hundred examples of these types could seem like enough, or the first few thousand examples of tea versions.  A main favorite type might change a few times, and you might settle into a bottomless main preference version (eg. sheng pu'er), and not stop experiencing that tea range, ever, but discussion and writing could still get really tiresome, not just not fresh but also not worth the effort.

I suppose I'm essentially there now, and have been, but I still write anyway.  I don't want this post to be about that, though, so let's move on to the rest.

main changes in Western tea culture in a decade:  some rotating set of people will always be exploring loose tea for the first time, and some others pushing on to the far end of an exposure curve, but the generalities in typical patterns of interest can still shift.  Text blogging is more or less dead, as an example.  It hasn't been replaced by one main thing, as one might've expected, but that interest coverage has been taken up by Youtube video options, Instagram participation, tea app use, Discord discussion, and so on.  Facebook groups more or less came and went as the main discussion form, also not replaced by just one thing.  

Tea preference trends have came and went; sub-types or origin areas became popular, or at least "hot," like Indonesian, Nepalese, or Georgian tea.  With so much reference content and discussion de-centralized now there would never be as pronounced main forms of themes like that again, one novel type being popular at one time.

Good specialty tea interest never really took off and became mainstream; that was strange.  People tended to revisit that theme every couple of years, that tea was finally having its moment, but it seemed to never.  Incremental increase in awareness, demand, and sales only kept progressing.

What really changed though, related to the tea itself?  Trends in styles evolved.  Tie Guan Yin had evolved to be very lightly oxidized and not roasted even well prior to a decade ago, and patterns like that kept occurring, shifts in preparation styles related to what was demanded.  Whole-leaf Darjeeling has been evolving over the last half dozen years, but it's still not common or mainstream (per my understanding, at least).  Classic Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese teas aren't evolving much; they were fine as they were.  Maybe different cultivars are used to make Wuyi Yancha over time, or lower oolong oxidation and roast levels can become trendy, but to some extent basic style range doesn't change.  For new origin areas the opposite is true; the range of what Indonesian, Nepalese, and Georgian tea all are changed, quite a bit.

Sheng pu'er evolved a good bit but it's probably as well to set that aside, to avoid the risk of a 1000 word tangent on those trends.  I think better versions of the entire range of what exists are probably far more accessible now, with market pressure making a medium quality range fairly accessible across lots of types, driving up pricing level to where expensive versions were before, or beyond that, going back 20 years.  Higher end demand didn't push pricing as far as one might've expected; you can find plenty of tea selling for $1 a gram or over but the high end stays leveled off there, with lots of pretty decent tea selling for 50 cents to 80 cents per gram.  Then of course plenty of exceptions keep going beyond that.  It's tempting to guess how that parallels or contradicts trends and pricing levels in China but it seems as well to leave that out of scope too.

direct sales / producer outlets / small local vendor sales:  it seemed like this would evolve, and to some extent it has, but not as much as one might've expected.  The same is true for vending platform outlets designed to facilitate this, something like Tealet was set up to be originally.  Some more-direct vendor sales might be based on Ebay or Amazon, but variations of vendor forms that existed a decade ago are still the main sales channels, even if there are more alternatives now.  

If tea awareness and demand really had taken off there probably would have been enough volume to support new channel evolution.  Plenty of exceptions exist, producer vending pages, FB pages set up for sales, varying forms of monthly tea clubs, etc., but Yunnan Sourcing is still the main outlet, and smaller specialized vendors like Seven Cups or Essence of Tea are still around, seemingly doing well.  Locally oriented sales outlets like Farmerleaf and Hatvala seemed to evolve to be more common around a decade ago, and some are more developed and mainstream now.  

Tea shops changed, related to Teavana expanding and collapsing, but it's probably as well to set aside that too, as drifting out of the range of discussing tea culture.  I do see sales channel forms as an important part of tea culture, as cafe availability is, but it's enough to focus on perspective and home personal consumption scope.

Western tea culture forms:  a decade ago there was an emphasis on pragmatic and narrow forms engagement with tea experience and exploration, per my understanding, and for the most part that's still the case.  For many people interest expanded to limited Gong Fu Cha gear, process, and aesthetic forms but for many more it stayed focused on the drink itself, perhaps including aesthetic and gear collecting dimensions but not being mainly about that.  

Global Tea Hut was the exception earlier on, combining tea appreciation, religion, and religiously oriented practice, gear use, and aesthetics.  Other comparable presentations and organizations never evolved much.  Some individuals take this up, or Moychay is an example of a somewhat national tea culture (based in Russia) folding in some related aspects, but tea and Taoism or Buddhism never linked further.  Tea masters promoting traditional, lineage-based exposure forms never really caught on, outside of limited application in China and Taiwan.  Per a conflicting interpretation a lot of Western context training is equivalent to that, and it could be difficult to judge degree of uptake, of any practice or perspective.  Lots of people hold training certificates now.

In a way that's strange, isn't it, that far less changed than stayed the same in a decade?  When I look back at the other interests I pursue they're far different now, from how they were that far back.  As an example running has completely changed in the last decade, altered by the uptake of performance tracking devices, improved shoe technology, and a range of other training approach evolution and options of things to buy.  The races haven't changed so much, how far people run, or what occurs during one, but there was hardly any learning curve to experience a decade ago, in comparison, about training forms, what data to monitor and review, supplement use, and so on.  

Oddly the evolution doesn't push on to make all of the most natural themes more mature, for example with electrolyte supplementation still seemingly in its infancy, with more focus on what is natural to sell, the shoes, clothing, and electronics.  Discussing training practice generates Youtube reference revenue, so that's common, and shoe reviews.  I suppose it makes sense that there is no parallel in the world of tea, that gaiwan use basics videos draw views but not enough for lots of channels to earn revenue from posting them.

future direction:  why would more things change than already have, or that transition pace increase?  Tea awareness and demand may or may not ever "take off," and if not there should only be gradual transitions in what is popular, or the range of types available.  

It's odd that I've made it this far without mentioning flavored blends, or teas mixed with tisanes; that definitely already happened.  If demand increases quickly everything already available would expand.  There would be more Thai teas to buy, and better quality versions of them, related to a sub-theme I've been focused on for awhile.  Or with gradual uptake increase that would shift very slowly, as it has been.

I've also not mentioned tea podcasts or online meetup forms; those happened.  With tea being so experiential online or social media exposure forms may never really expand much, beyond where we are now.  An app can only help you so much with a tea drinking experience, and over and over they develop those to add novel functions and then just try to sell you tea there.  Steepster was really functional, a place to write and share notes about what you experience of tea versions, and discuss ideas in forum style threads, but it came and went in the last decade (it's still up, but quiet now).

Couldn't an AI tea master eventually stand in to provide engaged instruction and discussion?  Sure.  Maybe that will happen in the next five years, given the pace things change related to all that.  It's hard to imagine that being a good thing.

Some of those really esoteric tangents have been interesting, but I don't think any will seem more important later on.  The learning curve related to brewing water mineral input has shifted a lot over the last few years; that will continue.  Focused training related to identifying scents has been developed; I see Facebook posts about that from time to time.  Use of testing to identify tea components, quality level, origin area, and possible contaminants has been initiated; for sure that will progress.  But none of all that will change ordinary tea experience or perspectives on tea, I don't think.

my future direction with tea:  the automatic first thought:  why not monetize what I've learned?  It is a natural path for tea bloggers to move on to write books, to do consulting, or try to sell other services related to tea.  It's odd how few become vendors.  I've either edited or have been part of a pre-release review process for three books about tea, and for the second it seemed like I had written most of the same ideas about all of the same topics, and liked how I presented them better.  My ideas and writing wasn't better, of course, it's that my own writing choices seemed to represent the most natural way to express the ideas, to me.

I've earned very little related to doing some writing, consulting, holding an event, and tea related tour guiding, maybe on the order of $1000 over a decade.  Even at ten times that income rate, $1000 in one year, it wouldn't change anything; at 100 times it would be a start.  Writing a book is practical, and selling tea is definitely an option, but ramping up some sort of tea services isn't as promising.  Tea related conventional employment maybe even less so; it seems highly unlikely.

Moving on to write less in this blog seems likely; I like to write, and to share ideas, but half the posts every year are all but identical to older versions.  I've just reviewed three sheng versions from Thailand and Vietnam that I also reviewed last year's versions of, which weren't all that different.  That pattern had been coming up related to Wuyi Yancha and Darjeeling versions for some years.  Writing 20 posts a year instead of 80 might make sense, more on perspective themes, and less reviews.  If a vendor offers to send standard tea versions I could still review those but that definitely repeats; those kinds of write-ups could be the 10th post that's all but the same as earlier ones, just swapping out a few aspect terms.

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with me arranging a meetup series with a couple of dozen tea experts or interesting related participants in 2021, part of a late covid "getting out" social contact replacement.  I could continue on with some similar initiative.  Or maybe it would be interesting to move the whole blog theme to video, and add messing around with editing, technical details, and video form performance (and buying electronics; not a positive aspect).  I live in Bangkok and Honolulu at different times of the year; we're definitely in interesting places for background.  I probably will do that, but then I've been thinking that for years.

I don't really see myself as a tea expert, even though few ideas in discussions, or in books or other references, tend to be unfamiliar, for some years now.  I can't place the scope of the range I haven't yet experienced in comparison with what I have; it just doesn't work that way.  Very few people have had broader tea experience, but some definitely have.  Not completely unrelated, to me relatively extreme humility tends to pair well with tea learning and experience, people remaining an active student of the subject even when it's their time to share ideas and guidance to others.  

That's what I've been trying to do, to share ideas as a fellow tea enthusiast.  There's a normal lifecycle of that usually changing forms, and I've been feeling I'm at this place myself now, for a couple of years.  

One last point:  I've received very little feedback about what I've written over ten years, which was kind of an initial main point, but I still appreciate people reading what I've written.  The stats say that hundreds of thousands of people have read the posts, or tens of thousands have read a significant number (or people and bots did).  

It's nice when people comment that a post means something to them, and even negative feedback is helpful.  It can sting a little but people being critical essentially always have good points to add, about different gaps or ways to interpret what I've expressed.  Thanks for reading!

early blog photo, seemingly taken on a Nokia phone.  it's gaba oolong, which I still find strange.

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.

Vendor promotion through social media channel creation

 

First published in TChing here.

I've mentioned a very successful pioneering case of social media channel creation before, the Yunnan Sourcing Fans Facebook group.  This post is focused on that kind of thing, versus a vendor creating good information content that can support sales in a recent post.  Of course any given vendor can do both; Farmerleaf is a good example of that, with only the content creation really clearly successful so far.

the feel of those groups is familiar, but the functional structure is a bit limited

The prompt for talking about this is being invited to a Farmerleaf Discord server (group), and hearing a nice audio interview there with a friend, Anna of Kinnari Tea, about development issues in Laos.  There are other vendor-specific tea-related groups there.  I don't buy enough Farmerleaf tea to talk about them in a group, or enough of any one vendor's tea (except maybe Moychay; they send me more than average for review).  I suppose that's one drawback, that a premise for participation is based on consuming a lot of one vendor's products.  Some people do that, or maybe even only buy tea from one source.

What other channel forms are out there?  Vendors using open form social discussion themed channels for promotion tends to be heavily restricted and moderated, for obvious reasons.  In the Facebook group I run, International Tea Talk, mostly populated by vendors, content about products is allowed but not explicit sales information.  For whatever reasons it's hard for vendors to adjust to talking about their products without moving on to sales range (mentioning a special, emphasizing contact information, utilizing marketing content that looks like obvious marketing content--ads).  Discussing background in other types of social media settings is an option, it would just require carefully working around restrictions.  Adagio created and hosted Tea Chat, really the former main old-style tea forum, but activity dropped off when they tried to play a more direct role in leveraging that for marketing.  Way off; one part of that upset some of the forum members so much that they created a spin-off forum, Tea Forum.

But what else, like Discord, or that Facebook group?  A Facebook page can work for a contact point, or providing information, but it wouldn't provide the same function.  Crimson Lotus has been developing a cool variation on these themes, doing a podcast series on Youtube.  They're a pu'er vendor (mainly), so it might be a conflict to have another similar pu'er vendor as a guest (eg. the Bitterleaf or Yunnan Sourcing guys), but even that might still work.  It's not as if their customers don't know about source options.  One episode had the Liquid Proust vendor Andrew Richardson on; he sells pu'er, but the business theme is a little different.  Making a podcast work can be hit and miss, but it would work to have really interesting people on, and do a good job of asking the questions people would want to hear answers to, just the basics.  It's quite indirect as marketing goes, and not so interactive, but live streaming versus posting edited video can give it a little more of that feel.

What else?  Due to covid lots of forms of online seminars and conferences are turning up; participating as a speaker could work.  This really assumes that the vendor has something to say beyond "I sell such and such tea."  Not all vendors are further through a learning and experience curve than an average social media group participant.  Someone having been to a tea production area in China--or anywhere--only one time could be used for all its worth; it would be enough.  Elyse of Tealet seems to do both seminar style events and informal streaming group talks, all really seeming more social than business-networking oriented.

I recently participated in a small Malaysian vendor holding an online meetup session to discuss this issue, hosted by Bigfuller Foong (his profile name), what would work for marketing or sales approach in the new business and social climate.  We didn't get so far.  Related to his own tea business he was expanding tea types, embracing a new Japanese tea interest there, and exploring cold brewing, so sharing that online could indirectly lead to sales.  The point related to this theme is that even without a group or channel base online video meetups could fulfill a similar function, with people networking to set up contacts to join those in any way that works.  He was doing more conventional tea enthusiast meetups too, not just talking among vendors and tea professionals.

Rather than arriving at approaches, in that discussion, we ended up discussing the context, how tea perspectives and very local cultures vary.  It makes a huge difference where you are and what you are trying to sell.  That Malaysian vendor was trying to move beyond the most conventional and in-demand Chinese teas that are popular there.  Another prospective vendor in Sydney, Australia was considering how to initiate and develop a Gongfu practice sub-culture there similar to what she had experienced in Austin, Texas.  It could work, it would just take some doing.  A one to one mapping of interest form and perspective might not work, actually, but with the right approach a similar theme and practices might be adapted.

One theme that often comes up:  it's a real challenge to try to replicate the effect of in-person tastings online.  Of course related to the main end-point you just can't, handing over someone tea to try.  You can mail it, but that still skips the brewing part.  A novel initiative combining training and online group tasting themes sold tasting sets and allowed participants to try a variety of Japanese teas together, a set they sold prior to the meetings, along with content presentation and discussion (the Tea Creative Japanese Tea Marathon).  That's different.

these online meetups used to be more about sharing tasting experience

No matter what the approach is it seems critical to identify a point of connection.  Going after existing customers who already have the existing product interest could be a challenge, given some sources have already taken steps to solidify a relationship with their customer base.  There would have to be an angle, something new to offer.  Regardless of channel format or approach if a vendor is sharing their own passion for a tea type that could help, some of it would come across.  

To my limited awareness--which must be missing more than I've caught word of--Yunnan Sourcing is the only success case in setting up a really active channel, on par with a main social media group for activity level, that ties back to developing sales so far.  Many others have had some success but aren't quite there yet (excluding podcast and seminar cases, many of which may have been successful, and I wouldn't know for not really following any).  A number of Discord channels could change that in short order, with those already in existence now.

To switch over to fortune-telling mode it seems likely that vendors who can provide the best source-neutral content and develop a shared-interest community theme will be most successful.  In one sense that's the opposite of the Yunnan Sourcing case; you can't even mention another vendor in that FB fan group.  To cite a possible example, once pandemic impact settles a bit doing local events could link together online connections and a meeting in real life theme, which would be helpful for an experiential subject like tea.  Now only vendor-neutral groups fill this kind of space, as far as I'm aware, usually local area themed.  A vendor being open to broadening discussion restrictions in running such a group could work, or just shifting what YS is doing to include real-life contact scope might, keeping that scope restriction.  That's back to the theme that most successful vendor I mentioned uses, Moychay using shop based tastings and events as a very successful tool to promote awareness, just using social media contact as a catalyst.

a Chinese IT vendor hosted a tea ceremony that helped me get started into tea

I'm guessing this, that a vendor hosted but vendor-neutral approach might work in the long run, because few other sources will be able to match the single-source loyalty of Yunnan Sourcing.  Related pu'er-themed vendors might, outlets like Crimson Lotus or Liquid Proust, or maybe even Bitterleaf, but somehow this group contact function doesn't seem to match with the White 2 Tea theme, to me.  

It's nice how this sort of function can seem to work out based entirely online (maybe in part now since so many people are stuck in isolation).  The main Discord tea community, Communitea, successfully shifts old forum style and FB / Reddit post comment discussion connection to a number of chat channels instead, covering some of the scope that had occurred in real life or through private messages.  It's promising.  All sorts of meetup circles seem to be initiating from lots of different starting points.

That Farmerleaf Discord server / group may mix vendor promotion and community / awareness themes, or it might not take, and limited early activity isn't a clear indication either way.  It's interesting how that location and form invokes gaming and tech interest, just related to being there, and to some extent excludes more people than it includes (like Reddit group sub-culture patterns, which can be rough).  Then it's odd thinking through how other permutations might work, how other social media channel biases might combine or prevent combination with a tea shared interest theme.  Communicator app versions, like Slack or Snapchat groups, might have as much potential as other forms, and for sure those forms will keep evolving.

Writing about tea culture in 17 countries

 

It's a strange idea, writing an index post about other posts.  I'm the admin for the International Tea Talk group and seeing people join from countries I've written about has me considering telling them about such local-specific posts, but I almost never do.  It's hard enough keeping up with moderation tasks, filtering out ads and such.

But why not?  I'll keep this simple, and include a link to the main posts I take to be about tea culture or themes in a different area.  Related to a country like China I've written countless posts, but not really about tea culture there in particular.  Oddly that's something of a blind spot for me, even though some of my closest friends here in Bangkok have been from China, and some work contacts.  We've visited China a few times (twice for vacation, and once for business, and Hong Kong a few more times, and Taiwan, if you count that), but you only see shops on visits (if you don't visit producers), versus interacting with locals about tea culture.  

Here are those post links.

Making tea in Wuyishan; sharing pictures and video from Cindy Chen:  not exactly about local tea culture, except related to tea production as a part of that.  By tea culture I usually mean tea history, preference for types, locally produced styles, or related to enthusiast groups and ceremonial practices and such.  I last visited China two years ago, and wrote about that visit and going to a tea market there in this post:  Tea shopping in a market in Shenzhen, China, with this trip summary on what the rest of the visit was like.

my favorite picture of Cindy

Russian Tea Culture:  that sentence about typical themes covering history and interest groups and such works as a summary of this post.  We visited Russia on vacation three years ago and that started an ongoing interest in Russian tea culture, and just related to the country.  It's a fantastic place to visit, discussed in more detail here:  Travel in Russia, to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Murmansk

a very nice guy who helped me translate in this Moscow shop

Indonesian grower profile with Galung Atri; on Indonesian teas:  this is mostly focused on production over consumption themes, with some perspective on tea history mixed in.  Indonesia is amazing to visit too.  I might say that over and over in talking about different places.  Russia, China, and Indonesia were all personal favorites, but lots of other places were really cool.  Here's more on the visit details:  Tea in Indonesia; one vacation's worth of experiences

we visited a tea plantation in Java but two volcanoes really stole the show there

Wonosari plantation in Eastern Java

Searching for tea in Seoul:  ok, Seoul is amazing to visit, and I'm going to stop saying that.  Tea themes didn't get so far compared to in other places but I least I found and tried some.  I tend to focus on themes like seeing amusement parks and cultural heritage sites on my family vacations, which is appropriate enough.  An old-style spice market there was absolutely amazing but I didn't buy much.

Travel and tea in Japan, versus Korea:  this is really more about travel in Japan than tea in Japan; I didn't get far with the tea themes there.  Again that tied to doing more sightseeing than related cultural investigation.

Tea culture in Poland,  Tea culture in Poland (2), informed by a local tea blogger:  this was a bit random, reviewing tea in a place I had no connection to, experimenting with that theme.  I've never been to Poland.  It was nice that a local tea blogger saw the post and offered a lot of input as an addition, which worked for a nice second post.  I tend to see more about tea culture in places like Latvia and Georgia online; I should follow up about those countries sometime too.

Tea culture in Sweden:  kind of a similar theme, looking into local tea culture in a somewhat random place based on talking to someone living in Sweden (originally from Spain, for what that's worth).  It's interesting how the progression of uptake of awareness and preference works out in different places, typically following a similar pattern, but with some local variations.

Tea shopping in New York City:  even a short visit can work well for a post, just checking in with a few local shops, and passing on what got missed in reviewing leads and later suggestions.  We stayed in Chinatown on this visit, which made for a good starting point.  One of the most promising shops I only heard about later, but I adjusted the post content to mention it.

frantically stomping around NYC in a snowstorm looking for tea was really cool

Searching for tea in Taipei, Taiwan:  kind of similar to the last post mentioned; this is mostly about looking around over one day there.  I found two fantastic shops there (Lin Mao Sen and Lin Hua Tai), so the part about hunting for teas went well as a result.

About Thai teas and tea in Thailand:  I live in Thailand; strange I let this go this far down the list.  A search for Bangkok Chinatown in that blog would turn up more than a dozen posts about meeting people there; I visit a favorite shop there all the time.  I'm not that well integrated into a local tea culture here but of course some of that is around. I wrote about Tea as the hottest latest trend in Bangkok back in 2017 but that was more about bubble tea and matcha catching on.

Vietnamese teas! Green and Black!,  Huyen's family's trials in making Vietnamese teas:  it's strange how my awareness and context shifted so much between this 2014 and 2020 post.  I was so happy to find two basic types of tea on a trip to Hanoi way back when, and then really obscure or novel versions seemed more familiar in the latter post.

my friend Huyen, in one of my favorite tea party photos

Narendra Kumar Gurung on developing local tea production in Nepal:  this is the first Asian country on this list I've never visited (although I hadn't been to Poland or Sweden either).  This is more on production themes, co-op initiatives, local preferences, and transitions in their tea industry than on local tea culture in terms of interest groups and such.

Tea in Kazakhstan:  the first random pick-a-country themed post, reviewing tea culture in a place I'd never been, or had never heard much about.

Assam Teahaus orthodox black tea review:  this review post included a section that's a grower and producer profile based on input from Maddhurjya Gogoi, a contact I consider a friend.  Those issues came up in relation to Assam in a lot of posts, but no single article covered that theme explicitly.  I think one will pretty soon, related to Jaba Borgohain passing on more on that theme.  This post on Trying Assam falap, a variation of bamboo sheng covered some on a local type, and a few others talked about co-op initiatives and more direct sourcing ventures, and changes related to orthodox tea production.  I've written a lot about Darjeeling too, just not background posts, on status there beyond reviewing individual teas.

Kinnari Tea sheng comparison (Nyot Ou district in Phongsaly, Laos):  this covers some development issues related to Northern Laos tea production, about NGO activities and expanding use of feral / native local "wild" tea plants.  It's odd that Laos appears so far down this list, since it has long been one of my favorite sources for interesting and pleasant teas.  Anna of Kinnari is also one of my absolute favorite tea contacts.  Laos tea contact helped get me into tea; about 10 years ago I visited a Laos farm and bought fresh coffee and tea there, before starting this blog.

a wild part of Laos (photo credit and thanks to CCL)

mixing national themes, a Laos Tea tasting in a Moscow bookstore

visiting a Laos / Bolaven plateau tea farm with baby Keo, in 2011

Mission Impossible: reviewing teas from North Korea:  this isn't about local tea culture in terms of interest groups, but it does cross over from production considerations into discussing how national isolation led to it being very challenging to obtain this tea.  The same Chinese guide who brought Dennis Rodman there picked it up for me, so it probably really is from North Korea, but you just never know for sure.

That's probably plenty to mention, and most of the interesting places we've made it to.  I've been to Hong Kong a few times (3, and passing through once?), but didn't focus enough on tea there for it to warrant a post about cool shops or unique tea experiences.  The first two visits were a long time ago, before my tea interest ramped up, and the third was part of that trip to Shenzhen that I did mention, and we were in mainland China for longer that time.  

We've visited other places in South-East Asia, and limited tea themes have came up, but nothing on the same order of these other ventures I just covered.  Singapore's Chinatown is definitely unique but we cycled through a number of Singapore visits before I was as into tea too, in the first half of my 13 year stay here in Thailand.  The same is true for one short trip to Malaysia, and I actually found tea from Cambodia in a trip there but it wasn't much to get excited about, low-grade stuff.  It's nice that I was doing direct comparison posts that made no sense that early on, six years ago.  I still do that.

Thanks for reading along with me, and related discussion, or the positive comments, if any apply.  If you've made it this far at least the first scope did.  If you've got an interesting story you would like to talk about, or see covered here, look me up, probably best at this blog related FB page.  Even if it's not about tea I'm not that touchy about random contacts, and definitely not overwhelmed by the demands of fame just yet.

Shenzhen tea market witch's broom style Da Hong Pao

sheng bundle top, Da Hong Pao lower two

includes a few sticks, otherwise looks fine

We visited Hong Kong and China something like 6 weeks ago (a trip summarized in this post), and I've only reviewed a couple of the lower cost sheng picked up from there so far (here).  I've made notes on a couple other sheng tastings I've not posted yet but it seemed about time to mix it up and write about something else, since I've been relentlessly posting about that tea type for a long time.


This is definitely something different; what I expect to be moderate quality Da Hong Pao (Wuyi Yancha, rock oolong), presented as a bundle instead of loose, twisted leaves.  There was a bundle of sheng pu'er we bought at the same shop; eventually I might mention that here, although maybe I won't too.  It would probably be more going on about the scope moderate quality sheng can cover, as in the only bundled sheng review I've written, about a local version from Vietnam, which they call trà chít or trà bó.

anyone know what I bought?  a 2005 sheng version?

Review

The flavor is ok, nice. It gives up the subtlety some versions possess for mostly covering that one characteristic sweet caramel or toffee range some versions express. Beyond that there's the typical warm leather earthiness. It's not "good Da Hong Pao" in the same sense unusually high quality or well balanced versions are, like this one would be, but this is the characteristic simple profile that gets people hooked on exploring the type. It would almost be a shame to lose appreciation for it due to discovering other range, what better versions are like.

For going with a lower proportion (and not brewing sheng) this will work better at a longer infusion time. The initial round I brewed for over 20 seconds but I'll go a bit short of a minute on the second round, in order to try it in a different form.

Second infusion

Cardboard picked up a little; that doesn't help. I'm still not ready to say that I don't like this. I've been off of mediocre quality Da Hong Pao for so long, or even the better versions range, that it's a nice break. There's still plenty of toffee sweetness and rich leather flavor, so it works, still pleasant. It's simple and basic in effect but that can be a good thing. The feel isn't thin, just not particularly structured, and the aftertaste isn't extended but also not non-existent. It's better than I would have guessed it would be.

The bundled presentation is just a novelty, and not one that adds more function than it eliminates by making you tease apart a bundle to brew part of it. It could work like a tea bag, to brew the whole thing, but that's a good bit for a single serving. Throwing it in a ceramic teapot for a few people to drink a few rounds from would work.  These would be cool for gifts just because it's not how people usually see tea presented, and it's a very reasonable quality version, which I wasn't able to judge with any confidence by sniffing the dry bin of tea.

Third infusion

Still nice, but already fading a little. The next round brewed significantly longer might do it. It's funny how this tea could be so many different things for different people with varying prior exposure. For someone new to Wuyi Yancha it could be great, a positive start of a new chapter. Unless their natural preference didn't go that way, then it would probably just seem like a strange tea. Someone further down the path still might like it, or look down on it for being too basic a version. For a breakfast tea this sort of aspect range and quality level is perfect; something you don't need to brew carefully to get exactly right, but still pleasant enough to compliment lots of foods well.

I really like it; to me it's the tea equivalent of comfort food. It's like a steak lover eating meatloaf and mashed potatoes; it's not that other thing but still pleasant in its own way.  Eat enough meatloaf and you'd want to set it aside, but take a few years off and a good version is an experience of nostalgia beyond taste and the rest.  And sometimes you'd feel like having meatloaf instead of steak.


It makes me wonder why some of these versions can be this sweet, since that really stood out, especially in the first round. Without any trace of char or roast effect that input of roasting the tea to ramp up cooked-sugar flavor and sweetness would seem to not be it, but then that char range does fade over time. This version might be a fortunate case of a tea hanging around awhile and improving, which is not always how that goes.  The leaves being that tightly twisted probably enabled it to endure more air contact than really good tea should ever be exposed to, again seeming to work out to somehow balance overall character in this case.

typically a high roast level blackens leaves this much; char must have faded

The fourth infusion is also pleasant; that bodes well for extending to a fifth. The dark wood tone (which gets described in different ways in reviews, I think) still has a touch of cardboard edge to it but the sweetness, toffee flavor, and overall complexity make it work. It all extends a little to malt range, not like Assam black tea, but how malted milk balls or the shakes are, that mild, rich, almost creamy flavor.

On the next infusion it was spent, and not as pleasant as the fourth, with char ramping up due to longer infusion time required to draw out intensity.


I'd have bought more of these if I knew it was this pleasant.  I was just focused on sheng, and it was hard enough snapping out of that tunnel vision to grab these samples. I stopped short of exploring chen pi, the shu stuffed tangerines / oranges, but those were around too, and a vendor gave a sample of a couple with some sheng.  My wife bought a good bit of chrysanthemum, which seemed odd at the time, since it's here too and we tend not to drink that much, but it's really come in handy since my kids have taken a recent interest in tea (or tisanes, in that case), and they can drink as much as they like.

dim sum restaurant a half block from the market, with fishtanks out front

I'd definitely recommend visiting that market to anyone visiting Shenzhen, and beyond that anyone visiting Hong Kong to set aside time to stop by that other nearby mainland city too.  We dropped in using an on-arrival visa, not exactly the ideal process since who knows how long the queue that day would add to travel time, or if worsening relations with China due to a senseless trade war would narrow back approval of those.

As to travel time Shenzhen is an extra hour by train up the local Hong Kong rail line, easy to access.  Just make sure to download a local version of a Shenzhen Google Map, if that's even possible, or to switch over to an app version that will actually work online inside of China (or set up a VPN; you get the idea).

a chrysanthemum "tea" party; they can both use a gaiwan

Making the perfect cup of tea, article response

A recent news article about tea put me in the mood to talk about tea, to break from reviewing.  The whole link is here:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11475732/Most-Britons-do-no-know-how-to-make-a-cup-of-tea-say-scientists.html


I agree with a lot of what is in the article but it mixes together different ideas that don't make sense taken together, what tea enthusiasts and experts would say (or scientists--odd to bring them in though), and what an ordinary person might actually do.  Just to clarify I'm no expert, but evident in the other blog posts I've given tea some thought, and tried some, much more than referenced in this blog.

To keep it simple I'll comment on individual ideas from the article:


Researchers at University College London and the British Science Association claim tea must be allowed to steep for up to five minutes, far longer than the toe-tapping two minutes allowed by most drinkers.


Right, sort of.  Really tea enthusiasts use one of two different general methods of brewing tea (neither involving a tea bag at all):


1.  the "Western" technique of brewing a pot or smaller amount in a different vessel.  This possibly involves one longer infusion (the five minutes they mention, give or take), or multiple infusions for shorter times, with the number and times depending on the tea (and the water temperature, how the leaves are prepared, etc.)


2.  traditional Chinese method, or "gong fu cha," which translates roughly as "tea technique."  This is the same term as "kung fu," which would mean martial arts technique, just without specifying that the subject is fighting.  A much higher proportion of tea to water is used, brewed for very short times using many multiple infusions, typically in either a small clay pot or a gaiwan (like a small bowl with a lid).

my gaiwan, with a black tea from Taiwan (lid not shown)

To adapt the first general method to tea bags it might work best to brew using three tea bags instead of one for one short infusion, say 2 minutes, then repeat for a second longer infusion, maybe 3 more.  Given that tea bag tea is typically so low grade it doesn't matter you could also just use one bag and come back to take it out whenever you get around to it.


A study carried out by Cravendale milk in 2011 found that the perfect cup of tea needed eight minutes (two minutes with the tea bag or leaves, six more afterwards) before it reaches optimum flavour and temperature.  The scientists at UCL suggest that tea is best drunk at around 65C.


Odd the article is now contradicting itself; is it two minutes or brew time or five minutes?  Different scientists...  Really proportion of water to tea is the other main variable, along with temperature of water, an ideal for which varies by type of tea being brewed, so any one optimum would need to address all the different factors.

Tea does show flavors better when slightly cooler, as they say, but it's hard to imagine tea always cooling from boiling temperature to 65 C in 8 minutes (150 degrees F if you're on that page, a little hotter than what comes out of a tap, where hot water from a sink tap is a real thing).  This sounds wrong, and slightly pointless; if you like it hotter then drink it at 80 or 90 C, or let it get cold, it's your tea.

On to the main points though.


Making the perfect cup of tea:


1. Water temperature? Use freshly boiled water to pour over your tea bags or tea leaves


For black tea boiling water is fine but some instructions suggest 90 C is better even for black (194 F), and for other tea types slightly cooler is definitely better.  Green tea in particular will be more bitter (astringent) if brewed at boiling point, so cooler is better, but it's not always just about cutting bitterness, also about optimizing flavors.

instructions with a nice Indonesian tea (follow this link to my post)

2. Pot, cup or mug? A warmed ceramic pot is ideal, but mugs and cups do nicely


Tea enthusiasts wouldn't agree a mug is ok, because using an enclosed vessel retains more of the flavor (essential oils that can evaporate away, if you must know).  Not so much worry about that in aged, badly stored, bone-dry, over-processed tea ground to a powder as in most tea bags.


3. Milk first? It depends – if you are making tea in a mug, add the milk later (because cold milk will lower the temperature so tea won’t brew in your mug as well); if pouring already steeped tea from a pot into cups, then it is fine to have a splash of milk in first.


For most "tea people" this is simple:  no milk, no sugar.  Even most black teas aren't astringent enough to require this, and it detracts from really tasting the tea.  Of course it's all a bit subjective, so if someone really loves blended black tea with milk and sugar it's their beverage to adulterate, but they would need to try decent loose teas to know if their preference doesn't just relate to the lowest grades of tea tasting better adjusted quite a bit.

I just shared a small cup of an incredible tea with a co-worker, a 2012 Rougui I'd just received (review to follow later I'm sure, but this unrelated vendor link says what the tea is) and she asked "could I add milk to this tea?"  After the momentary shock passed I told her that she had just insulted the tea, but I forgave her, and that no, she couldn't.


4. Steep time? anything between two to five minutes (this particularly varies on personal preference)


Right, subjective.  But it's a different story for the powder in tea bags, which brews faster, and varies a lot across loose tea brewing methods.

Conclusion, about that perfect cup of tea:

The perfect cup of tea starts with tea that's much better than Lipton, Tetley, PG Tips, Dilmah, or Twinnings tea bags (no offense intended; those last two make some other decent products).  Even tea sold as high-end premium loose tea in sophisticated pyramid-style bags is a bit dubious; better to just take the leap and brew decent loose tea.

But what is decent loose tea?  I've only thrown dirt on the main products everyone has access to, right?  And not everyone is going to dedicate a part of their lives to a beverage as I have.  So I'll start to answer this, but with a limited scope, just saying a little about what decent black tea is, and of course not really getting far with that.

I've just read an interesting article that informs what tea blending is all about, but it's too much to get into here:

http://www.teaguardian.com/quality-varieties/blends-single-origins-single-harvests/


To oversimplify lets say some mid-range quality level product blends could be very decent and could come close enough to making "the perfect cup of tea," even if for tea enthusiasts they would produce a very mediocre cup of tea.

in our break room now; definitely not great, but decent

Ordinarily "better" tea is sold as a single-origin tea; at least it's from one place, even if that does allow for some degree of mixing (for example, a country is a big place).  Really better teas yet are sold as from a more narrow origin, from a particular farm and producer.  Tea from different areas have a different character, and there are lots of other factors, grade, growing factors (eg. how much it rained, and when), harvesting factors, processing (huge variances relating to that), on and on.

Note the goal here is shifting, and making a "perfect cup of tea" really isn't the point; it's about making a decent cup of tea related to what you expect and want.  There's no reason that couldn't continually change, and you couldn't keep on making better cups of tea than you were aware is possible in the past.  That just won't happen if you keep using the same commercial tea bags.

As far as how to come by decent tea (even limited to black tea), the starting point isn't so hard.  Find some loose tea by a large commercial maker like Twinnings, work out how to brew loose tea, and keep on going from there.  Decent mid-grade black tea, better tea than most people know exists, isn't that expensive, and there are lots more sources than it might seem at first.  Of course black tea is just one general type, and the two other main ones, green and oolong, offer lots of range, and there are others yet.

For people using the internet--most of us--there wouldn't be that much to it; click around, try some from a vendor chosen at random.  Don't get too caught up in hype or feel the need to buy $100 (50 British pounds) of tea at one go, or worry about optimizing purchase of the right types of samples, just get started.  Same for brewing gear and method; don't overdo it at first, try something basic and adjust from there.  You really can brew loose tea in a coffee mug, there's just a straining issue to work around.

Tea shops short-cut all that; decent ones will brew the tea for you to try, and you know if you like it right then before you buy it, and can see how they made it.

The real conclusion:

Now I've went and shifted from brewing back to the tea (leaf) itself, probably the better starting point than how to brew.  One could just read tea blogs to sort through the ideas but those are all over the map, and just because someone writes a lot about tea doesn't mean he or she knows much about it, or has a decent palate, or isn't an idiot to begin with.

I'd already mentioned one general tea reference site, the Tea Guardian, but there are lots of others.  That site includes a tea shop finder, since visiting a cafe or a tea shop involves access to the products and not just information, and here is another tea map locator site from Adagio teas.

The take away is this:  to start on making much better cups of tea find decent loose tea, put it in hot water, and be amazed at the result.  Optimizing those steps takes a lifetime but you'll be ahead of most people that drink tea the first time you get that far.

Postscript:  adding sugar to tea (sort of applies to milk too)

A comment reminded me of one special consideration that really fits with the rest of these ideas, about adding sugar to tea.  There is an interesting contradiction in two seemingly opposed ideas:  it's common sense that people can add whatever they prefer to their tea (it's their tea), and "tea enthusiasts" tend to gravitate towards saying that better tea (the processed leaves) prepared properly as the beverage doesn't benefit from added sugar.  A natural derivative from the latter is that if you add sugar to tea you are either drinking bad tea or making it wrong.  So how to resolve this; it can't be that simple, that one side or the other is right or wrong.

One function of sugar is to offset bitterness, or change the flavor profile when the taste could use some adjustment.  It is the case that this applies more to lower grades of tea, or to tea that has been brewed improperly, at the wrong temperature or steeped long enough to draw out excess tannins, resulting in astringency or bitterness (overlapping concepts, maybe not exactly the same though).  Better teas also exhibit a range of subtle flavors that probably are easier to appreciate without adjusting the overall flavor at all, even if sugar and sweetness level are relatively neutral.

On the other side tea preference isn't only one thing; subjective preference is a personal thing.  There's nothing inherently wrong with someone adjusting their own tea, even if some separate near-consensus opinion disagrees.  There are cultural aspects to this; my understanding is that in Turkey people prefer very strongly brewed black tea taken with sugar to offset the astringency; they like it that way, on purpose.  In Vietnam they seem to generally prefer green tea brewed in such a way as to be too bitter, per almost all other guidelines.  Of course masala chai is made with milk and sugar, sort of a special case.

I seem to have contradicted this by saying my co-worker couldn't add milk to a very unique type of Chinese tea I recently tried, that she insulted the tea.  To me she did, but much as it pains me to say it if it were her tea she could've went about adding milk, I guess.  In practice it wouldn't work out that way.  No one would get to the point of seeking out a tea that many tea drinkers have never heard of to drink it with milk.

One last idea relates to the experience of a palate learning curve when drinking tea (or tasting wine, also related to foods, etc.).  It's normal to experience a certain range of types and preparations of tea earlier on, and for those to change over time, along with preferences.  There's essentially nothing wrong with someone drinking black or green tea made from tea bags with sugar, but it would be nice for them if they could also broaden that range of experience and try different teas made and prepared in different ways.  One typical experience is to prefer less sugar or no sugar later in most tea.