Happy 2nd birthday to this blog

It's been two years for this blog!  That's easier for me to keep track of than my wedding anniversary because I started just before my daughter was born.  The idea back then was that I wouldn't have time for such things as writing later, and I'd been researching teas and drinking different ones then.  That was not long after a second trip to China, where I'd bought a lot of tea, almost randomly, and it was time to start sorting out what I was drinking.


These abstract theme posts don't seem as interesting as content closer to the subject so I'll say a bit about what I've learned in two years and be done with it.  I mean aside from what's already covered in these other posts; countless details about different teas, and an early start on identifying what tea tastes and feels like.  A chocolate blogger contributed in a recent post and gave a really clear and thorough explanation of palate development, preference changes, and subjectivity issues, all themes I keep coming back to.

Wuyi Yancha!  like drinking a rock that tastes good.

Lessons learned:

Common sense goes a long way.  The opposite of what you always hear, right, that there is a large set of ancient Chinese secrets one needs to learn to really make better tea.  There's something to those fine details, more about optimizing technique once one gets some basic brewing steps and preferences down.  Someone really could start there, and work backwards, learn the finer points first and then figure out what basics they extend from after, and oddly enough it seems to work that way sometimes.  As with most things it's as well to not throw ordinary reason completely out the window.


It's an experience.  Really what else would it be?  Judging by courses and degrees maybe it's an academic field of study instead, or about a credential level, and of course it relates to a vocation for many.  If one becomes a bit burned out on the sales pitches that turn up along with background information it's helpful to remember that all the tea wouldn't make the trip here without it being a business.  In this sense "here" means anywhere, unless you are a tea farmer, or live across the street from a plantation, and even then it really needs to be a viable business for someone to keep on growing and processing it.


Some people take tea way too seriously.  Kind of strange coming from someone that wastes the time on it I do, so I guess I just mean it related to people that take it all differently than I do.  This seems to contradict the next idea:


There are lots of approaches to tea, and no one of them is right.  Better to keep an open mind and try different things, to learn from people that see it differently.  It's ok to never drink tea blends or certain types, or to never brew Western style, but maybe better still to keep an open mind.  Someone might hate the idea of blending tea with anything, or even mixing the same types to balance attributes, and then later figure out that they really love masala chai (or Earl Grey; whatever it happens to be).



Some degree of contradiction in the experience of tea is fine.  Just like related to being married, just not that much inconsistency.  Rules and conventional wisdom play a role, and so does breaking those rules.  One tea mentor said to watch out for people that make absolute claims related to tea since preferences and other natural variations tend to make the fact of the matter more complicated than that.  It's not directly related to the same point but he also said to be wary of a shop selling too many kinds of tea, but that's not a hard and fast rule, just something to consider.

useful tool or tangent?  interesting to keep investigating either way.

One warning sign related to tea expertise is someone claiming to be an expert.  But of course they really could still be one.


I recently read a blog site where the author said the best way to learn tea knowledge is to read classic sources, of course only available in Chinese language, implying she was the go-to expert you really needed to listen to.  The last blog I read that in I didn't get around to reading again, and I recently noticed that vendor went out of business.  The most knowledgeable sources seem to down-play being an authority, realizing there is more to learn than any one person knows.


Of course there is something else going on with people being trained and working as a Tea Sommelier; the field is expanding to include roles for people recommending tea for a living, so it is necessary for some people to step forward and claim that level of knowledge.


You can't judge a tea type by one tea.  How many then?  One relatively ideal example of the type is fine, which you would need lots of experience to recognize as such.  Those ideas make a nice circle.  Even after one has pinned down the ideal, paradigmatic type--as much as there could be such a thing, but it typically doesn't work that way--something else could still crop up, variations and such.

it's about interesting places and people too

The experience of tea changes over time.  Kind of obvious, right?  Preferences are going to change, palate development, etc., but perhaps more interesting is that different aspects become more interesting, like the feel of the tea, or aftertaste (hui gan, which doesn't exactly mean aftertaste; here is an interesting article that compares such terms to wine, which may make more sense if one has been through a lot of tasting that too).


I'll say more about that as I follow the path further; I'm not so far along just yet myself.  In a way it's a shame for people that get hooked by trying a really good tea early on, and jump in tying many other exceptional types, because someone experiencing the whole range from tea bags to mid-grades and on could spend many years continually trying better teas.  Of course they would still go through trying them with a changing palate, comparing different qualities and picking up new dimensions, so a lot of the same would still apply.


It's not just about tea.  For me the experience of drinking tea and knowledge of tea are two separate but related things, but for this point I mean something else again.  It's also social.  This point gets a bit strange since my tea connections are almost all online, so just I have the outsider's vantage through messages.  Funny how the conversations and groups and the rest work out, mostly nice enough.  If you like you could join a Facebook group that I help moderate to talk about it online more yourself, but aside from the issue of most such groups being a little bit quiet there are lots of them to choose from.


Plenty for one list!  Thanks to those that read this blog, for taking some part in exploring with me, even if you never did get around to commenting on your own experiences.  I'm open to talking about tea, sort of my thing to do that, so feel free to say hi, and by all means feel free to help out by flagging it when I've said something that's clearly wrong.  It's a learning process.  And more than that about one nice cup of tea after another.

Thai black teas from Tea Side (Jin Xuan as black tea)

I just spent months looking for better Thai teas, three or four years in all really, and as I've mentioned in other posts this latest vendor raises the bar.  My wife's aunt turned up a couple interesting ones on a trip this year but this tea I'm writing about is on another level.

The Tea Side vendor sent two Thai black teas made from a Jin Xuan cultivar.  This cultivar / plant type is usually processed as an oolong, but I've had it made into oolong, green, and black teas in the past.  They describe it as a red tea but that's just a different translation; red tea is what we call black tea in English, so it's the most literal translation from Chinese.  Somewhere along the way the English category name switched from the color of the brewed tea, reddish, to the color of the leaves.

Review part, Tea Side Red Tea Jin Xuan

Usually tea reviews are really objective, a careful taste by taste analysis, maybe including a guarded opinion about the tea at the end.  Forget that; I loved this tea.  This is probably my favorite black tea I've tried yet, although my long-term taste-memory is still a work in progress.

The tea smelled sweet and rich, like malt and dark cherries, and floral, maybe with a bit of cocoa.  Or then again that's sort of how a rose smells, sweet and complex, so a lot like that.  Brewed tea tasted a little more like peach, still plenty sweet, but nice and clean flavored, with a good bit of cocoa and malt, and some cherry as well, with a rich floral nature.  So good complexity across a range of awesome flavors.  It started to hint a bit towards sweet potato, somehow not my favorite taste element in teas, even though I like sweet potato, but didn't have the too-sweet aftertaste that can go along with that sometimes.


It can be hard to pin down specific taste elements when a tea has this much going on; all those tastes are similar but the specific descriptions are different.  Lets think back to that chocolate taster's expert advice on this same concern in a recent post, from Lisabeth:


In the case of Madagascar-origin chocolate, for instance, the chocolate is so clearly fruity that most people will identify that as a flavour in chocolate made from cocoa beans grown in Madagascar. But whether they taste raspberry versus grape or lemon, is a whole other thing. What we taste is also dependent on what we eat prior to tasting.


At any rate I love teas in this style, softer black teas with an interesting range of sweeter flavors, with good complexity.  It even had a little astringency to give it a nice feel, but not enough to come anywhere near bitterness.  It brewed a good bit of tea consistently, a good sign in a tea, without much flavor transition.  The smell of the brewed tea was also amazing, so fruity and floral you almost didn't need to drink it, you could just enjoy the smell.  Sometimes it works out that the empty cup will hold a strong fragrance after the tea is finished but I don't remember a tea liquid smelling this pleasant before.

good tea can be this exciting

It was so good it made me think about comparisons and weaknesses; how it related to other black teas that I loved.  I just bought a Vietnamese black tea I really liked from the beginning of the year a second time, a Wild Boar tea from Hatvala.  That tea runs a bit more towards earthy and cocoa flavors but can't match the fruit and floral aspects, and isn't as aromatic.  That astringency is also light as black teas go but a little stronger than this Thai tea, not quite as pleasant.


As I remember the character was not so far off the only Indonesian black tea I tried earlier in the year, from PT Harendong estate.  Another reviewer described the nature of that tea as "juicy," really seemingly related to the feel of the tea, and also "brisk," which would be a more familiar description.  It gets a little odd when you have to start using non-standard descriptions to bring across impressions, mixing taste and feel attributes together, but there's something to this.  There may be other effective ways to get there, comparisons to other teas or something such.


It's a stretch to say how it could be any better.  I guess for some the flavors could seem too sweet, but that's not really fair, saying that personal preference may not match up; of course that varies.

Before I even saw price of this tea I thought it would probably be a great value, since people tend to not even know teas like this exist, so hard for people to know to demand them.  Of course it seems fair to me after checking it; I just went on raving about the tea.  Although the taste is nice it's easy to have natural preference directed towards other tea types, lighter or darker oolongs, or maybe green teas or pu'ers, depending on inclination and experience with tea.  To me this is a tea a beginner could love and an experienced tea drinker might keep on craving, or as the vendor put it:


My absolute favorite for the evening drinking. Drink it almost every day. 


I would ease up on the Wuyi Yanchas if I had a lot of this around.

Red Tea From The Old Trees, #3

Again a bit unconventional, but I'll start with the vendor description:


The tea is notable for delicate aroma of sweet buds. Here are more buds then in Red Tea #6 and the taste is a little bit more strict but elegant, more floral and less sweet, with a large number of semitones. But the flavor profile is still the same - tea-rose, caramel and tulips laced with dried fruits.

So it's being sold as a higher grade tea, which it looks to be by appearance.  It is closer in flavor profile to a standard black tea, with a clean, refined, structured taste and feel.  It's a lot like a Sri Lankan / Ceylon tea without much astringency, so a bit more earthy and mineral in nature, with less sweetness, floral, and fruit elements.


This reminds me of the earlier post on traditional Thai flavored teas, which are now typically sold as an orange colored iced tea (and now made from artificially flavored powdered tea, but that's a different concern).  In that post research indicated that traditionally Thai flavored tea included orange blossom and crushed tamarind seeds (which I've yet to run across yet--I'll keep a lookout for those), and also said the teas were made from local and semi-wild Assamica variation plants from Thailand.  It could be the case that these are those plants, these old-tree sources.  Of course that's connecting a lot of dots based on different speculations, but still interesting.  This vendor didn't specify which variety of tea plant these trees were, var. Assamica or Sinensis, but it seems a good guess the former.



Some people would like this tea more than the previous one, # 6, but that tea is a perfect match for my personal preference in black tea, so it suffered a little in comparison.  Kind of strange saying that about a tea that seemed better in some ways, but there it is; subjective preference has me liking this tea and loving the other one.


I've had an experience like this once before, in buying a Lapsang Souchong from a Chinese vendor.  She sent samples of different teas and I really liked the smokiness of that tea.  As anyone who loves that tea type knows it's really about getting the type of level of smoke dialed in to personal preference, which is maybe even more subjective than other aspects of tea drinking, even though most sort of are in a sense.


For one person a smoked tea might be perfect, for another way too smokey, or not smokey enough, or too sharp flavored as that effect goes, leaning towards sour, and so on.  Of course I think people would tend to break one way or another on the smoke issue in general.  I tried one once that was so smokey I was tasting it for a half-hour after, an unusual experience of tea "finish."  It wasn't really bad but a bit much, I guess potentially a side-effect of them adjusting that flavor somehow.

To make a long story short, I tried one version of the Lapsang Souchong from that vendor and ended up buying a higher grade of the tea.  It was better in most of the normal ways, clearly a higher grade of tea, but I didn't like it as well; not enough smoke.  It was a lesson learned; if you can try a tea and buy one you know you like then good to go with that certainty.  It's one down-side of online buying, but the reach and range of products available and potential for great value are huge advantages.

I still love the type but I've had trouble getting back to finding that perfect level and type of smoke.  If I were back in Pennsylvania, where I'm from, I'd settle the matter myself by buying a good bit of black tea and experimenting with burning different trees growing all around, but here I just let it drop.  Here in Bangkok it is possible to walk around the sidewalks with a make-shift food cart selling meats grilling on a small wood fire but I'm not on that page at all.

About these other two black teas, it all depends on preference, but they represent why black tea shouldn't be marginalized by oolongs and the rest as they tend to be.  When one really clicks for you it's just as special as when more conventional tea-type hype applies, even if it still seems a little more like an "everyday tea."

Comparing tea and chocolate tasting based on the Ultimate Chocolate Blog input

Comparing tea and wine tasting has come up quite a bit, but what about chocolate?  Of course I mean specialty, bean to bar chocolate, the kind of thing many people aren't aware even exists.

Lisabeth; blogging seriously about chocolate

Some chocolate bloggers are just talking about things like how to bake a nice cake, which is surely very useful, but after some searching I found a chocolate blogger that is thorough and analytical, but still personable and genuine.  The reviews seem familiar, even though the subject is very different from tea.


I'm talking about Lisabeth Flanagan, author of The Ultimate Chocolate Blog.  I might go too far in mentioning it but she even reminds me of one of the tea blogging world's favorite daughters, who hardly even needs to be named after a scan of Lisabeth's blog mission statement, but I'll add the link to that tea blog since some chocolate people may read this.


Of course the point is that flavor description approach is comparable, and so on, but some of the rest of the results are shocking!  Wait, you are already reading this, and it's quite interesting but maybe not shocking.

Chocolate reviews:

Tanzania Origin Chocolate by Askinosie: 72% Dark Chocolate

This chocolate bar was creamier in texture than the other two origins, and to me, had and an instant bitter flavour reminiscent of tobacco smoke, spice and dark roast coffee before it opens up to a berry fruit flavour and perhaps dried cranberries. Also, maybe a hint of dried grass. It is my favourite.


For anyone else I'd edit those extra "u's" out of there...

Use of a similar type of taste-by-taste component analysis is clear in this, and to me it's a nice touch that it isn't completely objective, that personal preference is included.  In case you wanted to try this at home here is a link on some chocolate tasting basics.  Same post / maker following:

cacao pod, the beans

Davao, Philippines 62% Dark Milk Chocolate + Fleur de Sel (Goat's milk chocolate)

This is somewhat acidic, lightly salty, and has the taste of soft goat cheese, not as strong as in the white chocolate, but still very apparent. Sometimes I love it. Sometimes not. It depends on my taste buds at the time. It tastes great with red wine.


Almost nothing to break down further here; reference to subjective preference changing over time, a pairing suggestion, coupled with a clear and informal writing style.  If you don't already love her review style then the problem lies with you.  Of course I don't know if I'd like that chocolate, and if I had to pick just one I'd go with the Tanzanian one.

A bit more on texture in the next review, seemingly the equivalent to mouthfeel or body in tea.

François Pralus Chocolate: Intended for Indulgence

Many of the 'new school' chocolate makers focus on minimizing the cocoa butter content, and sticking to 'two-ingredient chocolate' for health benefits or to highlight the flavour of the bean. These two ingredient chocolate bars are often stiffer, with a slower melt-in-the-mouth effect. 


Ok, so at some point I'd actually have to try the chocolate to experience that, but I guess I could use my imagination based on having tried Hershey's Special Dark.

Fiji chocolate (photo credit)

So we've got taste description by flavor element, feel, pairing, some terroir scope, but it's still just chocolate, a few of the same ingredients sourced and blended differently, right?  Not so fast:


...on the Pralus chocolate bar packages, I learned immediately that the Djakarta bar is made from Criollo and Trinitario type cacao, whereas the Cuban bar is made from Trinitario-only beans, and the Indonesia bar is made from Criollo-only beans.


So there's that; cocoa bean cultivars (or maybe it's actually cacao; per this reference it's only called cocoa after you roast it, which involves different types of changes).


Still, you might be thinking, this chocolate is relatively large-batch standard ingredients blended per a standard recipe, nothing like tea leaves that are sourced from a small plot of land, hand picked and processed, then carefully brewed, so that each cup of tea is a natural, unique, semi-mystical experience.  Check out this processing step description, from François Pralus, chocolate maker and owner of his own cocoa plantation in Madagascar:

Francios Pralus (photo credit link)

I brew the cocoa in water, rather like making herbal tea and sweeten it slightly with sugar, then I leave it to settle. This gives me a precise idea of what the flavour will be like before I launch the manufacturing process.


So he seems to be a genius French Master Chocolate Maker; nice!  One product is even described as barres infernales; hellishly delightful.  Sounds good.


Just when you worried this post might end I asked her to cover some questions that dig deeper into comparing chocolate tasting to tea tasting, and then some.  She also makes chocolate related products, which helps explain the depth of these answers.

Comparing tea and chocolate tasting:

1.  my question: Tea tasting often compares tea tastes to other foods tastes, which I also see in specialty chocolate reviews.  To what extent do these seem like subjective judgments to you, that different people would cite different taste elements for the same chocolate?

Lisabeth's answer:  Certainly chocolate tasting is subjective to some extent. Everyone tastes food differently, and so will relate the flavours they taste in chocolate to different foods. In the case of Madagascar-origin chocolate, for instance, the chocolate is so clearly fruity that most people will identify that as a flavour in chocolate made from cocoa beans grown in Madagascar. But whether they taste raspberry versus grape or lemon, is a whole other thing. What we taste is also dependent on what we eat prior to tasting. It is important to give yourself one-to-two hours without eating or drinking (other than water), prior to tasting chocolate.


2.  Do you experience palate training in tasting chocolate?  That is, does it seem like over time with experience you taste chocolate differently, for example, can identify different flavors, or judge chocolate differently, or is it more a matter of just being able to compare the chocolate to more things you've already tried?

With palate training, it is more about learning how to identify and articulate what you are tasting. The more you taste, and compare, the more you will be able to identify the flavours inherently within the chocolate. And over time, you will get better at identifying those flavours. It's about tasting a lot of chocolate bars, and tasting them against each other (i.e. comparing a fruity Madagascar chocolate to a nutty Ecuador or Venezuelan chocolate, and then to a smoky Indonesian chocolate). It's also about research, and learning about the origin, the processing, etc. and what may affect the flavour within the chocolate. I imagine tea is the same thing - one change in manufacturing process can change the entire flavour. After a while, you will be able to taste it, and know what is affecting the flavour without needed to do research.


3.  In tea there may be a normal type of preference learning curve, although that's not something everyone agrees on.  For example, one might normally start with lighter oolongs and later move on to darker oolongs, or pu'er.  Is there such a thing with chocolate?

Over time, your tastes certainly change. As you are exposed to more and more types of chocolate, you might begin to dislike one of your former favourite chocolate bars, and love a chocolate bar that you may have spit out years ago. Certainly I could not palate chocolate with 85% to 100% cocoa solids 10 years ago, but now I enjoy chocolate bars as dark as those. I now love all chocolate and can appreciate it.  But certainly, if I am to enjoy a 100% dark chocolate, I cannot eat a super sweet chocolate bar just before, or sometimes within a few days before.  I work my way up so my palate is used to the bitter taste.


4.  Tea enthusiast circles are generally positive and supportive groups, but there is also the element of "tea snobbery," people telling others that "you're doing it wrong."  Are there examples of such a thing among chocolate enthusiasts?  Related to that, an article about the Mast brothers products seemed to cover some of the same disagreement over perspective (more background on them here, and that article covering that controversy).

Mast brothers, photo credit, meltingbutter.com

It is all about perspective.  For Mast Brother's - I believe - the complaint is that their chocolate is not consistent.  So I could go out tomorrow and buy a chocolate bar from them that tastes wonderful.  But in a month I may buy that same chocolate bar and it is not tempered properly, or has a funny taste. 


The chocolate 'aficionado' community is frustrated because Mast Brother's gets a lot of media coverage, but perhaps should not be the face of the craft chocolate movement, due to their product inconsistency.  They are worried that Mast Brother's will become the benchmark, and those that have tasted poor quality chocolate from them will never try craft chocolate again. 


I have not tasted Mast Brother's chocolate myself yet, but I still plan to. They may change their processes and become very fine chocolate makers over time. All that said, there will always be those that take tasting - of any food group - to a snobbery level.  But it is just best to ignore that and do it your own way.  Speaking from experience, you can find your own way over time and become knowledgeable and skilled at it, without always following the common 'rules' of tasting.


[editor’s note:  later allegations of the Mast Brothers using re-melted purchased chocolate, and their admission of limited early cases of this, not matching the extent of those allegations, made this subject an active news story at the end of 2015]

5.  What is an example of something you would want to tell others that don't know anything about specialty chocolate?

Two ingredients is all you need for a perfect, balanced tasting chocolate bar. Three can make it better, sometimes. But beyond that....well, let's just say that less is often better. So if you are looking to taste fine chocolate, seek out chocolate makers that focus on creating world-renown chocolate bars with 2 to 4 ingredients at most (cacao, sugar, cocoa butter and sometimes vanilla or lecithin). Then taste and research and do that over and over again.  Search 'craft chocolate' and 'fine chocolate' on the Internet and reference lists, like the bean-to-bar craft chocolate makers lists on my blog, or find some in your area, and taste.  Use brands like Michel Cluizel, Valrhona, Bonnat, Amano as starting points - then move on to others from there.