On tea popularity and tea cults

An article recently raised these themes, with the "cult" idea already reoccuring once in awhile.  I'll start with the broader context and then move on to more about the cult issue.

That article included an interesting summary of where the interest in the subject stands now (here).  The title gives away some of his main concerns, "Artisanal Tea in America Is Having a Moment."  It's really not.  For the last decade people have continually said that artisanal / specialty / "better" tea is about to become the next big thing, and that hasn't happened, and it's probably not about to happen now.  As someone put it in a comment in his post, the author was the one having a moment.  All fair enough.

From there people might take issue with specific points made, with too many references to commercial interests (vendors), or to other parts of the perspective there.  In general I see a problem with the more exotic aspects of tea making headlines (most typically in news web pages versus newspapers), tied to duck shit (ya shi) dan cong oolong, or about obscure aged tea versions that you need to visit a tea master in an isolated basement shop to even try.  By appointment, maybe, screened with more care than your local drug dealer puts into keeping a low profile.

All that last part is actually a reference to one person in particular, with plenty of others coming to mind that it also fits.  Forbes mentioned that 'Duck Shit' Tea Is Taking the World by Storm, in 2015, but I was thinking more along the lines of LA Times mentioning Tea Habitat in 2009 and 2016, which also relates to that Dan Cong oolong theme.  Tea really doesn't need to be any more exotic or difficult to source and prepare than coffee; that can get lost in the hype over how some versions are really unique and unusual.

The article seemed fine to me, not based on a mature or balanced perspective of current tea culture or tea itself, but that is what it is.  This describes why the author thinks tea is having a moment:


TEA IS THE PERFECT CULTURAL DRINK FOR RIGHT NOW. It has such a big tent -- you can like it for the caffeine kick, or the rituals, or the scientific experiments in brewing time and temperature, or the cool hobbyist gear, or the Eastern religious undertones, or the dietary benefits, or matcha's Instagram friendly coloring. You can like it because it separates you out, or pulls you into a new community, because it makes you feel simultaneously like an outsider and an insider. 

Right now tea is exciting because tea feels fresh and new, which is ironic considering it is the oldest drink in the world. We're still in those early adopter stages, the energy and optimism and the hobbyist nature, but it's professionalizing slowly... 


That's the thing, we were in the early adopter stages 15 years ago, back when online tea groups, blogs and reference pages, public meet-ups, source options, and the rest started ramping up.  Most of the early versions of all that have ran their course, often replaced twice by other similar references, sites, vendor outlets, and groups since.  This reference explains what I mean: Cha Dao:  A Journal of Tea and Culture summarized input from various authors from 2005 to 2011, much more active for the first three years.

Bubble tea has had a moment in that longer time period, and Starbucks tried to make mall shops work and failed, in the case of Teavana.  Better tea is ramping up slowly but it's definitely not having a moment.

a Moychay tea club in Moscow, maybe tea is having a moment there

Onto the point I did want to address instead, in this section:


...As we drank the teas from small, handcrafted clay tea cups made by an Albuquerque artist, the Tea Heads talked their shit. They talked about the intense battles fought in the Reddit subreddit/tea. They talked about Steve Odell, an influential Portland, Oregon tea house owner who created a large, cultish following with his sober basement parties. And "Po" Rosenberg, another Portland tea master who guides folks through "tea tastings" at his Heavens Tea shop, sometimes letting them try 50 year old teas... 

There's that tea master offering ultra-rare teas theme, just still not the one I was thinking of, which also wasn't Imen. Technically this doesn't say that any tea following resembles a cult; it says that one following is "cultish."  Let's start with definitions and my own take on cults and get back to that. 


As to the mention of "intense battles fought in the tea subreddit," that's a joke.  People post pictures of brewing tea there, or cupboards full of tea-bag boxes of teas.  Once in awhile snarky responses blame them for not really drinking good tea, or for thinking that their tea is better than others' when they actually do.  There are no battles, hardly even any decent discussions.


To be clear on context I am active on that subreddit, posting or commenting there about every other day, but it's just not where tea is really discussed, people only post there.  Discussion works out better on Facebook groups, at least for now.  Like in this Gong Fu Cha group, the Puerh Tea Club related to that type, the International Tea Talk group I admin for, or in the Tea Drinkers group, more oriented towards people newer to tea, where this discussion took place.


Little glitches in that article, like that one, probably put off plenty of tea enthusiasts, but in general it's not a problem for me to read past them.  The author just passed on what he was told, and a majority of the references described real tea themes, just in light of such perspective biases.

What is a cult?

Google's take will work for a dictionary definition starting point:


1. a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.  "the cult of St. Olaf"

2. a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.  "a network of Satan-worshiping cults"

3. a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.  "a cult of personality surrounding the leaders"


All so negative!  There must be a more positive form of cult to balance all that.  I think the definition of "cultish" might lead back towards that:


1.  relating to or characteristic of a small group of people having religious beliefs regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members.  "weird cultish beliefs"

2.relating to a person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society.


That last definition captures what I'm after; the negative value judgment isn't essential to the concept.  Even in "cult," as I see the concept range, but related to "cultish" Google's definition agrees.

The Wikipedia definition is the same:


In modern English, the term cult has usually been used in reference to a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or by its common interest in a particular personality, object or goal. This sense of the term is controversial and it has divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia and it has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.[1][2] It is usually considered pejorative...


I'm probably interpreting the concept more broadly than most in wanting it to also have positive range, which raises a very problematic "private language" concern.  Word meanings that aren't shared are meaningless.

I'll skip ahead to an example; Crossfit could be considered cultish (although per the Google dictionary definition here not as a cult).

A close friend was into working out in a similar capacity--just not actually doing Crossfit--and at one point he posted about his workout routine daily.  Dedication to that pursuit took over his life, most of his daily social connections related to that, and most of his life's meaning was tied up in becoming very, very fit.  I don't necessarily see that as a problem.  It's shared obsessive behavior, for sure, but on a couple of different levels it is very healthy.

Another example:  in the late 70's when I was growing up in Western Pennsylvania fandom for the Steelers football team took on cult-like aspects.  People painted their houses and cars black and gold, wore the related clothing regularly, regarded the players as more important than typical celebrity status, and planned their lives around following the games.  It became one of the more important parts of a lot of people's reality.  Was it too much?  That seems like a judgment call.  That degree of frenzy was temporary, based on several years of unusual success, and it was harmless enough.

Tea as a cult

Tea can't be seen as a cult in relation to those Google and Wikipedia definitions.  There's not enough religious tie-in, and bias towards mind-control and other negative aims.  It's just a beverage choice, although it can relate to subculture.  A tea circle could be "cultish;" it could "relate to a person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society."

The closest it seems to get is in the example of the Global Tea Hut.  That is a Zen-based group led by a single individual (Wu De, formerly Aaron Fisher), that puts emphasis on shared subject interest and perspective, and ceremonial aspects, based out of a central location, with some degree of financial interest.

Wu De (photo credit the Global Tea Hut Youtube channel)

This web page lists their subscription packages, and this Go Fund Me account shows them to be $156,000 towards meeting their million dollar goal to build a new retreat center.  Commercial enough.  The first link also leads to past issues of their monthly magazine on tea background, a great reference.

An online friend wrote a nice, neutral-tone article about visiting there for a lifestyle and travel blog.  It's probably as well to move on here rather than to try and force my own interpretation of to what degree this is or isn't a cult.  It doesn't matter.

Again, I don't necessarily see that "cult" concept as needing to be negative, as I think of it, so the discussion doesn't clearly mean any one thing.  If you strip away the negative connotation and leave the rest, about shared interest and perspective, underlying common philosophical themes, and so on, what concept remains?  Interest group?  They're definitely an interest group then.  Their goals and overlap with being a cult are perhaps best identified by the first paragraphs of their Go Fund Me proposal:


Imagine arriving at a retreat center to find you feel instantly at home. The smiles of all your new friends from around the world welcome you. Imagine the first bowl of tea, and how it warms and refreshes you after a long journey. You start letting go of the vicissitudes of daily life and the quiet rhythm of this amazing place takes over. Along with insights and wisdom, you find a stillness in yourself you didn’t even know was there.

You stay here for ten days — meditating; eating nourishing, healthy food; connecting with wonderful humans from around the world; wandering the gardens; learning and practicing tea brewing; and drinking lots and lots of the finest organic teas on earth.

And it’s all free. When you leave, you pass by the donation box and quietly leave an offering from your full heart and send a good thought to the future people that will be nourished here, as you have...


Sounds great; no concerns there.

That original article never unpacks why a tea circle was interpreted as "cultish."

That idea was passed on by the people discussing it in the article, and may well have been the author's interpretation, versus something they actually said.  If either of those circles of friends shared a strong interest in tea (as many people really do; an obsession even), a general perspective on life, a take on ethics, and maybe even aesthetic sensibilities (taste in clothing) then that would seem to fit.  Religious interest, personality-centering, negative goals, and mind control wouldn't need to apply.

Actual tea culture

Another criticism was that real tea culture wasn't fleshed out in the article, which I completely agree with.  The individual fragments of "what tea is" kind of worked towards that, but in some of those cases people were forwarding their own agendas instead of sharing perspective.  Or the two were the same thing.

There's no way I can do justice to what tea culture is here, and I'm probably not the right person for the job anyway.  I drink tea alone, almost all the time.  I have tea friends but not many living locally, so the idea of a culture base seems to not imply.  Still I should say a little.  I've been active in discussing tea online for quite awhile, and have met lots of people related to tea over the last two years, so some perspectives and generalities definitely apply.

Which perspectives should I describe though?  That article spends a few sentences on individual people and cases; that's as far as a review would typically go.  The snap-shots and limited reference frameworks would need to knit together into a continuum of what tea culture is, or could be, which would always leave out more than it actually includes, and lack depth for boiling perspectives down to a couple of sentences.  Groups would gain importance, as if one person obsessed with tea, working back through older cultural influences and new experiences, wouldn't be as important as any given dozen associated people doing the same things.  Hundreds of those somewhat isolated, partially networked-in tea enthusiasts are as much the story of modern tea culture as anything else.

Groups like the Global Tea Hut and Tea Masters (mentioned in the article; it's a long story what that is) do promote relatively universal background information along with their own perspective.  Facebook tea groups are exactly what you'd expect, diverse in nature.  There it's interesting how vendor specific tea groups can also serve as a way to share common perspective (like this Yunnan Sourcing version).  Other online tea groups come and go, as references do; the Tea Chat forum more or less morphed into Tea Forum.

Online discussions don't do an experiential subject like tea justice.  People gathering in person to share the experience really is a much more complete, and therefore valid, expression of tea culture.

In an initial comment on that article post I mentioned how furthering tea awareness is a common goal that such articles promote, maybe even more effectively than tea blogs, like this one.  The reason for why people want to promote tea interest may not be clear.  For vendors it is; increasing income.  Beyond that, and beyond sharing an experience enthusiasts themselves value, there is desire to promote tea consumption to help producers.  That subject gets covered here to such length I'll not add to it in this.


All of this reminds me of guessing that other interests I've pursued were surely the next big thing.  I was amazed by the intensity of the experience when I took up rock climbing, and thought for sure that would catch on.  It's clear enough why it didn't, and never will:  it's difficult, dangerous, hard to train for, and gear intensive.  I was a vegetarian for 17 years and never even considered that might become more popular someday, and now some years after I gave that up it has.

There's no telling what critical mass of acceptance subjects require before something triggers broader interest in them, or how that all works.  Tea may or may not ever become the next big thing, it may never really "have a moment."  Whether or not that happens doesn't seem to matter.  It's an interesting, multi-faceted, essentially bottomless subject that means a lot to some people, and that's enough.

Tea and illness 2: masala chai and chen pi

I'm sick again!  The short version:  I drank a lot of tisanes when I was sick recently, and trying out variations of masala chai worked a lot better this time than any single tisane or mix of those had then.  A chen pi (shu pu'er stuffed tangerine / orange) didn't seem to have much effect.

I probably pushed it related to getting back out running in moderately bad pollution within a week of recovering from that last sinus infection.  The levels had spiked to quite severe a day before the last run and partial clearing of that smog probably wasn't enough.

at the worst; I ran when the text balloons were yellow and orange

A doctor said that I'm fine, that I just need to drink fluids, rest, and wait it out.  I think this pollution may be too much for us, since my wife and kids have been sick too.  We've been using air purifiers at home, so we get a great break from it at least one third of the day, or more than half if we're around the house a lot past sleeping, but apparently it's not enough. 

We have masks to wear.  They're the special versions that filter a lot better than the green or white ones you can pick up in a hospital, surgical masks, but it just doesn't work to live in those.  It seems like your body can handle a moderate degree of pollution well enough, until it can't, and then you become much more sensitive to it.

back in February, the last pollution spike

The tisanes I wrote about drinking in an earlier post didn't seem to help in any medicinal sense, but it had been nice drinking a lot of hot beverages, and going easy on caffeine.  I speculated that masala chai blends, maybe even made with tisanes instead, might work even better, but I felt a bit wiped out to spend 20 minutes mixing inputs and simmering tea during that first round of illness.  So I tried it this time.

It seemed to actually help.  On the third day or so--hard to pin down the exact day you get sick, since you can just feel a bit off at first--I prepared masala chai, Indian spiced black tea, made with half black tea and half willow herb (aka fireweed / Ivan Chay).  For spicing I used clove, cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg, not exactly typical but it sounded good.  Drinking two large mugs of that, prepared with sugar and milk, brought on a heavy sweat, and I seemed to feel better related to illness symptoms within an hour.  I drank a second round with lunch hours later, adding ginger and fennel seed to that blend, and again sweated quite a bit.  Within those hours the output from blowing my nose ran much clearer.

Still, could be a coincidence.  I hadn't eaten much at all the day prior so I was wondering if the spicing wouldn't be a bit much for my stomach, but it wasn't.  The next morning I made another batch, and went a little heavy on the dash of salt I usually add, throwing off results a little, but then my sense of taste isn't great anyway.

Chen pi

Being a little tired of masala chai I tried brewing a shu stuffed orange / tangerine with a lunch.  I couldn't read any of the label but it was clearly shu, not a variation made with black or white tea.  One of the vendors in that Shenzhen tea market threw three of those in with what we bought and I'd not tried one yet.

before tearing up the peel a bit

As to approach I brewed it in a tea bottle.  With my sense of taste still on the limited side a flavor-list theme review wouldn't work, and optimizing that never was the point.  It tastes like citrus and shu.  At a guess the flavor would be positive if I wasn't sick, but it's hard to be sure with blocked sinuses.  The second round was brewed for a long time (I wasn't really controlling proportion or timing), ending up tasting nice enough but a little metallic.  Water might potentially taste metallic now, since beyond the illness more or less plugging my nose other symptoms do apply. 

I'm not even sure if the traditional Chinese wisdom / medicine claims say dried (and aged?) orange peel cures sinus infections, or colds, or whatever else.  It's said to have some medicinal properties, I thought, but most likely the list that turns up in discussions and marketing content is broad.  Why wouldn't it be, regardless of the truth of the matter?  Personal effects probably do vary anyway, and there is no simple, singular truth of the matter.


Back to the masala chai instead, there seems to be a lot of potential in using modified spiced tea blends for the same purpose.  Sage and black tea sounds like a potential contrast in character but mixing in a bit of rosemary, or whatever else, and shifting the masala blend part to match might work.  Adding some citrus might be good, since shifting off the original flavor profile would be the point anyway.  It's hard to get that warm, earthy character back though, without black tea, which really ties masala chai together.  I don't completely avoid tea or caffeine when I'm sick, I just try to moderate it, since it doesn't pair well with lying around.

This part is more about talking crazy than a real suggestion, but tied to making roasted pumpkin recently toasting the seeds to a medium brown then grinding those as an input might work.  No one is going to roast pumpkin in the middle of being sick, although I just did since I feel better five days later, and there was a Japanese pumpkin no one was using in the kitchen.

roasted pumpkin with spices and ice cream is nice

Let me know what you think, if any of this rings a bell, even though no one ever does.  Or if it sounds awful; whichever way that goes.

Combined tea sample tasting

A background / basics post, on using combined or multiple-sample tastings as a tool for evaluating teas, and also just for experiencing them differently.

This relates to intention:  if a resale vendor is visiting a plantation to choose a black tea (or any type) from among a dozen or more versions then of course they are going to taste them together.  For drinking tea with friends, Gongfu style or prepared Western brewed, it would probably make more sense to drink one after another.  But drinking two or more teas together can help you identify much more subtle character differences in relation to each other, eg. one might feel thicker, taste slightly more complex (even though similar in range), or a difference in length of aftertaste might stand out.  It's a good way to help determine how aspects combine to build up the overall effect of a tea.

Limitation:

Until it's familiar to drink two or more teas together the experience can be a bit much, a lot to take in.  That's counter-intuitive, because if you can taste and notice aspects beyond flavor for one tea it should be simple to extend that to two or three.  It's also odd that background noise volume significantly affects how much detail you notice in tasting a tea, but experientially that becomes very clear, that it makes a lot of difference.  In typical combined tasting practice it's natural to narrow down evaluation form to consider less detail, for example to focus more on flavor but not consider mouthfeel and aftertaste aspects as much.  With a bit more crowding of input stimulus only the primary flavors would stand out, the main tastes or aromas.

To some extent flavor and other effect builds across time when drinking some tea types, and combining drinking two versions can limit that.  Drinking cool but not cold water can "clear" your palate in between tasting samples or rounds, but it can't completely adjust for experiencing the tea in a different form, for the lack of continuity.

For some giving up noticing the "cha qi" or feel effect of a single tea type is a crucial limitation.  Not everyone notices this to the same degree, or values it in the same way, but combined tasting does rule out being able to distinguish this from either as a single source.   At some point the amount of tea drank also becomes a limitation, taking in too much caffeine.  It is possible to spit the tea back out while tasting it, effectively countering this issue, but for many that wouldn't be a preferred option.  For a professional tea taster it would probably be necessary, just a given.

Benefits:

A much finer level of level of detail can be detected, especially in relation to differences between versions.  With enough practice and appropriate taste-memory gauging a broad range of aspect types--beyond flavor--against a central baseline would be possible, but it requires relatively little practice to drink two teas of the same type together and notice the common ground and differences.  In the longer run combined tasting can help someone self-train to be more familiar with these types of ranges, or establish what is typical or best in a specific type.

It works better the more similar two or more tea examples are.  Once the approach becomes more familiar a contrast-theme tasting could also work, experiencing substantial differences, but until then sticking to at least similar versions would work better.  It's just too much ground to cover if teas differ a lot, and parallel brewing process concerns complicate things more if versions aren't similar.

Approach:

One special concern is that even if teas are brewed in exactly the same way (using identical proportion, devices, water source and temperature, and timing) not every tea will be at it's best using any one set of parameters.  A typical Western-style standardized approach offsets that by using parameters that aren't necessarily ideal for any, over-brewing teas slightly in relation to that metric.  This allows for greater detection of flaws and to adjust evaluation process (judgment) related to that preparation style becoming familiar.   ISO 3103, a brewing standard, covers one such approach and the main theme.  I'm going to part ways with discussing that general approach in favor of discussing how to brew tea in the most preference-optimum form using a Gong Fu approach instead.  This is only because that's how I approach tea tasting, not intended as a claim that it's better.

I use identical gaiwans to taste multiple teas.  Most often I compare only two versions, but have used this approach for up to four.  It gets to be too much tea over a short number of rounds for any more than two versions, and even for two using a small gaiwan works better, in the general range of 90 ml.  Using tiny gaiwans would also work, 60 ml or so versions.  Proportion should be whatever seems most familiar; what would seem to work best related to single type tasting.  I have made an adjustment to brew a lower proportion in order to make it through a complete sequence of rounds in tastings, but most often that related to being short on time.  Adding any unfamiliarity to the process adds difficultly.

It can come up that one tea brews faster for whatever reason, or is more intense, so that the same timing doesn't work well as an optimum for both.  In such a case I tend to brew both in the middle of what would be ideal for either.  It is possible to brew one version twice as long as the other, and throw off a parallel brewing structure, but observations comparing transition cycles wouldn't be as meaningful.  Any of these factors end up tying back to the intent.  If brewing is intended to objectively and completely compare two versions for review that might be a different goal, requiring different process, related to the approach serving an informal training function.

It works well for me to adjust infusion strength, going with what I see as a typical optimum for most rounds, and brewing one or more faster or slower instead to experience the teas in a slightly different form.  It's possible to guess what that would change from the "more optimum" infusions / rounds, but results aren't always what you would expect.  Brewing a tea slightly stronger tends to make flaws or imbalances show up better, and brewing it very lightly can make it easier to distinguish individual flavors, even though that's a bit counter-intuitive.

What to expect experientially:

It takes time.  You can't rush trying to fully experience one tea version over a number of rounds, and doubling or tripling that scope takes even longer.  Taking notes may or may not be of interest; again it depends on the intention.  Even only for personal reference it's very difficult to retain a detailed level of memory of individual aspects and transition cycle for more than one tea.  A month or two later most of that finer detail probably would have faded from memory.  Retaining that later could come in handy related to re-tasting a tea, to see how your impression changes, or to compare it to another version later on.

In cases when a tea might transition (change with age, or vary in relation to any other factors, for example settling after being shipped) retaining a detailed reference might be useful.  Tasting the same tea multiple times can sharpen your own evaluation skills; it often happens that flavors or aspects can be interpreted differently after more exposure, with a more complete impression available after trying a tea 3 or 4 times.

For a brand-new tea type it's natural to just notice a range of how versions can vary, beyond preferring a set of individual aspects, or picking up version limitations.  For trying two nearly identical tea versions--which typically only occurs by design, although if you comparison taste enough eventually chance would bring this up--it's interesting how even finer levels of differences stand out.  Very slight variance in sweetness level, bitterness, underlying mineral tone, mouthfeel (astringency related), etc., can be noticed, at a level that would be difficult to assign if tasting those teas over different days instead.  Very slight flaws or minor positive aspects also stand out more (eg. a less "clean" overall effect, or slightly more flavor intensity of complexity).

It's odd how much pre-conceptions can shift an impression.  If you think one tea version should be better, or expect a certain range of aspects (eg. based on reading a description prior) these inputs could easily change results.  It's even possible to get "stuck on" identifying the same aspects over and over, based on expecting them (eg. noticing cherry or cocoa in most black teas).  That doesn't necessarily mean it would be "better" to do a more blind tasting; again it depends on goals and preference.  In any case individual preference will shift interpretation of any experienced characteristics, so subjectivity is an integral part of the process.

As you experience finer levels of details minor variables would come into play more.  For example, mineral content in water changes outcome, and the same water wouldn't necessarily be optimum for different types.  Extending that a little two similar type but somewhat different samples might compare differently based on the water used (related mostly to mineral content, and also ph, and perhaps other factors).  Tasting slowly or faster would change how much time wet leaves would have to cool between rounds, altering final brewing temperature slightly.  Variances in the taster probably also plays more role than one might think.  It's as well to just keep things relatively uniform and not sweat all the details or outcome too much.


It wouldn't be for everyone, such an approach.  It's not a great match for casual tea drinking, adherence to ceremonial form, or when aiming for some sort of mindfulness experience.  It can be positive for training or detailed review purposes.