En Jie continues her introductory series. En Jie is a Sydney (Australia) based Chinese tea specialist, with a passion to share the modern rediscovery of an ancient beverage. She sells tea online at Valley Green Tea

Chinese tea houses

In China, tea houses serve as a venue for people to meet informally and socialise, similar to the café tradition in the west. They open all day and night, with young people being the main clientèle.

Characteristics of teas such as its inertness and ability to repeatedly infuse by topping up a teapot with hot water allow for informal chats that can last longer then a cup of coffee. A serve of tea leaves is generally subject to repeat to up to 4 infusions.

Aiding this is the ambiance created through layout of the tea house, comfortable setting, background music, and availability of a variety of small food dishes that can compliment the tea, and sometimes entertainment. Some tea houses also offer the option of a private room or cubicle.

Tea is ordered by price (eg. a serve of 10 Yuan Tie Guan Yin up to 200 Yuan Tie Guan Yin). Affordability and importance/status of the guests are determinants of what quality to order.

Teas are also consumed at restaurants – but the emphasis here is on the food rather than the tea.

En Jie, an Australian based Chinese tea specialist, has a passion to share the modern rediscovery of an ancient beverage; Chinese tea. “a source of life enjoyment and good health”. En Jie sell’s online at Valley Green Tea

Tea, well established in China with discerning well informed customers, is universally consumed at restaurants, work, home and in specialist tea houses. There is a strong tradition of drinking the locally produced tea. For example in the An Xi area, which produces 95% of China’s Tie Guan Yin tea, local people drink this local tea exclusively.

Tea shops in this area are also highly specialised in the local teas ( Outside a tea producing region tea shops will typically offer a wider variety of teas) and different qualities are easily differentiated by price. There is a great emphasis on quality and acceptance of these price differentials, for a top quality tea can be up to 1,000 times that of a base quality tea of the same type.

Most Chinese will regularly consume a medium to high quality tea. They may buy one tea quality for ordinary consumption and a higher quality for special occasions. Top quality teas are also often sold as collectables or gifts; Companies give them to clients as a demonstration of their wealth and prestige in being able to obtain rare and valued goods and China tends not to export their very top quality teas as they are able to fetch higher prices locally due to the appreciation within their local markets.

Amy Dubin, of Portland, Oregon USA, who imports her own range of Single Origin teas from India and then sells them on her online store , describes her conversion

In November 2002 I decided to immerse myself in tea education by going on a self-guided journey through India; my first stop was Assam, and a tea garden about an hour from Guwahati. The air was clear and sweet, it was late morning and already the pluckers were gearing up for their first tea break of the day.

The waist-high tea bushes were planted close together and lean, gangly trees towered over the garden, which stretched as far as the eye could see. Big, shiny leaves sprouted from every branch, I touched them in disbelief because they almost looked fake. I was shown how they’re plucked and took lots of pictures of the garden and the homes of the workers. Once I saw how much labor and care goes into making tea, it seemed clear that I wanted to make a life for myself in this industry too.

Henrietta Lovell sources teas from small mountain tea gardens, mainly in the famous tea region of Fujian, China. For those interested in finding aficionado teas in London, she provides some basic background.

Tea may come from the same regions and have the same name but not all tea is equal. It’s rather like fine wine or champagne: in a terroir there may be many producers growing many grapes but they don’t, of course, all produce the same wine. Beyond the dedication of the grower and the soil in which it is grown, teas differ by the way they are processed.

White tea is just dried and reveals the most delicate flavours with a heady aroma of freshly mown grass. Green tea is lightly fired or steamed to develop the softer, greener flavours. Black tea goes through fermentation (oxidization) which brings out the richest tannic flavours (the bitter taste that can make the mouth feel dry) ; and it’s not just the flavour that changes with the different methods of processing.

White tea, as the least processed of all teas, retains the highest concentrates of antioxidants, making it more effective at preventing and fighting various diseases. Green tea is steamed or fired to prevent oxidization and still maintains more antioxidants than black. The oxidization of black tea, however, results in some of the beneficial nutrients being converted into other compounds.

Henrietta’s Rare Tea Company has recently launched in Waitrose in London. You can find her products at these Waitrose stores : Holloway Road, East Sheen, Kings Road, John Barnes (Finchley road), Richmond, Bloomsbury, Putney, Gloucester Road, Marylebone, Oxford Street, Canary Wharf, Belgravia, Wandsworth, Kensington, Fulham, Balham, Barbican, St Katherines Dock and West Ealing. You can also order her teas direct from her online store here.

One of the most common statements I hear about tea bags is that they contain dust and sweepings from the floor; this is indeed true, but not in the way that you may think ! At the end of the manufacturing process, there is a jumble of different leaf particles that need to be sorted so that equal shapes and sizes are grouped together.

This is literally done using big sieving machines whereby the largest particles are syphoned off at the top and the smallest fall through the smaller mesh at the bottom (For fine quality teas this may be partially done by hand - as you see on the left).

The leaf grades of equal size/shape are then packed together and sold separately in the open market.

There is a very comprehensive grading system used within the tea trade and the smallest of these are known as ‘dusts’ - these grades literally look like dust as the particles are so small and it is typically these grades that are used in tea bags. Continue Reading »

There’s nothing better than sitting down with a good cup of tea and a large slice of chocolate cake (it’s not even 10am and I’m already salavating), but what happens if you combine the two..?

Flavoured teas are not new (think Earl Grey) and chocolate flavoured tea certainly isn’t either - but what constitutes a good chocolate tea? Whilst Adagio claim to have the best chocolate flavoured tea, most large tea companies will offer some form of chocolate flavoured combination. I’ve not tasted Adagio’s blend, of the chocolate teas I know, the best tend to have a light tea base (such as a Sri Lankan Uva) so as not to detract from the delicate flavour of the chocolate. A North Indian Assam base is already very malty and thick, so the chocolate flavouring has to be added to the tea in higher quantities in order to be tasted in the cup. Continue Reading »

Alex Probyn gives some industry insider views on tea in tea bags. Alex is a trained Master Tea Blender whose company Blends for Friends creates personalised tea blends as gifts and custom blends for tea shops; as gifts these teas are perhaps the height of tea giving as each blend is uniquely created from Alex’s stock of over 400 teas and herbs.

Invented in 1904, becoming widespread in Europe and North America during the 1950’s, the tea bag had not seen much change in it’s style for nearly 40 years before the likes of Tetley and Unilever (Lipton and PG Tips) sought new marketing angles by changing it’s shape. In reality - and contrary to what they would want you to believe - whether it be square, round or triangular, the flavour extraction is pretty much the same. However the past 10 years have seen a mini-revolution in these bags of leaves and it seems the bag of the moment is a ‘Fuso’ style bag that allows loose leaf teas to be brewed in a see-through gauze tea bag. Continue Reading »