Tea is a big part of our lives (Julie and I, that is) and to that end we decided to take 5 hours of our lives and go to the seminars offered by premier tea provider and salon Camellia Sinensis last weekend. It was incredibly fun! We got to taste 19 different teas! Delicious, I must say. Definitely an experience even for those that don't know much about tea. For example:
Pu-erh teas are the only tea that does not degrade over time; in fact it gets better and better with age. For this reason, they are classified by year and region just like vintage wine. They often look and taste similar to a strong black tea to the novice, even though there is a green tea aspect to it. One of the owners of Camellia Sinensis was allowed (after a grueling question-and-answer session by some local tea cultivators and sellers in China) to enter what I would call a shrine to Pu-erh tea. In this room was millions of dollars of tea stored in individual cakes. One such cake dating from 1930 (and there were many, even much older ones) and weighing roughly 350 grams cost about $10 000. Using the consumption of Julie and I as a reference* it would cost us about $30 per cup of tea. $30. Per CUP. If you wanted to try our tea, we'd have to charge you.
Tea can be a very prestigious commodity, like wine and spirits. At an auction this year, one very wealthy Chinese woman bought 25 grams of tea at an auction for $23 000. When asked what she was thinking, she boldly admitted that she didn't know very much about tea, but bought it for the prestige of being able to do so.
If you like premium Darjeeling tea, you may be disappointed in the 2008 spring yields. Snow, cold, and other inclement weather conditions combined with labour problems yielded a smaller amount of production at a considerably lesser quality than normal. The price you pay may not be worth it. Ask questions.
The difference between Chinese teas and Japanese teas in terms of production and philosophy is as clear as the difference in practice and philosophy between kung-fu and karate, or the Chinese and Japanese tea ceremonies, and it comes through in the taste if your palate and knowledge is sufficiently advanced. Japanese tea production uses more machines, is extremely clean, and is very, very precise. Chinese tea production is more intuitive, more fluid and flexible. Both are vastly different from Indian tea production, which, due to cultural factors, focuses more on large production of lesser quality teas to the West, although there are high-quality teas to be found there. It's no surprise that the country with the highest tea production is India.
Julie took a lot of notes on the teas that we sampled and bought that can be seen here.
It's worth looking at if you want to know more about tea from China, Taiwan, India and Japan. It's in French; if you want a translation, let me know.
* about 2 cups of tea per person per session (although in any given day she drinks much more than I do) which means roughly that 1 gram makes 1 cup for us. You can definitely stretch it, though, which we would do if we actually had this incredible tea in our possession.
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