Grasping The Aesthetic Of A Tea Company

In the course of sampling teas and reviewing them, I often go through a process with a new or unfamiliar tea company, in which I move from having no familiarity with the company, to trying one, two, three, and then more teas. Eventually, I form an impression of the company. Besides reflecting on the business, customer service, pricing, and presentational aspects of the company, I also form an impression of what I'd like to call the aesthetic of the tea company's teas. This aesthetic represents what I think of how the company's teas tend to differ from other company's teas, or how they tend to deviate from average or "typical" examples of each type of tea.

The aesthetic of a tea company is a bit of a nebulous concept, like this Lagoon Nebula pictured below, but, like this nebula, it is still a real concept that can, in some cases, be described in words:



Aesthetic can take the form of teas being sweeter or more bitter than typical, or of teas performing better under western-style brewing or gong-fu-style brewing, of the leaf of teas having certain characteristics of color, shape, or form, or of certain aromas being more or less represented than typical.

When comparing similar teas, aesthetic is sometimes subtle. For the most part, if you try a bunch of the same type of tea (like dragon well green tea, or Keemun black tea) from different companies, you'll be trying similar teas. But you will also probably notice certain trends even in these cases, if you pay enough attention. And, when looking at a company's whole catalogue, you will notice much larger trends in terms of which teas they choose to stock.

Some examples of a company's aesthetic that I've noticed:

• Rare Tea Republic struck me as carrying a lot of smoother-than-average teas that had a moderately vegetal flavor, more vegetal than typical, especially for their black teas, but not overwhelmingly vegetal.
• Adagio Teas has seemed to me to carry teas which tend towards a sweeter flavor, with lighter aromas, although they certainly have some exceptions as well.
• TeaVivre's teas struck me as more aromatic than most Chinese teas for sale in the west. Each tea of a familiar style that I tried, conformed closely to the "typical" examples, with traditionally more bitter teas tasting more bitter and traditionally smoother teas tasting smoother.
• Rishi Tea seems to often have bold, edgy teas, with atypical aromas and strong flavors, often a little out of my comfort zone, but always making my tea-drinking experience enjoyable.
• Life in Teacup seems to have a decidedly non-western focus, with more teas that initially taste quite different to a western palate. The company also carries a lot of teas that are less well-known in the West. This company's teas are more likely to strike me as a bit strange, but I've found, they are also more likely to excite me, and I'm more likely to find teas I consider to be truly exceptional from Life in Teacup than from most other companies.
• Simpson and Vail, whose teas I've been sampling recently, seem to have dry leaf that is less aromatic than typical, but I find that their teas are much more pleasant to drink than I'd expect from the aroma of the dry leaf.

Some companies, like Upton, are so diverse that it's hard for me to describe an aesthetic of the company as a whole. And in most cases, I haven't formed enough of an impression to describe a company's aesthetic.

Forming an impression of aesthetic:

In order for me to form what I would consider to be a very solid impression of the company, I like to do the following things:

• Sample some teas that represent the company's strengths - I think that a company's strengths and areas of focus say more about the company than random teas. Even in cases where a company specializes in a type of tea I am less familiar with, I want to really delve into the specialized offerings. When a company offers me samples, I like to accept at least a few samples that the company wants me to try, and that I may initially be less enthusiastic about. Sometimes, like with Rishi Tea's Vanilla Mint Pu-erh, which I would have never chosen to sample on my own, I am pleasantly surprised.
• Sample some of the company's most unique offerings - A recent example of this would be sampling Shanti Tea's Los Andes tea from Guatemala (my review).
• Sample some teas of styles which I am very familiar with - If I try only unfamiliar teas, I don't have a great sense of how the company's teas compare with others, both in terms of quality, and character.

The aesthetic begins to take form:

Once I've begun to sample a sizeable portion of teas from a particular brand or company, I begin to form an impression in my head about what that company's aesthetic is. Every tea company that I have sampled teas from has had its own unique stamp, signature, or characteristic aesthetic, but in some cases, it has been more overt, whereas in other cases, it has been subtle. This aesthetic reflects the decisions of the company's staff in which teas they choose to stock and sell. It also reflects the company's audience, and it may also reflect the companies practices of packing and storing teas, as these influence the tea's flavor as well. For example, I suspect that TeaVivre's loose-leaf tea is so aromatic because it is packed and sealed closer to the source of production and not re-opened after being shipped to the US, in contrast to some companies which import tea and then re-package it.

What do you think?

Do you think that the "aesthetic of a tea company" is a useful concept? Have you formed any impressions about the aesthetics of any tea companies yourself, whether or not you call them by this name? If you've formed an impression of the tea companies I mention here, does your impression fit with mine, or do you have a different view of any of these companies?

Tea and Locavores: Loose-Leaf Tea Which is Not Local Can Still Appeal to Fans of Locally Grown Food

I recently read an article on J-TEA's blog, Marketing Oolong in the U.S: Difficult But Not Impossible , which raises a number of questions. In this post, I want to focus on one question: whether or not imported tea can appeal to people who value locally-produced food and drink. My short answer is a resounding yes! I posted a comment on the post, but I decided that it was an interesting enough topic that I wanted to expand on it here.



The above picture shows a poster from the U.S. Food Administration, circa 1917-1919. While the U.S. government used to actively promote local foods, now, current U.S. food policy encourages a lot of long-distance shipping of foods, such as by subsidies of bulk commodities and other subsidies that benefit wide-scale factory-farming. Now, the local food movement is primarily driven by a decentralized network of people acting from their own personal value systems, out of a desire to preserve local food cultures and protect the environment.

My experience with locavores, die-hard fans of eating locally-produced food:

My experience is that there are very few "strict locavores", i.e., people who truly will not eat food that is not locally produced. Rather, most people seem to embrace eating locally-grown foods as a general guiding principle of something that is good, but not necessary to follow strictly, the way an Orthodox Jew might follow Kosher food laws. Strict locavores in colder climates would be forced to avoid such culinary staples as olive oil, lemons or limes, and many spices. Most people, no matter how enthusiastic they are about local foods, don't hold themselves to standards this strict.



The above salad (click the image for an ingredient list) was made in Pennsylvania from mostly-local ingredients, but it included lime, olive oil, and coriander from other regions.

It's also been my experience that people who are highly enthusiastic about eating locally-produced food and drink, either already love loose-leaf tea, or are very easy to get into drinking loose-leaf tea, especially if you present them with an explanation of how loose-leaf tea can fit into the same value system that values locally-produced foods.

Why do people want to buy or support locally-produced foods anyway?

There are many reasons that people seek out locally-produced foods. These include:

• Sustainability - Using locally-produced goods can minimize consumption of fuel to transport goods over long distances. Increased reliance on locally-produced goods can also promote economic sustainability by promoting more local economic activity and insulating each region against economic downturns in other regions.


• Local Traditions - Local food production is inextricably tied to local food culture. People often support local foods because they want to support traditions, including the preservation of and development of specific cultivars of plants, as well as traditions of preparing food. "Foodies", people interested in food culture in general, tend to be among the strongest proponents of locally grown foods.


• Quality - Locally grown foods are often fresher and higher in quality, and are often preferred by people seeking out the best-tasting and highest-quality goods.

Loose-leaf tea may not be local, but fits easily into all of the main driving factors behind the eat local movement:

In most parts of most Western countries, locally-grown tea is simply not available. But even if tea is not locally-produced, there are reasons that loose tea, specifically, high-quality loose-leaf artisan teas, traditionally produced, single-origin teas, can fit into this same framework for a variety of reasons. Much of this comes into comparing tea to coffee, or presenting tea as a substitute good for coffee:

• Tea production, measured per cup of brewed tea, is less resource-intensive, and thus more sustainable, than coffee production.


• Tea culture is associated with a more mindful, slow-paced culture than coffee, which is often associated with a fast-paced consumerist society.


• Tea is much more diverse than coffee, having a greater potential to appeal to foodies and people interested in the diversity present in the different types of a certain food or drink available.

But looking at tea on its own, it also fits into more things:

• Tea, even higher-priced tea, is quite inexpensive when compared to other food and drink. Tea can thus appeal to people who value sustainability and the prudent use of resources.


• The traditions of tea production in many countries are rich and diverse; by buying high-quality single-origin tea of specific varieties, produced by traditional methods, people support the preservation and development of local traditions.


• As tea ships and stores well, people seeking out local foods primarily for quality reasons will have no qualms about seeking out high-quality tea imported from far away, as it is a good, much like olive oil or spices, that does not suffer much from being shipped.

Do these "selling points" work for drawing local food enthusiasts into the world of high-quality, imported loose-leaf tea? It has been my experience that they absolutely do! Most locavores are not strict or fanatical in their focus on buying and eating local. They are just regular people with common sense, who care about sustainability, about the quality of their food, and about preserving local food traditions. If you can show them how loose-leaf tea fits into their value system, they can and will get into it.

If you want to read more about these issues, you can find more depth on my post Tea as Slow Food.

Top 5 Most Unusual / Interesting Black Teas I've Tried

This top 5 post focuses on unusual black teas, black teas that have something novel, exciting, and different about them.



One of the reasons behind this post is that I sometimes read and hear the idea, expressed by enthusiasts of Chinese and/or Japanese teas, that the most interesting teas are green, oolong, Pu-erh, and white teas, and that black teas are somehow not as interesting, or do not represent a fully rich, deep, or complex tradition worthy of the same sort of focus or interest as the other types of teas. While I find it hard to argue with some points (like the complexity of Pu-erh), I think that some tea enthusiasts dismiss black tea without ever seeing what it can offer. People have different tastes, and I think it is completely legitimate to prefer these other types of tea, but I think that if you seek out interesting black teas and approach them with an open mind, you will find they offer a lot of diversity.

There is a difference between a tea that I consider interesting and a tea that I consider good. This list is not a collection of favorites. When comparing ratings on RateTea, I ranked a number of black teas higher than some of these, but for this list, I did not consider the teas with what I would call a "classic" profile of a well-established style, like a classic Assam, Darjeeling, or Keemun. These are the teas that defied classification, had surprising complexities in their aroma, and were totally unlike anything I had tried before:

• Putharjhora Estate FTGFOP1 Tippy/Cl First Flush Organic from Upton Tea - From the Dooars region of India, this tea stands out as the most interesting black tea I have ever sampled. I experimented with brewing it extensively, and I found that multiple infusions were required to fully experience it and bring out its diverse characters. This tea had elements in common with Darjeeling and Assam teas, and exhibited nuances of wintergreen, fruit, malt, celery, citrus, and caramel in the different infusions. One thing that really struck me about this tea was its resemblance to sheng Pu-erh and high-grown green oolongs in later infusions. The flavor and mouthfeel were also very complex, with peppery sensations like a Yunnan dian hong, and a significant savory or umami presence as well.


• Royal Tajiri Tea from Royal Tea of Kenya - This is the only black tea so far that I gave a perfect score on RateTea. It has a fresh, vegetal quality I usually only encounter in Darjeelings, yet is stronger overall. Aroma has suggestions of asparagus, honey, malt, muscatel, and wintergreen. Eminently pleasing to drink!


• Livingstonia Estate GFBOP from Upton Tea - A Tanzanian orthodox tea, also with wintergreen in the aroma, and rice, malt, and floral tones. The floral tones are reminiscent of Queen Anne's Lace, a flower with a distinctive aroma that I have not before noticed in tea. Very unlike other teas I've tried, but also very balanced and enjoyable.


• Kuwapani Estate Makalu Tippy Spl from Upton Tea - This tea from Nepal, which Upton described to be Oolong-like, I found to be vaguely reminiscent of Panyang Congou. The aroma has tones of sandalwood, smoke, wintergreen, cocoa, and muscatel. This tea had a dry, peppery finish as well.


• Singalila Estate SFTGFOP1 from Upton Tea - This tea, which I did not enjoy quite as much as the others, but still liked, was just outright bizarre. It was from a very new tea garden in Nepal; Upton described it as being oolong-like. The dry leaf appeared Darjeeling-like, but upon brewing, the aroma had a burnt quality, suggestive of candle wax. Nuances in the aroma included peppermint, vanilla, and chocolate, with hints of muscatel grape, smoke, and dust. This may not have been my favorite tea on this list but it certainly is up there among the most interesting black teas I've sampled.

One interesting observation I made after compiling this list was the fact that four of these teas exhibited wintergreen in the aroma. This signals the presence of methyl salicylate, which I explain in my post on wintergreen tones in black tea. While I haven't liked all teas exhibiting strong wintergreen tones, I think that in general, this quality tends to correlate pretty strongly with other qualities that I like in black tea.

What do you think?

What are some of the most interesting or unusual black teas that you've tried? What companies other than Upton Tea Imports would you like to recommend for these sorts of teas? Have you tried any of these teas?

How Into Tea Are You? How Is Being Into Dance Like Being Into Tea?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about my level of depth, interest, and focus, in various aspects of my life. A discussion on the Tea Trade Forums led me to an LA Times story on rare tea enthusiasts, which sparked some of this thought. When I first started working on RateTea, I was interested in tea, but was early on in the process of learning about it. Now, I know a fair amount about tea, having spent a few years researching it in a fairly intense manner, sampling different teas, and becoming tied into the tea industry in various ways. But I would not consider myself a tea expert, and I regularly encounter people who know far more about tea than I do, and perhaps more importantly, who are more into tea.

These people are more excited about tea than me. Tea is their passion. I will be the first to admit, tea is not my passion. Yes, that's right, I'm not that into tea. Just how much am I into tea? I'm into tea in much the same way I'm into dance. Here is a picture of one of the styles of dance that I like to do regularly, called lindy hop, a type of swing dance. This photo was taken at Rittenhop, an event run by the Lindy and Blues organization, whose tuesday night dances I nearly always attend:



There are some people who are really into dance: they dance many nights a week, and on weekends they frequently travel to various big dance weekends, which include weekends focusing on workshops and dance lessons, as well as those focused on social dancing. Some of the people with the highest level of enthusiasm for the dance scene will lose a lot of sleep at these events, and between their work and dance, they have little room for other hobbies and social activities.

When I dance too much:

There is such a thing as too much dance. I have gone to physical therapy twice for dance-related injuries, and they were both not acute injuries, but rather, injuries associated with chronic over-use. I've stayed up later than I normally would because of dance, and felt bad and off-kilter for the following day or two. And I've had moments when I realized that my whole social life revolved around the dance scene, and that I felt a strong need to diversify my social circles. And I cut back from dance and diversified my life in all of these circumstances.


I'm more interested in balance in my life. I like dance not for its own sake, but because I like the exercise and the social interaction, I like the sort of community of quirky, intelligent, creative people that the dance scene attracts, and I like the dance form as something that can be a source of creativity and inspiration in my life. I like dance because it produces good results in my life. But I am not interested in attending every big dance weekend, not even every one in my own city. I do not care about being the "best" dancer (if there is such a thing), and I do not feel like I'm missing out if I miss a major dance event. I value my sleep, I value having a broad range of hobbies, and I value having a diverse social life. I want to dance only to the degree that it enhances, rather than detracts from the other elements of my life.

My interest in tea:

My interest in tea is similar. I like tea not for its own sake, but I like tea because I like how it tastes, and how it makes me feel. I like the effect that drinking tea has on my life. And I like the effect that paying attention to how tea tastes, and learning about where my tea comes from, has on my life.

However, I am not interested in getting so focused on tea that it would detract from other elements of my life. For example, I'm not interested in drinking so much tea that I have trouble sleeping because of the caffeine, and I'm not interested in spending so much money on tea that it takes away in any substantial way from money that could be better put to use elsewhere. And I'm not interested in thinking or learning so much about tea and where my tea comes from, that I start thinking less about my food and where it comes from.

My interest in tea fits in a holistic way into my life. And at times, I find myself obsessing over tea, and I realize this is too much, and I need to hold back.

What I want to encourage in others:

I want to encourage this approach in others. I want people to become interested in tea, not to become interested in tea for its own sake, but so that they start paying more attention to food and drink in general. I want people to start listening to their bodies and raising awareness of their mind and bodies through paying attention to how tea makes them feel. I want people to drink tea with others and to take a break in their day to enjoy tea, and I want people to see the mental and emotional and spiritual benefits of taking these sorts of breaks.

And I think this is a good general rule to follow, when asking yourself how interested you want to be in something. Is your interest in this one thing making your life as a whole better? If so, then keep being that interested or more interested. If your interest is detracting from your life as a whole, by taking away from other aspects of your life, then scale back. This point will be different for different people. But I'm about at that point for tea. I'm not interested in being any more interested in tea, nor any less interested; I'm content where I am.

How about you?

OpenSky, and Why Communism Failed

Lainie Petersen of Lainie Sips wrote a blog post about a tea coupon special through a website called OpenSky. This was the first time I had heard of the site OpenSky, so I decided to check it out. Apparently, tea is one of the products that this site occasionally has deals on.

But when I visited the site, it reminded me, among other things, of Communism, which inspired this post.

My memories of Communism:

I've never lived in a Communist country, but I was born in 1980, when the cold war was still very much alive, and I remember, as a child, the rhetoric and public talk of Communism, with the unified "Eastern Bloc" of Communist countries from the USSR through Eastern Europe. And I remember the fall of the Berlin wall, and the breakup of the USSR. My mother, being a German professor, felt that we had to get over to Germany after the wall came down, and I remember going to Germany in the summer of 1990, after the wall came down, but before reunification. We arrived in East Berlin on the day that East Germany was changing their currency to the West German Deutsche Mark; shopping on that day was chaotic and confusing, but to an American at the time, prices were dirt cheap. I was only 10 at the time, but this experience left a lasting expression on me, and I think it helped fuel my propensity to think critically about economic systems.



I did not take any photos on the first trip, but I returned to East Berlin in 1996, and stayed with a host family. The photo above is from this trip; it depicts a Strassenbahn, meaning Street-train, a trolley much like the ones I ride now in West Philadelphia. The pictured trolley is a modernized one, an upgrade from the decrepit trolleys that I saw during my first trip, and occasionally during my second trip.

Even in 1996, East and West Germany were like night and day. East Germany had construction everywhere, although it still looked poor and falling apart. And even to an American like me, it was easy to spot and distinguish East and West Germans by their body language and dress. There was considerable evidence of cultural tension, and I saw the toll that Communism had taken on East Germany and its people.

Learning about Communism:

I've also heard about Communism through other means. My roommate during my first year in Oberlin was Armenian, and talked about his experiences during Communism. I also have known, less closely, numerous Russians, East Germans, and others who grew up in Communist countries, over the years. One thing I learned was that East Germany was by far the most prosperous and functional of the Eastern Bloc Communist countries, and that the level of poverty and dysfunction in other areas was far greater. Add on top of this the authoritarian control of the government, punishing any sort of dissent, and overly paranoid to the degree that it employed people to spy on just about every citizen, and you have a culture and society that created such depressing but beautiful works as Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet. Shostakovich, by the way, was contemplating suicide while writing that work. Have a listen:



Besides listening to Shostakovich, I've also extensively read the works of Marx, not just The Communist Manifesto, but also some of his earlier works, in which he takes a more metaphysical approach, talking about how people are spiritually connected to the product of their labor, and how capitalism results in alienation of people from the product of their labor, through paying for labor. And I've read enough Marx and know enough about Communism to know that Communism in the Soviet Union would have been absolutely abhorrent to Marx.

Why did Communism fail?

I think I have a pretty good idea of why Communism failed. It failed because it was based around the idea of a small core group of people micromanaging an entire society, specifically, micromanaging its economy. This phenomenon is called a planned economy or a control economy. And it doesn't work.

Societies are too complex...they're more like an ecosystem than a machine. And a group of people, no matter how intelligent, simply cannot centrally plan everything needed to make an economy function at all, let alone function well. Even in a smaller country, some sort of decentralized system, like the free market, is necessary, or eventually, massive economic failure results. The only way for a government to be successful at managing its economy is to shape and guide the economy by setting up good incentives, rather than by trying to micromanage it. China realized this, and embraced a market economy and this is why China's economy did not collapse like the USSR did.

Now to OpenSky:

My first impression of OpenSky was not positive. The site immediately displays a squeeze page, a page with little content and few links, which prominently leads you to sign up for something. I wrote about squeeze pages and how they are a common feature of spam / scam sites on my post Tea Spam: Starting With The Most Blatant. This screenshot shows the squeeze page:



What exactly is this site about? Here are two quotes from the site:

"Our tastemakers don't just curate your shopping experience..."

And:

"They'll discover the best products for you."

Really? This is starting to sound a lot like Communism to me, not to mention that it takes the fun out of shopping (I love searching around for a bargain, love evaluating the quality of different products, and I love the process of comparing different stores or sellers against each other!). And also, it's been my experience that there are only three people who know my tastes better than anyone else, and who are consistently best at picking out products that are best for me, and these people are me, myself, and I. And it also has been the case, for the most part, that retail businesses themselves also play an important role in the selection process.

I don't need or want celebrities or specially appointed people (who aren't directly involved in running the business) picking out products. I'd rather just operate as I do...find sellers or businesses that seem consistent in their quality control and fair in their pricing, and buy from them. Didn't Communism establish that having a team of people trying to do a better job of this doesn't work?

What do you think?

Did you live through Communism? What do you think about Communism? How about OpenSky? Have you used it? Do you think it has a spammy-looking squeeze page? Do you think it's a Communist conspiracy to make our economy collapse through central planning?

Aesthetics: What Purposes Do They Serve?

This post is inspired by a discussion on the Tea Trade Forums about the new East India Company, in which we began talking about whether or not luxury and idealism are necessarily at odds with each other. The general sentiment seemed to be that, to a degree, they are. But this post is not directly about that...it's about aesthetics.

In the discussion, David Gall posted a comment about how he appreciates beautiful objects, whether it be handmade art or well-designed electronics (he gives Apple computer as an example). I certainly think that aesthetics and beauty have great value, both for me and in general.



Some things, like sunsets, seem to be nearly universally appreciated as beautiful. But aesthetic senses, the sense of what things are beautiful, also vary hugely from person to person and culture to culture. One thing I think about a lot is the degree to which our aesthetic sense is culturally constructed, and can be changed. I like to think critically about aesthetics, and ask the question:

What effect is our aesthetic sense having on our lives, on our society, and on our environment?

Aesthetics produce real-world results:

Aesthetics are by no means superficial...they impact nearly all choices we make in life, from which products we choose to buy, to which streets or roads we choose to drive or walk on, to where we choose to live, to which clothes we put on in the morning. And, although some of us may not fully admit it, they also impact which people we choose to associate with. Many of the ways in which aesthetics shape our lives are subconscious...we make decisions to choose one thing over another, and these are sometimes major choices that impact our lives and the lives of other people as well.

An example of aesthetics having ecological impact:

One of the aspects of modern society in which subjective and highly variable aesthetics can have far-reaching ecological impacts is that of the grassy lawn. Pictured here are two patches of grass or lawn in Bryn Athyn, PA. The first:



And the second:



I chose these two photos because they are about as directly contrasting as you can get, at least, in Bryn Athyn at this time of year. Which is more attractive to you? The top picture is more lush and vibrant; the bottom picture is more barren looking, but shows greater diversity, both of color (with the two different flowering plants), and biodiversity. If you know me at all, you'll know that I prefer the aesthetics of the second picture.

When choosing something like which tea to drink, our aesthetic sense is mainly a question of personal taste. But in the case of these two pictures of patches of grass, there are actual impacts of choosing one aesthetic over the other. The top picture depicts an unnatural lawn, heavily treated with chemicals to maintain both a lush green color and a monoculture of one plant (and you know how I feel about monocultures). The chemically-intensive maintenance of this lawn has negative consequences on the environment, and even on humans--that lawn is actually on the campus of Bryn Athyn College, in an area where people often walk barefoot, thus exposing themselves to whatever chemicals were sprayed on the grass.

The second picture of grass, an untreated area, has much greater biodiversity, not to mention that it is less resource-intensive to maintain. More biodiversity means greater ecological value, and most importantly, there are none of the negative impacts associated with using herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers. It looks a little bleak if you're used to the aesthetic in the first picture, but there's beauty hiding in the bleakness...the photo is taken during April, after all. If you are at all familiar with Pennsylvania's climate and ecology, you'll know that Pennsylvania does not naturally have lush, light-green colors year-round. April is a time in-between the browns and grays of winter, and the lush green foliage of spring...plants are beginning to bloom, but there's still a lot of brown and gray about. I personally find it beautiful.



This final photo shows a polluted stretch of the Delaware river, viewed from National Park, New Jersey, to remind us that, just as chemicals wash off and flow downstream, our actions flow into consequences. Fertilizers and chemicals used on lawns and in agriculture and industry kill wild animals, devastate ecosystems, contribute to cancer and other chronic diseases in humans, and destroy fishing industries downstream. This stretch of the Delaware river could be pristine; there could be abundant fish here, and it could be safe to eat these fish. In our current world, it is not.

Imagine what it could be like. And now:

You can choose your aesthetic sense:

You can choose which of the two pictures of grassy lawn to prefer. In this case, it's not a matter of personal taste. Choose the second one.

Safety in Numbers: Perspective, and Not Getting Stuck in Your Ways

A conversation on the tea trade forums, which references an article about how Twinings "New" Earl Grey formulation is not being well-received, inspired this post.

That article is about long-standing drinkers of Twinings old Earl Grey being outraged at this changed formulation...and it's about this phenomenon in general, and what it says about our tastes in tea, and in food, and about how we live our lives in general. The following collage of some of my favorite teas, with a few herbs too, is a sneak-peek of the solution to these problems: safety in numbers, not quantity of anything, but rather, diversity, the number of different teas we drink, which can be an empowering analogy for giving us stability in all aspects of our life:



To be honest, I've never liked Twinings' Earl Grey, even though I think Twinings is a company that, among the mainstream tea bag brands, does British tea well. One of my favorite tea bags is their Ceylon Orange Pekoe which I gave a fairly favorable review--better than some loose-leaf Ceylons I bought from Upton, my favorite tea company. But this is just a matter of personal taste, and is not terribly relevant. What is relevant here is that Twinings Earl Grey was the same for many years, and it changed. And people were upset. This type of reaction is actually rather normal and almost expected, whenever a product that has stayed consistent for so long changes. People get stuck in their ways.

What do we get angry about?

The article describes people as being very angry about this change. "An affront to tea", people posting angry complaints on Twinings' company site. I'll be the first to admit that I get angry about a lot of things. But I don't really get angry about tea. I get critical of tea, herbal tea, tea companies, and their business practices...in fact, if you read this blog a lot, you've probably read a lot of critical posts lately. But I'm not angry.

What do I get angry about? I get angry about injustice, and economic exploitation, especially when people profit through dishonest or coercive means. I get angry about sexual assault and rape, especially when it happens to people I care about, but really, when it happens to anyone. I get angry about people showing blatant disregard for other people and for their community, such as vandalizing common areas such as parks or public buildings on college campuses. And I get especially angry at people thinking that their wealth or social status entitles them to treat others of "lower status" with disrespect. I find this attitude abhorrent and it makes me want to just crush them with my bare hands.

I don't always handle or express my anger gracefully. Sometimes I lose my temper, and, believe it or not, I have actually yelled at people in public, using quite colorful language. More often, I just sit and stew and let it ruin my day or get me into a global, negative mood that makes me quite unpleasant to be around. And, in addition to the things above, I also sometimes get angry about superficial or irrelevant things. I want to make clear that I am not some sort of "enlightened being" who knows how to effectively handle my emotions all of the time.

But I do know one thing. I don't get angry about the quality of tea...even when it changes, and even when tea is really really bad. Why?

A sense of perspective:

It seems silly to me to get genuinely upset about a tea's formulation changing when there are so many other more important things to get upset about. It also makes me wonder who these people are who are getting upset, and what their lives are like.

There are some aspects of my life that I have found very difficult over the years. One of them is friendship, through various moves. I've formed so many wonderful, close friendships over the years, and one by one, I've seen friends move far away, or I've moved from my friends. First, I moved from high school, then my college friends dispersed, then I moved from Cleveland to Delaware, then to Connecticut, briefly to the west coast, and back to the east. Even when I stay in one place, people seem to come and go. Even when my friends stay in one town, they often vanish into their careers, school, family obligations, or other activities that eat up all available time in their lives. This process has been very painful to me, and continues to be painful on an ongoing basis.

And then I read the news and I read about earthquakes, floods, war, violence, and I read about the U.S. and our stagnating economy, and I see the partisan bickering and I see my own feeble attempts to build a consensus between liberals and conservatives, falling on deaf ears or being ignored as I post my articles to the facebook and twitter feeds.

And I sit here reading about people who are upset about tea and I wonder...where are these people's sense of priorities? Have they ever lost a loved one, do they care about war or poverty? I suspect that most of them probably have, and probably do care. But why are they getting upset about tea? Are they perhaps channelling their frustration into something irrelevant in the global picture, because they feel powerless to do anything about the things in life that really do matter, much like I often do?

Back to safety in numbers, and diversity:

While I'd like to think that I don't get upset about tea because I have a better sense of priorities and greater perspective, there may be a more superficial and less enlightened reason that is perhaps more powerful: safety in numbers. I can't possibly be upset if one particular tea changes, because I drink so many different teas. I'm never particularly let down when one of those teas changes or even if it is completely taken away, because there are so many other great teas out there.

But is safety in numbers really so superficial, or does it work because it creates perspective through diversity? If this approach works for tea, can it possibly work for helping us to cope with and address some of the really gory, gruesome problems in our lives, like the ones I touched on above?

Perhaps. I have personally found that when I've had a greater diversity of experiences in my life, and when I've come into contact with a broader range of people, and immersed myself in the lives and experiences of people of different ages and backgrounds and circumstances, it has given me a sense of perspective and stability that I don't have if I keep my life more homogeneous. With this greater perspective, I am better able to think up solutions to a broad range of problems in my own life as well as in the lives of others, and I am less likely to react in non-constructive ways to things that genuinely upset me.

What do you think? Does any of this ring true with your own experience?

Seasonality of Tea and Nature

One of my favorite aspects of reading tea blogs, which is more evident in some blogs than others, is reading about nature. Among these blogs, one of my favorites is Tea for Today, where Marlena often adds detailed little notes about birds she observed, and often includes nature scenes. I also love Tea Musings, a blog with original poetry; many of these poems focus on aspects of nature and the changing seasons. I very highly recommend both of these blogs if you love nature as much as I do.

The way I view it, becoming interested in and knowledgeable about tea, beyond a certain level of introductory knowledge, requires becoming interested in nature. In this post I want to show how the seasonality in tea is part of a broader trend of patterns that exist in numerous other plants and animals. Here's a picture that, for me, captures this time of year, early fall:



This photo shows a black-and-white warbler in fall plumage. This is a first-year bird. The fall migration season of birds is characterized by an abundance of newly-raised first-year birds, travelling south for the winter. In the background are the yellowing leaves of a hackberry tree, partly bare already. Hackberry trees, of the Celtis genus, lose their leaves relatively early, but this year, many of these trees lost their leaves particularly early. In nature, there are fluctuations in the health and population of nearly all living things, including plants and animals. Just as the tea harvest is different each year, each tree species fares better some years than others, insect infestations wax and wane (attacking stressed trees more easily), and bird populations grow, shrink, and move in response to the abundance of food. These hackberry trees, partly defoliated and full of insects, and also full of ripe fruit, attracted huge mixed flocks of migratory warblers, who help to control the populations of these insects.

The changing of the seasons is evident in this bird; compare its appearance to a photo I took of the same species in spring, in the same area:



The background shows the intact, yellow-green leaves of spring, in this case, on a white oak. This bird has a black throat and cheek, signaling that it is a male. (I'm pretty sure the first bird is male too). You can click the photos to learn more about these birds.

One reason I wanted to share these birds is to make an analogy to the seasonality of tea. Both of these birds are clearly identifiable as black-and-white warblers. The differences between them are noticeable, especially after someone points them out, but they might not be immediately evident to an untrained eye. This difference is a lot like the difference between the different flushes or harvests of tea, for instance, Darjeeling black tea. A connoisseur would usually (not always) be able to easily distinguish first flush from, say, autumnal flush (which, by the way, is coming available right now). But inexperienced tea drinkers often (not always) would not. I think in this respect, seasonal distinctions in the different qualities of tea are a lot like the seasonal differences in bird plumage. There is a certain unity in how nature works and is organized.

Changing of the seasons:

The changing of seasons is a very fundamental aspect to human existence. Some areas, such as the eastern United States, where I am located, have four well-defined seasons, whereas other areas have fewer, more subtle, or different seasons. For example, San Diego has a cool, slightly rainy season in their "winter", a cloudy but generally rainless spell around May-June, and then a sunny late summer and early fall, sliding back into the cooler, slightly rainy winter. Only certain climates produce the familiar fall or autumn with changing tree colors and fallen leaves of diverse colors:



Many of the major tea-growing regions have very strong, well-defined seasons, but these seasons do not always correspond to what most Americans or Europeans know of as seasons. South and Southeast Asia has a strongly pronounced monsoon season, much more pronounced than any of the seasonal precipitation patterns in North America. Most of Asia has wet summers and dry winters. The dry winters produce a greater swing of temperatures during the winter than similar areas experience in North America...but Asia experiences fewer heavy snow events. Some tea-growing areas, including much of Sri Lanka, and parts of Africa, have a bimodal precipitation pattern, meaning that there are two distinct wet seasons and two distinct dry seasons in each year. In many tropical regions, the seasons are poorly defined at low altitudes, where it is warm year-round, but as altitude rises and it becomes both colder and rainier, the seasons become more pronounced. This effect is evident on the west-coast of the U.S., such as in how high altitudes in Southern California show a full four seasons like the east coast.

Unfortunately, our modern society has often disconnected us from the seasons. Carefully climate-controlled interiors of offices, homes, and cars make us comfortable, but disconnect us from the world outside. Year-round avaliability of normally seasonal foods like apples, oranges, or even lettuce, further disconnects us. We lose touch with nature. Is this what we really want? I don't want it at all, and as I've gotten older, I've realized that I'm willing to give up something (i.e. no apples in spring, no plums in winter) in order to be more in touch with what's really going on. I also have found that the food I eat tends to taste better, and also be more affordable, when I eat what's in season. Living this way is also more sustainable, as eating and using what is seasonally available requires fewer resources; it involves working with rather than working against nature.

The following photo of a red Bartlett pear and a Valencia orange looks natural, but is not: Bartlett pears are a fall crop of cold climates, and Valencia oranges, a late winter / early spring crop of milder climates. It's simply not possible that these were both produced locally--not even both on the east coast of the US. One of these was clearly shipped across the globe from a different climate:



The same things are true of tea, to a degree:

Single-harvest teas vs. blends:

Naturally, as the growing conditions of the tea plant change throughout the year, the character of the tea produced changes, sometimes radically. Large tea companies, including the brands of tea owned by Unilever, seeking a consistent product, often blend-out these differences, changing the proportion of teas used in their blends in order to retain a consistent flavor and character of their tea year-round and from one year to the next.

While I can understand the drive to consistency, I resist it. I want to taste that variability. And I want to stay true to production methods that work with nature, rather than working against it. Nature has variability. I want to taste that variability, and I certainly don't want to pay to blend it out.

How about you?

Ideal Tea Sample Sizes: How Small, How Large?

This post explores the question of what the ideal sample size is to offer to a customer. Hopefully, it will be useful both to potential shoppers as well as to tea companies.

Pictured here are some different samples I have received recently:



Some samples also arrive in tins, although these are not pictured. In a later post I plan to talk more about the type of containers used for samples, but for now, I want to focus on one thing: the size of the sample. It is evident from the picture above that there is a fair difference in size of different samples. Keep in mind, the size difference can be even larger than the picture suggests, because different amounts of leaf occupy different amounts of space. The brown package contains a tiny amount of loosely-packed oolong, whereas the tiny vacuum pack in the back (which weighs much more) contains a much larger amount of tightly-rolled oolong.

Why are samples useful?

If you are a business, the value of offering samples is immense. In case it's not glaringly obvious, offering small sample sizes of each of your teas is a way to help your customers to discover which teas they like, while minimizing the risk of the customer making big purchases that they are unhappy with. The last thing you want is a customer to sink a large amount of money into a purchase that they find out that they do not enjoy. If, on the other hand, the customer purchases several samples and does not like one of them, the loss is relatively small, and the customer has gained useful information.

What is an ideal sample size?

In my opinion, the ideal sample size is small enough that there is not much waste if the customer does not like the tea and large enough to try the tea several times and experiment with brewing.

I have seen sample sizes ranging from 2 grams to 1 ounce (a little over 28 grams). 2 grams is, in my opinion, much too small, as it is only enough to brew a single cup of tea, Western-style. Such a small sample size does not allow for repeated sampling and thus does not allow for any experimentation with brewing. Gong fu brewing, of course, is out of the question.

28 grams, on the other hand, is too big. Fortunately, I have lucked out in my purchases, and all 1-ounce samples I have ordered have been quite enjoyable to me. Sometimes it can take me time to acquire a taste for a tea, but in most cases, if I've brewed a tea three or more times, over a week or more, and I still fail to appreciate it, I probably am not going to like it at all, and the remainder of the sample is wasted unless I can find someone else who likes it.

I think 15 grams, or a little over half an ounce, is a sweet spot for me, in terms of sample size. This allows for 6 or more Western-style brewings, or for 1-2 Gong Fu brewings, with leaf left over if only done once. Being able to experiment with different styles of brewing helps me to really understand the tea.

Sample Pricing:

The size of tea samples is closely related to pricing. For inexpensive teas, especially with smaller samples, the cost of packing and labelling the sample is probably going to be larger than the cost of the tea itself.

For pricey teas and larger samples, the cost of the tea becomes significant. This phenomenon is very clearly evident in the catalog of Upton Tea Imports, which has a minimum sample size of $1 for 15 grams, and many teas with this price point, but also many teas which go much higher, including for smaller samples (the priciest I've seen from them was $8 for 2 grams).

My recommendation to companies is to price your samples as low as you can without losing money or undercutting the price of the next-largest quantity after the sample. Why? Samples are a great way to bring in new customers, and they prevent existing customers from ending up with teas they are not happy with. You might say: "But what about people who just like sampling teas...like you, Alex? Won't they put us out of business?" First of all, I said as low as you can without losing money. But I also want to point out that the people, like me, who order obscene numbers of samples and then never order those teas again, are the people who really think about tea. I may never re-order the vast majority of teas I sample, but I write about each one of them online, and often talk about them with my friends. By catering to the sampling crowd, you get free advertisement.

What do you think?

If you are a tea drinker, what is your ideal sample size when you are looking to try new teas? How often do you order samples, and how big a factor is sample size in choosing whether or not to buy from a company?

And if you work for or own a tea company, how do you determine the sample size to offer? And how do you set the price?

Downtime, Tea, Birding, and Warblers

The term downtime or down time has two uses. In computing and information technology, or when referring to any sort of technology or machines, downtime refers to the time on which a system or machine is down or out of operation. In human terms, however, downtime can refer to a period of rest or relaxation. I hesitate to use the term "non-productive" because I find rest to be of paramount importance in productivity. In fact, one of the things I most like about drinking tea is that the time to make and then drink tea provides a break. Even if you drink tea at a desk, while working on other things, the act of pausing to take a sip provides a microbreak; these tiny breaks can reduce the risk of work-related injury, as well as enhancing your concentration and focus.

Today, however, I took more than a microbreak. After starting work fairly early, the servers that RateTea and a number of other websites that I run are hosted on experienced some downtime. While this was slightly annoying, the problem was fixed relatively quickly. During this time, however, I was unable to do the work I wanted to do. Given that it is still during the peak warbler migration season, I headed outside to Woodlands Cemetery to do some birdwatching.



Unfortunately, I did not have my camera on me; the above pictures are all pictures I have taken, of warblers, at various times. Today I saw a black-throated blue warbler, pictured upper-right, and a northern parula, pictured lower-left, and a black-and-white warbler, pictured top left. The other bird pictured here, yellow-rumped warbler, I did not see today (they tend to arrive in large numbers in a few weeks), but I also saw a chestnut-sided warbler, pine warbler, bay-breasted warbler, magnolia warbler, and American redstart. All in all, I saw 8 species of warbler and 23 total species of birds. Given that this was just a casual walk around an urban cemetery, and not a planned trip where I tried to see as many birds as possible, I find this amount of biodiversity staggering.

When I returned, the servers were back up. This was down time for me, but I was still working in a sense. I systematically gathered data on what birds I saw, and entered the data into eBird, which is a joint effort of the Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. eBird solicits data from casual volunteers as well as scientists and people conducting systematic bird surveys, and collects it into one master database, a lot like I collect data on tea into the master database at RateTea. If you birdwatch, eBird is an invaluable resource, but even if you just find wild birds interesting and want to learn more about them, I would also recommend checking out this site.

Warblers, Other Birds and Tea?

What do warblers, or birds in general, have to do with tea? I've noticed that a number of tea bloggers write about birds from time to time, and I've noticed that people who are interested in wild birds tend to be more likely to be interested in tea, and vice versa. Why? Often, I find tea bloggers mention birds when they mention changes in seasons, as the changes in which birds are present and in the birds' songs and behavior marks the changing of seasons.

But I also find that birds and tea actually have some more things in common, possibly because they are both organic or natural, dealing with living organisms: they both have a similar type of diversity. And both birding and tea appreciation involve honing one's perception. With tea, it's mainly smell and taste, and with birds, it's sight and hearing, that one develops. When one starts drinking tea, it's pretty easy to see and taste the difference between black tea and green tea. When starting to watch birds, it is also pretty easy to tell a crow from a sparrow.

The warblers, on the other hand, are often among the most challenging birds to identify. Many of them only arrive during a brief 3-week window of migration, once in the spring, and again in the fall. A large number of warblers have different plumage in different seasons, and have different male and female plumage. Furthermore, they're tiny, and most of them move very quickly; many of them tend to spend most of their time high in trees, where they are often backlit or hidden by branches or foliage. Learning to identify these birds is a lot like learning the differences between one tea garden and another, or being able to just look at a steeped oolong leaf and know what cultivar it came from. Birding and tea are both areas where one can continually learn more, developing greater skill and greater nuance in perception.

How about you?

Do you value down time? Have you ever experienced server downtime? Do you think one of the most valuable aspects of tea is way it provides a restful break? Do you pay attention at all to wild birds? Have you ever been birdwatching, had a bird feeder, and you ever heard of eBird?

Let me know!

Meeting People at World Tea East

This weekend Sylvia and I attended World Tea East representing RateTea. It was wonderful...we got to sample countless teas, learn of new companies, and most exciting to me, I got to meet and talk face-to-face with a number of people that I normally only interact with over the internet. I could not possibly do justice to writing about all the people I met, and I do not want to leave anyone important out, as I inevitably would do, so I'm focusing on some interesting observations I had.

Feeling at Home:

I have attended numerous business-oriented events over the course of my adult life, but I had never before attended a trade show, so World Tea East was somewhat of a new experience for me. But it was still somewhat familiar. I have a large enough sample from my past experiences to say that I feel more at home in some types of business-oriented events than others. In this event, I felt very comfortable.

Clothing & Dress:

One interesting observation to me was that there was little conformity in terms of how people were dressed. There were a handful of people in suits, others walking around in jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers or flip-flops, and all manners of outfits in between. Some outfits were drab and unobtrusive and others were colorful, creative, or elegant. Before attending the event I had the thought: "What do I want to wear?" and in retrospect I almost feel silly thinking this, having reflected on the various things I saw people wearing in the show, and how comfortable all of them looked. I probably would have been just fine with any of the outfits I wear in my daily life, and this realization produces a reassuring sense of feeling at home.

Diversity, but Where Are China and India?

There was also a fair amount of diversity in terms of people (and companies) of different national origins, giving good representation to the international tea community. One thing I noted, however, was a remarkable absence of Chinese and Indian people and companies. China and India, between the two of them, account for a huge portion of the world's tea production, as well as being the origin of numerous styles of tea and many of the world's highest-quality teas.

In my daily life, I meet and come into contact with a large portion of Chinese and Indians, in colleges and universities, and also Chinese-Americans and Indian-Americans. The disproportionately tiny presence of Chinese and Indian people at the expo, in contrast to people from Kenya, Japan, or even Germany (which has a very active tea culture) was striking to me.

I suspect that the lack of a strong presence of people and companies from China and India at the show says something about the structure and organization of the tea industry, and perhaps the global economy as a whole, or at least the economies of these countries. Japanese tea companies have been directly expanding into the U.S.; a large number of these companies now have U.S. based operations. (Did you know Yamamotoyama now owns Stash Tea?) But the same does not seem to be true of Indian and Chinese companies.

There were plenty of Chinese and Indian teas being displayed around the exhibition hall, and many of the companies present owned Chinese subsidiaries or had offices in China, which they used to source their teas. I have not done any research to back this up, but I suspect that there are fewer Chinese and Indian companies with operations physically located in the U.S. This observation raises some very interesting questions. For one, I'm curious if it's actually true as I suspect it is, and for two, I'm curious about why (I have a few theories that popped into my mind), so I hope to follow up with a future post on this topic at some point. But for now, one more observation:

The Tea Industry vs. Corporate Culture:

Another thing that struck me when talking to a number of people about their businesses, and how they became involved in tea, was that there was a certain commonality in language that came through. I heard a lot of people talk about the corporate world, in the sense of: "I worked in the corporate world for X years before..." and so forth. Keep in mind, in the very literal sense, many of these people are still working for corporations, albeit much smaller ones, and a large number of them founded or own corporations.

The tea industry is an industry in which there are lots of small businesses, many, in fact, tiny businesses, run out of people's homes, or on the side. Many of the larger tea companies actually started off in this manner as well. (RateTea, incidentally, started a couple years ago as a side-project that I was only dedicating a few hours a week to.) I think this is yet another aspect of the tea industry that makes me feel comfortable there.

In Summary:

I'm very glad I attended World Tea East! It was immensely valuable on so many levels, and in addition, it was a lot of fun. Do you have any thoughts or comments on my observations?

Tea as Slow Food: Fast Tea vs Slow Tea

Today I want to write about a social movement that, in my opinion, is directly related to the world of tea. This is the slow food movement. Slow food is a broad and far-reaching concept; it can be seen as an opposite or alternative to "fast food". The idea of slow food is to preserve and create new traditional local and regional cuisines, to enjoy food together with people, and to become more aware of where our food comes from. By promoting local food cultures, the movement encourages diversity, and by promoting local foods and raising awareness of how food is produced, the movement promotes sustainability. The huge number of tags I've classified this post with demonstrates that this movement is related to many different facets of the things I care about.

The logo of this movement is a snail, cutely symbolic of slowness:



Wikipedia has a great article about slow food, which I would recommend at least glancing at. If you want official information from the movement itself, you can visit the websites of Slow Food International or Slow Food USA. The slow food movement is something I strongly support, so I would urge you to check it out, and give some thought to what it advocates, beyond just reading this post.

How does slow food relate to tea?

Tea, like any food or beverage, can be viewed (and produced/consumed) in any number of different ways. Virtually everything about the slow food movement can be applied to tea, except possibly the "buy local" part (although one can still buy or grow local herbs for use in herbal teas, and one can certainly support local tea shops and tea houses). Using the concept of "fast food vs. slow food" as a continuum, we have two different "ends of the spectrum" so to speak.

Tea as fast food: "fast tea":

The ultimate manifestation of tea as fast food is ready-to-drink tea, which includes both bottled tea and tea in cans and other types of containers. This tea is brewed in a factory, packaged, and sold as-is. Ready-to-drink tea is fast food, in that it is quick and easy to purchase and then immediately drink, and that it is primarily an industrial product, produced in a factory, with minimal preparation on behalf of the person consuming it.

Tea as slow food: "slow tea":

At the opposing, "slowest" end of the spectrum, would be single-estate, single-harvest whole-leaf teas, processed by traditional methods, and brewed traditionally in loose-leaf form. Tea traditions are diverse, so I will not claim that "slow tea" needs to be brewed gong fu style in a gaiwan or Yixing tea pot. There are rich tea traditions in eastern and western Europe, in the middle east, and all across the globe, and they each have different practices of enjoying tea. But in order for it to be slow tea, it needs to be brewed at the point of drinking, and it needs to be brewed and drunk with care and thought.

Slow tea, like slow food, encompasses not just the production of the tea, but also the enjoyment of it. Slow tea is not just about the tea originating in a specific garden, but it is about the person drinking the tea knowing which garden it is from, and knowing when it was harvested, and knowing a bit about what makes this tea special. And slow tea involves paying attention to how the tea tastes, and enjoying the setting and process of drinking tea, whether it's a calm, meditative tea session alone, or sharing tea with friends or family.

Most tea is somewhere in the middle:

Relative to loose-leaf tea, tea bags certainly move much farther in the direction of "fast tea", but from the vantage point of bottled or ready-to-drink teas, they are more "slow".

In summary:

The slow food movement is a social movement which promotes greater awareness of and enjoyment of food, including awareness of where food comes from, enjoyment of food, and preservation and promotion of local food cultures. Slow food can easily be applied to tea, and pushes one in the direction of single-estate, single-harvest, loose-leaf teas, brewed with care and enjoyed mindfully either in a private reflective state, or shared with friends or family.

Slow tea and RateTea:

Personally, I want to support the slow food movement and what it advocates for. One of the main motivating factors behind creating RateTea is to get people to think more about tea, in the same sort of framework that the slow food movement works. I want people to rate teas not to discover which tea is "best" in some absolute sense, but just because I want them to start thinking about how their tea tastes...a key idea with RateTea is that the ratings and reviews are tied into a database that classifies each tea by style and by region, and in one click, a person can go from a page of a specific review, or a specific tea, to an article about that style of tea, or that tea-producing region. The idea is to draw casual tea drinkers in and open the world of high-quality loose tea to them, and in doing so, get them to think more about food and drink as a whole, and hopefully, move our society in the direction of greater sustainability in the process, so that we are all healthier, happier, and more able to appreciate all our food and drink, and where it comes from.

How about you?

Were you aware of the slow food movement before reading this post? Where do you think your own tea habits fall on the fast food / slow food spectrum? Does your interest in awareness of tea's production and enjoyment of artisan teas carry forward into your appreciation and awareness of food in general? Were you aware of my intentions of promoting "slow food" through RateTea or do you think this is something it would be good for me to emphasize more on the site?

Cultivars, Monoculture, Adaptation, and Extinction: In Tea and Elsewhere

I was inspired to write this post after reading a post by Gingko Seto of Life in Teacup, about Long Jing Cultivars. I want to start by talking about the word cultivar because it is often thrown around without being precisely defined.

In the world of horticulture and agriculture, a cultivar is a plant or collection of plants that has been recognized for certain desirable characteristics. There are some cultivars which can be grown from seed, those that come up "true to seed", but many cultivars are cloned--propagated by cuttings or grafts. In the world of tea, as with wine, cultivars are also called varietals. Whereas "variety" is a general term that can refer to a broader style of tea, varietal is a more specific term, referring to the individual plant from which the tea was grown.

In the world of tea, varietals usually refer to genetically-identified plants propagated by cutting or grafting, but there are also broad categories of tea plants that come up true to seed, such as the smaller-leaved Chinese variety, C. sinensis sinensis, and the larger-leaved Assam variety, C. sinensis assamica.

Cultivar Extinction:

Most cloned cultivars, regardless of what plant they are from, eventually go extinct for ecological reasons: because they have a fixed genetic stock, the insects, mold, and bacteria in the world around them is constantly evolving and adapting to be better able to attack the specific combination of chemicals in the one cultivar.

This is why many of the old varieties of banana and apple, enjoyed by people a few generations back, are no longer grown: various blights and pests have developed which make them infeasible to commercially cultivate.

Why do we have so many old tea cultivars?

In the world of tea, we are left with many older cultivars. Why have they not gone extinct as most of the older varieties of apple have? One reason is that the tea plant, in general, is not particularly susceptible to pests, and the plant itself is very long-lived (some individual tea trees are themselves hundreds of years old). However, there is also another contributing factor, which is that, for hundreds of years, many of these cultivars were only cultivated on a small scale; below I will explain why this has prolonged the life of tea cultivars.

Some of the most popular cultivars are actually relative newcomers, compared to the long history of the tea plant. The varietal used to produce Tie Guan Yin emerged some time in the 18th century, although I've seen some sources claiming it was later. Either way, it is possible to find individual tea plants older than this particular cultivar.

Monoculture and its Role in Cultivar Extinction:

Monoculture is the widespread planting of a single crop, like tea, over a large area. Monoculture is widespread in tea cultivation, and is the norm for most commercial tea production, which is unfortunate for a variety of reasons. A long while ago, I wrote an extensive post about tea monoculture and monoculture in general which explains a number of negative impacts that monoculture has both on human agriculture and the surrounding ecology.

One of the main negative impacts of monoculture is that it facilitates pest and disease spreading. With no other plants to function as barriers or buffers, once a pest or disease gets established, it can rapidly spread through the whole crop. And with such a huge reservoir of a host plant, the pest or disease can quickly evolve and adapt by establishing a healthy, genetically diverse population of its own. Just as in my last post about the value of diversity, I explained how diversity is an essential ingredient in ecosystems. When two populations are competing in some ecological sense, the more diverse one typically wins the battle.

An extreme form of monoculture is the widespread planting of a single cultivar or varietal, over a broad area. When a single cultivar is grown in monoculture, the evolutionary pressure for pests and diseases to evolve or adapt to the particular cultivar or varietal is very strong. The pest or disease forms a huge, genetically-diverse population, but the crop being cultivated has no diversity, zero, as it all comes from a single plant that has been cloned, propagated by cuttings or grafts.

This is what causes cultivars to go extinct quickly. If a cultivar is only grown in moderation, and is grown only in small batches, mixed in with other crops, it will usually last for far longer; the risk of extinction by a pest or disease adapted specifically to that cultivar becomes minimal.

What can you do about this?

There are actually several ways you can help prevent monoculture. These tips are about tea, but they could easily be generalized to buying any type of plant-based product:

• Pay attention to where your tea comes from, and give preference to operations that use ecologically sustainable methods. An example is Makaibari estate in Darjeeling, which leaves most of their land as intact forest and only cultivates a smaller portion of it. Seeking out the organic label is typically not enough to make the best choice; there are plenty of certified organic operations that are still monocultures, and plenty of more ecologically-friendly operations that are not organic certified.


• Seek out and buy tea produced from different varietals. Varietals like Tie Guan Yin (to use an example) are so widely cultivated because people buy them for a high price. While it's hard to dispute that Tie Guan Yin produces amazing tea, there are numerous other cultivars that produce delicious tea as well, that go largely ignored on the global market. Try broadening your perspective: not only will you discover new teas, but you will be helping to preserve the most famous cultivars for future generations.


• Returning to the topic of the original post that inpsired this one, which was Long Jing cultivars, don't malign or dismiss "fake" teas produced from different cultivars. For example, when tea in the style of Long Jing is produced from different cultivars, it helps to preserve and protect the original cultivars. If the original cultivars were grown on a wider scale, it would speed the development of pests and diseases targeting this cultivar, eventually leading to their extinction. These newer teas emulating an older style actually protect the "authentic" tea, rather than threatening it.

The Best Teas, or the Most Diversity? The Value of Diversity

The illusory search for the "best" teas:

When I was younger, I used to believe that the purpose of sampling and reviewing foods, products, businesses, or anything, was to distinguish good from bad, and to help identify the "best" ones, or at least my favorite ones (which could be defined as the ones I like best). As I began to learn about business and economics, I started to think that the role of reviews in business is to guide shoppers to the best products, so that the businesses creating or supplying a higher-quality product for a reasonable price thrive.

But whenever I have sampled anything, whether it is restaurants, teas, or anything, I find it very difficult to pick a single favorite, or even 10 favorites.



As I began to learn more about both ecology, culture, history, and current events, my worldview started shifting. I realized that in many aspects of life, there is no such thing as "best" on the level of individual products, people, cultures, foods, or businesses, species, and indeed, the best results for society as a whole often emerge when there is a great deal of diversity.

In many aspects of life, there is no such thing as "best"; when you look on a broader scale, diversity is usually better than uniformity.

The picture above shows a deciduous forest in Delaware, much like the forests in Pennsylvania where I grew up. I chose this picture because natural ecosystems were what most helped me to understand the true value of diversity.

An example from ecology:

As an example from ecology, the total biomass (mass of all living things) in an area will tend to increase as you increase the number of different plant species in that area. For example, if you have a garden plot with a single species, and you carefully exclude all other plant species, and let the plot grow to its maximum size, it will tend to grow less total biomass than if you allow two species to grow, and that will tend to grow less total biomass than if you include three, and so forth. It's not always true as a strict rule, so much as it is a strong correlation or trend. Biomass and biodiversity are two different measures, and are independent to some degree, but they tend to be strongly related.

If you are a gardener, this concept is important. You can often achieve a higher total yield by mixing many crops in a small plot, than you could by growing the same crops separately. This higher yield comes as a result both of increased productivity and biomass as a whole, and decreased pest problems (pests spread most quickly through a monoculture). While this complicates commercial harvesting, it poses little problem for home gardeners who harvest by hand.

Back to tea:

I have noticed that I tend to prefer different teas at different times of day, different times of the year, in different weather, or when in different moods. I also sometimes tire of certain teas, while at the same time becoming more enthusiastic about other ones. Most people, even those who are strongly habitual in their food or drink habits, experience some degree of these shifts or changes.

Diversity in tea gives us the ability to better match the tea we choose to drink, to what we want to experience, both in terms of taste and the effect of the tea on our mind and body. It also helps us to experience a broader range of aromas and flavors. It also helps tea to appeal to a broader range of people: people inherently have different tastes, and when there is more diversity in teas, tea as a whole will reach and satisfy more people.

Back to the world again:

I would encourage people to think about diversity in other aspects of your life, as well as in tea. How is your community enriched, culturally and otherwise, by people from different cultures and backgrounds? How is your yard or garden made more beautiful or more productive by the biodiversity in what you plant there? How is your health sustained or enhanced by eating a diverse diet? How is your workplace driven by the diversity of skills and abilities of your different coworkers? How is your life enriched by the diversity of personalities and experiences of your friends and family members?

Diversity is not a politically correct buzzword; it is more like an essential fuel that we require and cannot do without. It is necessary not only for us to live rich, interesting lives, but even necessary for ecosystems to exist and sustain us, and for our society to function at all.

The Chicken Soup Aroma in Black Tea

What does chicken soup have to do with tea? This is certainly not my favorite weather for hot soup, and I have not had a bowl of chicken soup in some time, but I have unexpectedly encountered the familiar, distinctive, and comforting aroma and flavor of chicken soup in several black teas that I have sampled:



This following photo of a bowl of chicken soup was contributed by RWS and is available on Wikimedia Commons under both GNU FDL 1.2 or later and CC BY-SA 3.0 licenses.

Which black teas taste like chicken soup to me?

The first tea in which I detected the aroma of chicken soup was Rishi Tea's Keemun, which is a black tea produced in the style of Keemun, but grown in Hubei province, rather than Anhui where Keemuns are traditionally made. I made a note of the interesting chicken-like qualities of this tea, but did not think much of it more until I tried Upton Tea Imports' Kaimosi Estate GFBOP1, which was a very different tea from Rishi's Keemun, but had a definite chicken-soup character as well. Then, recently I sampled Upton's Hubei Keemun Ji Hong, which, interestingly, I found very similar to Rishi's Keemun (although several months have passed since I tried that tea, so I cannot truly say whether or not they would be distinguishable side-by-side).

Why do these teas resemble chicken soup?

In terms of the flavor, I found all three of these teas to have a light, thinner quality, combined with a savory (umami) presence, with an almost salty quality. This helps explain the flavor experience.

What explains the presence of this aroma? I honestly have no idea but I find it fascinating. In general, I am quite fascinated by the diversity of smells that appear when drinking pure teas. Tea may be from a single plant, but the diversity of history of cultivation, different growing conditions, and different processing methods produces all sorts of fascinating resemblances to other foods.

Have you ever thought that a tea, black tea or otherwise, seemed a bit like chicken soup to you?