Red Shiso (Perilla) for Herbal Tea

In this post I want to write about a fascinating herb which is important both as an herbal tea its own right, for blending with Japanese green teas, and for culinary uses. The English common name is Perilla, but as this herb is not well-known in Western cultures, and many people have not heard of it under this name. In Japanese, it is referred to as Shiso(紫蘇). If you want to learn more about this herb, there is a good Wikipedia page on perilla. The plant is in the mint family, the same family which also contains basil and coleus. Here is a picture of red shiso, a red-leafed variety of Perilla frutescens (there are several different species in the Perilla genus); this picture shows the clear visual resemblance to basil and coleus:



Shiso has a variety of uses. One of them is in blending with Japanese green tea, usually sencha. On RateTea I created a page for Shiso sencha, but the only two listings have both been discontinued. I haven't exhaustively searched for other providers of this sort of blend, but a quick google search shows that they are available, so hopefully I can get to adding some more soon. In Japan, shiso is used not only as a seasoning but also a vegetable.

The flavor and aroma of Shiso is interesting...it is relatively mild but has a lot of different components to it. It is mildly suggestive of anise or licorice, but also somewhat resembles mint and basil, and it has a faint skunky quality. It is milder in flavor than basil and much milder than mint. I have found that many people find it very pleasing, but a small number of people find it to have an unpleasant aroma.

Perilla / Shiso Naturalizes Easily:

I took this photo in an alley or very small street in center city Philadelphia. This plant is widely used as a landscaping plant in Philadelphia, often co-planted with the tropical plant Coleus, which bears superficial resemblance to it. But, in contrast to the tropical Coleus, which cannot survive the cold winters in temperate climates, Perilla is adapted to cold-winter regions, and will easily naturalize. In Philadelphia and surrounding areas, it grows wild, coming up from seed (and usually retaining its red color). Some people even view it as an invasive species. Here is a picture of it coming up wild in a Philadelphia sidewalk:



Perilla is a highly vigorous plant, growing in between cracks in brick sidewalks, up against buildings, and in flower beds. As it is often planted deliberately, it's sometimes hard to tell where it has been planted and where it has come up naturally.

Herbal Tea from Red Shiso:

I gathered a bunch of this plant while on a walk in my neighborhood the other day, and brewed up a batch of it as a fresh herbal tea. The infusion shows a brownish purple color:



It was quite delicious. Like the dry leaf, the infusion smelled somewhere in between anise, basil, and mint, and had a slightly skunky finish. It was exceptionally smooth on the palate, and had a slightly sweet flavor, with only a hint of bitterness, and no astringency. Although some people might not like it because of the mild skunkiness, overall, I found this drink to be very pleasing and I could see drinking this regularly.

Eating Perilla:

In my last post, herbal infusions and cooked vegetable broth, I made the point that we often discard the broth after cooking vegetables, and that this broth can be viewed as an herbal infusion, and drunk. Conversely, when brewing an herbal infusion from fresh leaves, instead of discarding the steeped leaves, we can eat them as a vegetable. In accordance with the Japanese use of Shiso as a vegetable, I decided to eat the leaves leftover after steeping, and they were delicious! They had a mild flavor, similar to the infusion, and were fairly tender in texture, certainly more tender than a variety of greens, like collards or kale, which are widely consumed in the U.S.

Have you tried Shiso or Perilla?

Did you know about this herb before reading this post? Have you ever used it as a seasoning? Grown it? Eaten it? Infused it, either on its own, or blending it with sencha or other tea?

Herbal Infusions and Cooked Vegetable Broth

Pictured below is an herbal infusion: for once, I actually am not using the term herbal tea because there is nothing remotely tea-like about the process I used to create this liquid:



What is it? It looks a little bit like hibiscus tea, but it's not...a little too light perhaps? It does not taste remotely like hibiscus. This is nothing you'd ever buy at a tea or herb shop, it's the broth left over after cooking vegetables, a specific type of cooked green. Red-veined amaranth leaves, to be specific, called xian cai(莧菜/苋菜) in Chinese. Here are the greens themselves, after cooking:



I found the leaves to have a flavor most closely resembling green beans, but with suggestions of beets and asparagus. They tasted very familiar, even though I have never consciously eaten them before. If you click on the photo of the cooked greens, you can read more about my experience cooking and eating them. In contrast to some new vegetables, which often become more of an acquired taste, I think this vegetable would be pretty accessible to someone who likes the more familiar Western cooked greens and other vegetables.

What is amaranth?

In the U.S., amaranth is most known for its use as an alternative grain; it is generally available in health food stores, and is also gluten-free. It is also a relative of quinoa. In China and India, especially in warmer regions, however, amaranth is widely used as a cooked vegetable. Amaranth thrives in hot climates with poor soil, where the heat and soil are poor for growing greens like spinach that are popular in northern climates. I first learned of amaranth's use as a cooked green from an Indian gardener in Cleveland.

Vegetable Broth vs. Herbal Tea:

In our modern society, when we cook vegetables, we often discard the broth, viewing it as waste. Yet we then go out and buy herbal teas, carefully steep them, and drink them. At times, we even drink foul-tasting concoctions in search of their supposed "health benefits". In this post I want to highlight something so simple it's almost mindless. When you cook vegetables, the resulting leftover water is an herbal infusion; it's packed with vitamins, minerals, and beneficial phytochemicals--anything water-soluble goes out in the broth. And it's fresher and more nutritious than any infusion that you could make from dried herbs, as the drying process results in considerable loss and degradation of vitamins and flavor.

There are a few cases where it is not good to drink vegetable broth; some plants used as vegetables, such as pokeweed, have water-soluble toxins and which are only edible after repeated boiling and draining, but these plants are generally not widely available at stores or markets in the U.S.

What did this amaranth broth taste like?

If you're not used to drinking the leftover broth after cooking vegetables, it may taste a bit strange to you. The flavor is the very essence of vegetal...after all, the word "vegetal" is just an attempt to describe the aromas and flavors of vegetables when they occur in tea or other food or drink where we may not expect them.

It was definitely not the sort of thing that I would seek out to drink as a beverage, on its own, but it was also not at all unpleasant. Perhaps I would acquire a taste for it if I drank this sort of thing more. But the experience was interesting to me, and I think will inform my palate when tasting teas and herbal teas that have vegetal qualities.

What do you think?

Some questions come to my mind. Do you ever drink the leftover broth after cooking vegetables? What is the cutoff between vegetable broth, and herbal tea brewed from fresh herbs? Does this distinction only lie in intentions? What do you think of the vegetal qualities in tea? And have you ever tried amaranth greens?

Ginger in Tea and Herbal Teas

I love ginger; it is one of my favorite spices and I use it heavily in cooking. I have even grown ginger...it is relatively easy to grow indoors. In the spirit of raising awareness between the food, tea, and herbs we eat, and the plants they come from, here is a picture of a ginger rhizome, sprouting:



Ginger is the rhizome of a grassy plant, Zingiber officinale; the rhizome is storage area below the ground, looking like a root but technically part of the plant's stem; the rhizome stores energy, nutrients, and water so that if the above-ground part of the plant is threatened or dies, the plant can regrow when conditions are right. This adaptation allows ginger to survive drought, as well as having its leaves and stems eaten. The strong-tasting chemicals which give ginger its flavor are concentrated in the rhizome, to protect this most important part of the plant. I wish I had a picture of the ginger plant that I grew for two years, but I cannot find one. The ginger plant looks like a grass, here's a photo of the ginger plant on Wikimedia commons. This picture looks nearly exactly like what my plant looked like.

This next photo shows fresh ginger root which I have sliced in order to brew up a batch of iced tea:




Dried Ginger vs. Fresh Ginger:

One reason I feel particularly compelled to share these pictures and this post is that, over the years, I've tried a number of blends containing dried ginger, and they just don't do it for me. I think that ginger is one of those spices that is best fresh, and that loses most of its character when dried.

Still, I do sometimes enjoy teas and herbs which have been blended with dried ginger. I will say, I do not have any dried ginger in my cabinet, and I have never bought it; fresh ginger root is a staple in my household.

Medicinal Properties of Ginger:

Ginger is a fairly common ingredient in herbal blends. It has potent medicinal properties, or supposed "health benefits", to use a buzzword I have become slightly annoyed with lately. Ginger is used traditionally to settle the stomach and provide relief from nausea. I personally find it to be very effective for this purpose. Wikipedia's article on ginger is fairly well-referenced and explains these medicinal uses, and what is known of the chemistry of ginger, in more depth.

Ginger as a Flavoring for Tea:

Ginger is also used as a flavoring in black tea, sometimes on its own, but often when paired with peach. Adagio Teas sells a black tea flavored with ginger, and a number of brands, including Adagio, Republic of Tea, Revolution, Stash, Bentley's, and many others, sell ginger peach tea. These ginger-peach flavored teas, usually but not always black teas, are very popular. I used to regularly visit a coffee shop in University Heights, OH, which sold a ginger peach tea, and it seemed that more customers ordered this tea than all the others combined. I will say, even though I'm not a huge fan of flavored teas, I do like this combination.

Ginger is also a common, but not necessarily defining ingredient in masala chai or spiced tea. I like including some ginger in chai, but I generally do not miss it when it is absent (unlike cardamom).

Ginger in Herbal Blends:

Ginger is widely used in herbal blends. One of the most common combinations is lemon ginger. While I find that lemon and ginger go very well together (one of my favorite combinations for an iced herbal drink is boiling fresh lemongrass and fresh ginger root, then chilling it), I find that most herbal blends focusing on ginger, and relying on dried ginger, just don't do it for me. Teatulia has an odd ginger herbal infusion that also includes the herb Vasaka (Justicia adhatoda). I wasn't really a fan of this either...the Vasaka is extremely bitter; while I normally like bitter flavors, it was too bitter for me, so I suspect it is probably too bitter for a majority of others as well.

How about you?

Do you ever use fresh ginger as a flavoring for tea, or for making herbal infusions? Do you like the presence of ginger in masala chai, or other blends? Do you notice much of a difference between fresh and dried ginger? Have you ever tried growing ginger?

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?

Yunnan Gold: More Expensive. Better?

This weekend I attended World Tea East, and it was wonderful. I hope to write more about this event soon, but for now, I've been catching up on more routine tasks, including reading blog posts that I was behind on well before attending the expo.

One recent blog post that struck me as notable was Lahikmajoe's post you pay more for appearance. If you haven't yet read this, I recommend at least glancing at it, as it will make this post make more sense. This post talks about the appearance of tippy Assam teas. A comment on the post then brings up Yunnan Gold or Golden Yunnan teas, a tippy type of Dian Hong or Yunnan Red, the style of black tea produced in China's Yunnan Province. In the spirit of this subject, and in case you don't know where Yunnan province is, here is a map of China with the province colored in a rich golden color:



When I first started sampling and researching Yunnan teas, I was under the impression that all tips were golden in black teas, and that the golden color corresponded in a fairly straightforward way to the portion of buds. According to the post above and the conversation it references, this correspondence is not so simple. I had seen tippy Assam with golden tips as well, and I had read that the Yunnan Pure Gold teas were made exclusively of tips. But if you are a Yunnan enthusiast, as I am becoming (the more of these teas I try, the more this becomes one of my favorite styles), or if you are experienced with trying a wide range of tippy black teas, you will likely know from experience that the golden color does not always correspond perfectly to the portion of tips, nor to the character or quality of the tea.

But it does seem to correspond fairly well to price, which begs the question:

Does Golden = Better?

I was curious to see if I had been roped into the idea of golden = better, so I looked back to my recent ratings and reviews on RateTea to find some Yunnan Gold teas that I had tried recently. The three teas I most recently sampled, starting with the most recent, were Adagio's Yunnan Gold, Life in Teacup's Yunnan Golden Bud, and Rishi Tea's Golden Yunnan. These links will take you to my reviews.

Keep in mind, these companies also sell other Yunnan teas (Rishi has a less golden and more golden one), so I'm not necessarily comparing teas of similar grades. But that's the point. These three teas are pictured from left to right, Adagio's, then Life in Teacup's, then Rishi's:



These photos were not taken side-by-side. Although the lighting and composition of these photographs is obviously different, and it's hard to get an exact comparison of the way the leaf looked, I will say that having seen all of these teas up-close, Rishi's looks the least golden of them, as the picture suggests, and the other two teas are similar in color and appearance.

Interestingly, Rishi's got the highest rating from me. The other two I gave identical ratings. In my review, I noted when trying Adagio's that I think I prefer the darker teas somewhat.

How do they compare by price?

Rishi's is $4.00 an ounce, or $14.75 a quarter pound. Adagio's is 1.5 ounces for $12. Life in Teacup's is $7.99 an ounce. It looks pretty clear...golden is more expensive. And at least from my limited sample size, I do not necessarily prefer the golden color, and at this point, I do not think it is worth paying for. This impression may change as I sample more teas and/or as my palate develops, but for now, I'm thinking it's at least possible that this golden color is more for show than anything else, and does not adequately reflect higher quality as manifested in the flavor and aroma of the brewed tea.

What do you think? I'd be curious to hear your opinions and experiences on this matter.

Tea on a Rainy Day - Rain Sharpens the Perception?

Today it is a rainy day here in Philadelphia. I just finished drinking a cup of Upton Tea Imports' ZG46: Ding Gu Da Fang Organic, and you can read my review of this tea on RateTea. I am currently looking out the window to rain, which is slowing somewhat.

I find rain to be rather difficult to photograph. Here's my most successful attempt today:



One thing I love about the view out my window here is the way the wire is flat enough that it accumulates a whole row of cute little water droplets whenever it rains. This occurrence is a pleasing little interplay between human edifices and nature, much like the view of the street tree against the brick building, or the tea that I drink, which is a complex product of a natural plant species that has been carefully processed by humans.

Rain enhances my appreciation of color, and of tea:

People often talk about rainy days as if they are gloomy. But I find that rain actually brings out the colors around me. Even though it is darker on rainy days, and the sky grayer, I find that the grayness and subdued lighting draws attention to colors around me, especially the colors of leafy plants and brick. Colors often look more vibrant to me on a rainy day.

Rain also enhances my appreciation of tea. I love tea on just about any day, but I particularly love tea on cool, rainy days like today.

Does rain improve your ability to enjoy tea? Or color?

Tea and Public Transportation

What does tea have to do with public transportation? Other than the fact that I love tea, and I love public transportation, there's not much of an immediately apparent connection, but as I will show,my reasons for loving both tea and transit are actually surprisingly similar. And on a personal note, both tea and transit are areas in which I have worked directly.

Now, I am working in the area of tea, with RateTea. And in Cleveland, Ohio, I worked in operations research for GCRTA, Cleveland's transit system, and I also worked on several projects for a consulting firm, RNR Consulting, which largely specialized in working with transit agencies.

Why do I love public transportation?

Pictured here is the SEPTA Market Street Line, in Philadelphia, locally called the "El" as it is an elevated line at both ends (a subway in the middle):



I love public transportation for a variety of reasons, many of which actually mesh with my interest in tea.

• A ride on transit allows for time to relax or meditate, in contrast to driving a car, which requires intense focus and concentration, and can be very tiring. Even riding as a passenger on transit is much more relaxing than riding as a passenger in a car -- public transit gives one more space to stand up and move around. I find that, for me personally, there is a lot in common between the state that my mind and body is put into when I drink a cup of tea or take a ride on public transportation.


• Transit is inexpensive and sustainable. A ride on a bus or local train usually costs between $1.25-$2.00, more for regional trains. If one is able to use transit to live without a car, the savings can be immense. Even if you own a car, like me, you still save money on parking and gas, and in a city like Philadelphia or New York, parking is usually more than the cost of a bus or subway ride. The additional cost of energy and resource usage per person riding transit is negligible...that means, when you ride an already running bus or train route, you add little to environmental impact. I find this parallels tea because, compared to other beverages (soft drinks, alcohol, even coffee), tea is inexpensive, and has less of an environmental impact associated with its production.


• Transit and walking go hand-in-hand. Transit routes rarely take you from door to door (although, I must admit, there is a trolley stop directly out my door, closer to my building than I can usually park my car, so sometimes, I actually get to enjoy this luxury). But, in general, when you take public transportation, you also need to walk a bit. Public transit is thus good for your health...it is by no means essential to a healthy lifestyle, but it can contribute to health, especially if you use transit and walking in place of long car rides.
  
  In this respect, public transportation is also a lot like tea. Tea is a generally healthy beverage, unlike soft drinks, energy drinks, and other highly-processed, artificial drinks. But it's no magic bullet. Riding a bus can make you walk (and thus exercise) more, and exercise is known to reduce cancer and heart disease risk, right? But you never would suggest that riding a bus will cure cancer or prevent heart disease...and that's I think a good analogy for the relationship between tea and health.


• Riding transit and loving it requires loosening your expectations. Unless you are lucky enough to live in Germany, buses or trains rarely arrive exactly when scheduled. There is structure and organization to the transit system, but also unpredictability. I think this is a lot like the world of high-quality loose-leaf tea. If you are satisfied to drink the standardized products like Lipton, products whose consistency is maintained through extensive quality-control processes, then you always know what you're getting. But if you want single-region or single-estate, single-harvest teas of specific varieties, you will need to loosen your expectations. The same tea will not taste the same each year...each year it will be different. And a similar style of tea or grade of tea may taste radically different from one estate to the next, or from one region to another. Yet the pattern is still evident: the teas are still recognizable as their style. Just as the bus still gets you to your destination, even when it is late.

If you're coming to Philadelphia:

If you're coming to World Tea East, you're going to be lucky enough to be located right near most of SEPTA's major routes. While there's certainly plenty to do within walking distance of the convention center, you will also have access to most of the city with a direct transit ride, in case you want to go somewhere a little farther away.

A few tips: (1) the "transit" feature in google maps is outstanding in Philadelphia. Type in the info that you would to get directions normally, but then hit the little bus/train icon, and google will calculate the best routes to take using transit--usually giving you a few different options. You can ask it for immediate advice or schedule a trip in advance. (2) SEPTA's website has lots of good information too.