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I’ve written about that elusive creature known as the perfect cup of tea on a number of occasions now. My most recent thoughts are here. I’m still not convinced that such an item exists. But I guess all we can do is to try our best to get as close as we can to that lofty goal.
British Tea Favourites
I’m not sure that the British Standards Institution was setting out to promote perfection when they put together various standards for preparing tea, but I guess that’s implied just by the fact that they’ve done so. The group drafted general standards for preparing a cup of tea as well as more specific standards for black and green tea. All of which popped up in the news recently, specifically in the British press, when it was revealed that the BSI is reviewing the standard for tea, which has been in place since 1980.
For those who might be wondering, like I was, just exactly what this group is all about, let’s consider their Wikipedia entry. It states that the British Standards Institution, also known as the BSI Group, is “a multinational business services provider whose principal activity is the production of standards and the supply of standards-related services.” Which cleared things up for me.
The group’s standard for tea is BS 6008:1980 and is described as a Method for Preparation of a Liquor of Tea For Use in Sensory Tests. You can purchase a copy here, but at about $128 it’s not for everyone and presumably is geared more toward industry types with deep pockets. This standard, if I have my story straight, was apparently adopted by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 3103-1980, which is also a bit pricey for us mere mortals.
You can get a rough idea of what it’s all about without having to shell out so much as a penny, by checking out the Wikipedia entry. A key point made here is that “this standard is not meant to define the proper method for brewing tea, but rather how to document tea brewing procedure so sensory comparisons can be made.”
In the end, the “systematic periodic review” of the tea standard may not amount to much and is not likely to have much bearing on us average Joes, no matter what. But I guess it’s nice to know that someone out there is keeping tabs on the “rules” for tea preparation.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Get virtually up close and personal with tea (stock image)
I’ve noticed something over the course of the years that I’ve been writing about tea. Actually I’ve noticed quite a few things but the one most pertinent to this discussion is that while there are a zillion and a half tea merchant sites, tea blogs and whatever other Internet stuff related to tea, there don’t seem to be as many tea estates that have a web presence.
Or perhaps I just haven’t looked that hard. So after running across one such site not long ago I looked to see what else is out there. That site, by the way, is for Gopaldhara Tea, which operates the Gopaldhara and Rohini gardens, both located in the Darjeeling region of India, a region generally known more for the quality of their tea than the quantity.
Assam is another one of India’s tea-growing regions and is arguably one where quantity does sometimes take precedence over quality. But as an avid Assam fan I’ll be the first to point that this is not always the case and besides, I’m digressing a bit. Even as an Assam lover I’ll be the first to admit that there are not that many estates that I know by name. One of the exceptions is Mokalbari Kanoi Tea Estate, who bill themselves as producers of “premium 2nd flush Assam tea since 1917.”
I’ve never heard of Kolony Tea, who also call Assam their home, but you can take a look at their site here. If you know anything about Indian tea you might know of Nilgiri, the third and least well-known of the growing regions there. If you’re up for a virtual visit to a Nilgiri garden, you might try Glendale Estate, who claim to be renowned “for offering a range of SINGLE GARDEN PURE PREMIUM TEA of PLATINUM quality.”
Not far off the southeastern coast of India is Sri Lanka, where tea has been produced under the country’s former name of Ceylon since the late nineteenth century. Like India, Sri Lanka seems to be opening up to real tea tourism (as opposed to the virtual sort practiced here). For a good example look at Ceylon Tea Trails, a resort built on the grounds of a former tea estate. For an example of an active Ceylonese estate try Talawakelle Tea Estates, which owns and operates a total of seventeen tea gardens throughout the country.
The obvious problem with finding web sites for tea gardens in China, the world’s largest producer of tea, is that even those gardens who do decide to create a web presence for themselves might not be willing to make one that’s intelligible to English speakers. I’m sure there are plenty that do, however, including this site for 101 Tea Plantation, which operates tea gardens in China, Taiwan and Thailand.
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© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
If memory serves right there’s only one major type of tea that’s named for a person and that would be Earl Grey, a variety that’s most often made by flavoring black tea with the aromatic oil from the peel of a citrus fruit called bergamot. Which makes for a very aromatic product indeed, and it’s certainly not for everyone – present company included – but it is nonetheless a very popular type of tea.
Earl Grey tea versions
So how did it come to pass that a type of tea came to be named after a nineteenth century British prime minister? Well, the exact story seems to vary in the telling and this is not the time or place to revisit that issue, but suffice to say that it’s the Earl who’s typically given credit – rightly or not – for having a part in popularizing this tea.
Not so long ago, over at the Oxford English Dictionary, a whopping tome that in its entirety weighs more than many adult human beings, some of the crew began taking a look into the origins of the term Earl Grey. The earliest reference they found to Earl Grey tea was less than a century old, dating to almost a century after Grey’s death, though there was a less specific reference from about thirty years earlier.
All of which motivated the powers that be at the OxfordWords blog to invite the public to see how much further back they could trace the term. Their responses are chronicled here. Among the highlights, an advertisement from 1928 in which the company Robert Jackson’s of Piccadilly claim that they sold a concoction called Earl Grey’s mixture as far back as 1836.
I thought it might be interesting to trace the usage of bergamot as a flavoring and so I proceeded to give it a whirl. According to a 1836 volume on trade with China and Asia, the usage of bergamot as a flavoring for tea was already apparently known among “dealers and curious inquirers.” The author claimed that bergamot was one of the best substances that could be used for flavoring tea and offered a few ways to do so.
One of the earliest references I found to bergamot-flavored tea is in an 1824 mention that’s likely one referenced (though not by name) in the aforementioned blog entry. It comes from a magazine called The Kaleidoscope and as I read it more closely I realized that it was strikingly similar to the one just discussed in the previous paragraph. So much for copyright enforcement in the early nineteenth century.
None of which leads us to much in the way of conclusions about the origins of Earl Grey tea or the term itself. But perhaps one day someone with a more scholarly bent will come along and unravel the whole mess for us.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here and more articles on this blog about Earl Grey teas here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I drink tea for the taste. Nothing else. Although I’m perfectly fine with all those other reasons why people drink tea. Maybe it’s good for my health in some ways and it seems to give me a boost and whatever else. But I wouldn’t bother drinking it if it didn’t taste good.
Tea Shop (from Wikimedia Commons)
Which is why for a long time now I’ve counseled anyone who would listen (or read) not to pinch pennies when it comes to tea. As a general rule, I’ve found that when it comes to tea you get what you pay for and good tea doesn’t often come cheap and the cheap stuff usually tastes like cheap stuff. Perhaps I’ve gone a bit overboard in making my point, but there it is.
As it turns out, respondents to a recent Harris Poll – nearly 2,500 of them – seem to agree that taste is a key factor when it comes to their tea and coffee buying habits. Or, as the pollsters put it, “of 2,496 U.S. adults surveyed online from February 13-18, 2013 by Harris Interactive found that taste is the top factor in determining where coffee/tea buyers purchase their beverages, and that Americans are willing to go out of their way for their favorite cup of joe.”
Tea, too, and, yes, the poll appears to be a bit coffee-centric, but tea is included as well, even if it’s something of an afterthought. Of those who responded, a whopping 78% claim that taste was a very important factor when it came to making a purchase. Not that price is not important and as a matter of fact it’s next most important on the list – at 54%.
Given that the survey focuses primarily on coffee/tea shop purchases it should also be noted that there are other less critical reasons for making a purchase, such as the beverage selection at the shop (31%) and the variety of food choices (23%).
Among the other topics covered in the survey were the demographics of coffee and tea shop denizens. Not surprisingly, they tend to be young, with the largest percentage (71%) of those frequenting such establishments being in the 18-35 range.
There’s even more here. While one finds oneself wishing for a similar poll focused solely on tea we’ll have to take what we can get for now and hope for better things somewhere down the road.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
In the last book column I wrote for this site I made mention of a book I’d run across that had to do with coffee, of all things. Let me once again make it perfectly clear that I have not gone over to the dark side. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be a tea drinker for life, but I found the title and the approach of the aforementioned book interesting even so.
Be a teaist! (ETS image)
It’s called The Coffeeist Manifesto: No More Bad Coffee! and it comes to use courtesy of a gentleman named Steven D. Ward. To summarize briefly, it tells coffee lovers how they can achieve the best cup of coffee possible, whether it be on the home front or on the increasingly crowded coffee shop front.
I confess that I haven’t read the book (I’m not that interested in coffee) but, in looking over the various blurbs and whatnot, I found the following to be the most interesting and relevant to us tea drinkers:
Fact: Making very good coffee is NOT THAT HARD. With a minimal investment in time and education you can make the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had in your life in the comfort of your own home. This book shows exactly why billion dollar for-profit coffee chains are inherently unable to produce coffee of the quality you can make in the kitchen.
Which could be said for tea, for the most part, but let’s break down that statement a bit. While I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that making very good tea is “not that hard” I would say that if you follow the basics of using the correct amount of steeping time and the correct temperature you’ve pretty much got it wrapped up.
Of course, none of that counts for much if you don’t start with the best tea you can possibly get your hands on. Which is not that hard, but it takes a little work. As for that “minimal investment” part, as I never tire of pointing out, given how many cups of tea can be produced from a given amount of tea leaves, what might seem like a high price at first glance turns out to be rather reasonable. That’s even more so if you compare it to what you’d pay if you go out for tea.
Which is a topic that I’m not really all that qualified to comment on, since I never go out for tea. But with the dramatic increase in the number of tearooms and teahouses in recent decades, a little bit of careful shopping should lead you to a carry out tea that’s at least satisfactory and perhaps better.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
19 Lessons on Tea (screen capture from site)
As I was gearing up to write the latest edition of this column I thought I would browse through Amazon’s Kindle store, looking for books on a certain topic (first two guesses don’t count). As I did so, I found myself amazed and slightly befuddled at how many versions there are of Kakuzo Okakura’s influential 1905 work, The Book of Tea. I gather that the book is not protected under copyright laws and thus, given the relative ease of putting together a Kindle edition, you can take your pick among about a zillion of them. Given all that, I’d caution you to choose carefully.
This time around we start with a book about coffee (excuse me?). Bear with me for a moment, if you will, and no, I’m not going over to the dark side. I haven’t actually read Steven Ward’s The Coffeeist Manifesto: No More Bad Coffee! but based on the description, I like what he seems to be striving for. Here in the tea world we’re all making great strides nowadays but in my opinion people are still too willing to accept bad or mediocre tea. So The Teaist Manifesto? Anyone?
If you’re looking for the ultimate guide to Chinese tea you might want to look into something like Bret Hinsch’s The Ultimate Guide to Chinese Tea. It’s bills itself as “the first comprehensive and accurate book in English on the fine art of Chinese tea.” Which might be overstating things just a bit, given how many other books on the topic are out there. Take The Ancient Art of Tea: Wisdom From the Ancient Chinese Tea Masters, by Warren Peltier, for example. It treads similar ground and appears to have been published a few months prior to the aforementioned volume.
If you’re pressed for time and you couldn’t possibly commit to reading 20 lessons on tea, 27Press has just the thing for you. That would be 19 Lessons On Tea: Become an Expert on Buying, Brewing, and Drinking the Best Tea. Whether it’s really “the ultimate guide to everything you need to know about this healthy and flavorful daily indulgence” is something you’ll have to judge for yourself.
If you’re ready to make a substantially larger commitment you could take a crack at 365 Things Every Tea Lover Should Know, by Harvest House Publishers. It’s apparently a “fun, attractive collection rejoices in all there is to learn, savor, praise, and enjoy about tea.” I haven’t done the math but if try a selection a day you should be able to get through it in about a year.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Iced Tea by Shangri La – Traditional Black Brew Bags
When it comes to tea, certain seasons are known for certain things. I’m drawing a blank when it comes to autumn and winter, though it’s safe to say those are times when the warming qualities of a nice hot cup of tea are much appreciated.
We are currently passing through spring, perhaps best known for being a time when the first tea harvests of the year take place. This gives us shincha, a Japanese term meaning “new tea,” and some of the finer of these varieties are among the most coveted of all teas.
Right now, the afternoon temperature in my part of the world stands at 92 degrees (with 5 percent humidity – truly a dry heat). So it seems very summery, even though summer officially does not commence for almost two months.
All of which means iced tea season is approaching. Never mind that for some of us, it’s always iced tea season. I’ve already written a few articles about my curious tea drinking habits and though my Esteemed Editor will surely cringe, I’ll direct you to one of them.
Rather than reinventing the wheel and writing yet another article about bold new ways to prepare iced tea and whatnot, I thought I’d direct you to a few of the fine articles already in the archives here as well as touching on some miscellaneous iced tea-related bits.
Such as iced tea consumption in the United States. I don’t doubt that Americans drink a lot of iced tea and that the majority of what we drink is of the iced variety. What I wonder about is that in the seven years I’ve been writing about tea the only number I’ve seen given for the percentage of tea we drink is 85%. Maybe this number hasn’t changed even one percent in seven years or maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place.
Then I got to thinking about the term iced tea itself and wondering when it first came to be. I found a travel book from 1845 that commented on the iced tea, coffee and chocolate in Naples. Three years earlier, a writer in the London Quarterly Review noted that the Russians cooled all of their warm weather drinks with ice, including tea. But the oldest reference I was found (in my not completely thorough search) was a passing mention of iced tea in the 1827 volume, Domestic Economy, and Cookery, for Rich and Poor.
If you’d like to brush up on various facets of iced tea knowledge you can check out the articles at this site by going here. Among some highlights, an article that takes a look at a few brewing methods, one that looks at iced tea tidbits and trivia, and an examination of the critical sweetened vs. unsweetened issue.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Black Tea (stock image)
Much has been said about the fast pace of modern life. So much, as a matter of fact, that I won’t belabor the point by saying much more. I’m not one to sit around and wail and gnash my teeth about this sort of thing because we can all choose the pace at which we live our lives, at least to some extent.
But I couldn’t help sitting up and taking notice recently when I ran across the following headline – Capresso Brews a Cup of Coffee or Tea in 60 Seconds. Well, I have to say that this seemed to be a bit much. I’m not one of those tea drinkers who gets all overcome with the meditative nature of the tea drinking experience. But on the other hand I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with that sort of approach.
I don’t think it would hurt any of us to slow down a bit and smell a few roses and whatnot, but my objection to this kind of speed tea is more along practical lines. I don’t know anything about preparing coffee and whether or not the process can be completed within a minute and still come up with something worth drinking. When it comes to tea I’d venture to say that the answer is no.
Of course, there is at least one notable exception I can think of and that is those who brew tea in the gaiwan style, using relatively large amounts of tea with smallish amounts of water and very short steeps. But to be slightly ungrammatical about the whole thing, this isn’t that.
This is tea prepared in the “Western” style, unless I’m missing something, and there are plenty of variables here to be sure. But for the most part 60 seconds isn’t going to cut it, especially for that old favorite of tea drinkers here in the West – black tea. I tend to steep my black tea near the lower end of the range, but even I always give it at least two minutes. Do the math.
My other concern with such a gadget is that tea seems an afterthought and it doesn’t seem that any allowance is made for the wide range of steeping times and water temperatures that are critical to prepare different types of tea effectively. Perhaps if you were going to spring for a product from this company your money would be better spent with something like this. You probably won’t get 60 second tea, but you can wait a few more minutes to make sure it’s done right.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
No weapons here. (ETS image)
I can’t really presume to speak for the good people who bring you this blog, but in this instance I’m going to make an assumption. I’m going to assume that they, like yours truly, do not condone the use of their fine teas as a weapon. But if the truth be told, from time to time you do run across reports of tea used in such a manner.
Sometimes, I’m sad to say, said stories recount how tea was used as an offensive weapon. On the other hand and perhaps more in the category of good news, are those instances in which a cup of hot tea is used to repel some sort of evildoer. One of the most recent such incidents that made it into the press took place in the parking lot of a convenience store in Pennsylvania. In this case the potential victim of a robbery held off the bad guy with a well-aimed cup of hot tea to the face.
Over the course of the years, in the not quite so real world, we find that tea has been used a weapon in the annals of mystery fiction. Although to say that tea itself is the weapon might not be completely accurate, given that in many of these stories it’s actually the delivery vehicle for a variety of poisons. Tea used in this manner turns up in a number of books by the famed mystery writer Agatha Christie and surely in works by numerous other authors that I’m not aware of.
The dark side of this sort of thing is that tea is occasionally used as such a delivery vehicle for poisons in the not so fictional world. One of the more notable instances of this was the case of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian spy who, in 2006, was apparently done in by a radioactive substance introduced into his tea. For a more mundane but just as unsettling example of this sort of thing, refer to this article about a recent case of poisoning by tea that had a better outcome.
Finally, it’s not really an example of tea used as a weapon, but here’s an article about how the damages allegedly caused by a cup of hot tea led to a lawsuit of nearly a million dollars brought against Southwest Airlines.
[Editor's note: No we do not condone the use of tea as a weapon. Life is tricky enough.]
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
If you’re of a certain age, you might recall popular commercials for a certain stockbroker (if not, you can always turn to YouTube). After the mere mention of their name reliably caused an entire room to go silent, the proceedings closed with the catchphrase, “when E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”
Which is a roundabout way of saying that if you’re the big kahuna in your particular industry, then, just like with an 800-pound gorilla, people are probably more likely to pay attention to you. Recently one of the honchos at a certain ubiquitous mega-corporation made a few comments on his company’s impending move into tea. While said company is much better known for their coffee and their existing tea offerings have often lurked in the shadows, that all is apparently going to change.
What does all this have do with the price of tea in China, to quote the old phrase? Well, in addition to the fact that it may actually affect the price of tea produced in China, in a very real way, it’s also likely to have a significant impact on the tea industry as a whole. Let’s not forget that once upon a time, back before said firm became a coffee selling powerhouse, coffee was just coffee and there really wasn’t much to get excited about – and we all know how that’s changed.
Now, with their recent purchase of one of the U.S. tea industry’s biggest players (and let’s not forget that existing tea line) you-know-who is turning their attentions to the beverage that even they point out, is said to be the second most consumed beverage in the world, after water.
For more on the topic, check out this recent article/video from a popular investing site. Though you’ll have to hack your way through a thicket of financial buzzwords (“leverage the premium nature of” and so on). If you’d rather not, the gist of the thing is that though “tea” was originally part of the gorilla’s name, they have not made it enough of a focal point, they intend to keep alive the chain of stores they recently purchased with the potential for hundreds more locations on the horizon, and they will also increase their focus on tea selling in their existing locations.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
