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Caption: Researchers and members of the London Tea History Association smelling a 172-year-old yak-butter container during a workshop in January 2020. Image used with permission, Andrew McMeekin Photography 

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In 2019, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew began analyzing the provenance of more than 300 tea specimens of mainly Chinese and Indian grown teas dating to the 1850s. Ethnobotanist Aurora Prehn began by examining labels. She then proceeded to record non-textual evidence experienced through sight, touch, and smell. In this interview she shares her findings and offers some interesting insights into the work of Horticulturalist Robert Fortune whose specimens are included in the collection. Listen as we learn about tea from 1853.

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Q|A Aurora Prehn

Aurora Prehn is an ethnobotanist working independently researching the nexus of culture and nature while consulting in areas of expertise under her LLC, People & Plants. She completed her BA in Anthropology and Environmental Studies from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2013 where her research examined local food culture, health, and the environment. Following graduation she spent five years in the specialty, organic tea and botanical industry at Rishi Tea finishing as a tea taster and educator. In 2019 she completed her MSc in Ethnobotany at the University of Kent and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in the United Kingdom. 

Dan Bolton: Will you share with our listeners what it’s like to examine tea from 1853.

Aurora Prehn: The collection is quite old, so the leaves are different shades of brown. Of course they’re oxidized but the different shapes expose different tea types. Compression was a major theme that surfaced right away, as well as a whole slew of different Orthodox shaped leaves.

I didn’t touch them directly without gloves, and very rarely, very sparingly to preserve them, but rotated the jars to expose different labels that were hidden and even bits of metal that were stamped labels as well as a little bit of tea chests.

We all know tea absorbs scent.  I was shocked to smell white tea and pick up nuances, smelling some greens that are now brown, but you can tell that there’s still that green heart there. 

Yak butter has a very interesting, distinct smell, and 175 years old is still a little bit pungent.

And as far as how the collection tastes? 

Well, maybe one day if Mark allows, I would love to try some. 

Dan: The storied botanist and tea explorer Robert Fortune is part of the narrative. He was not working for Kew, but many specimens that he collected ended up in the museum. Will you briefly describe his adventures.

Fortune was hired by the Horticultural Society of London and then the East India Company and traveled on behalf of the US government. He also collected insects and different antiquities and wrote extensively about his work in the Gardeners Chronicle as well as the Journal of the Horticultural Society of London. 

He also wrote five books on his expeditions with a map of the tea lands which shows what was believed at the time. It doesn’t show the experimental test plots in Darjeeling or in South India and the area of Assam that we know that grows tea. We know that Korea has been growing tea for hundreds of years and was left off the map so it’s really quite interesting. 

We have two artifacts in the collection from Fortune. One is a set of 24 paintings showing how tea is grown and processed on paper that was requested by the collection’s founder. William Jackson was writing about the plant used to make that paper, so I think the paper itself was slightly more of interest than the depictions. 

The second was this fancy or twisted tea that was collected in 1852. It came from Yunnan, where Fortune wasn’t traveling, so it was likely he collected from a port.

Dan: Kew hosted multiple workshops in January 2020 for members of the tea community from the UK and Ireland – prior to closing the gardens during the pandemic. Aurora, how can listeners learn more about this marvelous collection?

Aurora: One way that people can engage this collection is through the online catalog available on Kew’s website. Search economic botany collection by just typing camellia.

One of the really remarkable things about this collection is how intact it is. Teas that were identified in the 1850s, they’re still here and still intact.

This is what’s pushing me to keep going remotely during this pandemic, because I know that listeners and tea nerds around the world are really just going to love it. There’s going to be even more coming out of this project. 

Rediscovering 174 Years of Tea, Chai, and ?

By Aurora Prehn and Mark Nesbitt

There are many histories of tea’s material culture, each depending on the perspective of the historian and, crucially, the raw material and methodology of analysis. This collection is distinct from those of most other museums and archives in being composed primarily of tea leaves, rather than teaware or documents. The majority came from across Asia, between 1847 and 1914, and include all parts of the tea plant, from root to seed, as well as clay, other woods, bamboo, and metals. Alongside processed tea leaves from all six tea categories, the collection also contains: seed husk and flower bud cakes, rare tea types, bricks from remote trading outposts, wooden statues, teapots, adulterated tea, fermented lappet, extracts, and a single yak butter container with an aromatic note left from its contents approximately 172 years ago. As one can imagine, these artifacts contain many biocultural stories, histories, and perspectives.

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Caption: Philippe Juglar, right, presenting AVPA award to Managing Director Chaminda Jayawardana, Lumbini Tea Factory, Sri Lanka

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The Paris-based AVPA (Agence pour la Valorisation des Produits Agricoles) is allied with tea producers globally. Recognition, professional education programs, and competitions build self-esteem and economic success that directs a larger share of the value chain to the country of origin. “This is why we cling to local transformation of agricultural products so that producers benefit from the pursuit of excellence,” says AVPA President Philippe Juglar. Juglar explains how competitions that exclude international judges in favor of local experts reveal that what the gastronomic world and what the professional tea world consider quality tea leads to some “very interesting differences.”

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How AVPA Elevates Origins

Philippe Juglar is a partner and consultant at Agro Business Consulting & Development, a Paris-based consultancy focused on agrobusiness development and trade. ABCD helps clients increase revenue by adding tangible and intangible value. He has worked in Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Juglar was named AVPA president in 2005.

Dan Bolton: Tea-consuming nations have many compelling reasons to support tea suppliers at origin. Name the most compelling of these reasons from the vantage of AVPA and describe your process of evaluating tea with French-only juries.

Philippe Juglar : We are trying to create contacts between European distributors and possible suppliers in new countries. For instance new tea producers in Eastern Africa are absolutely unknown up to now. They have a new image. We want the French and European tea distributors to have contact with new countries of production and new producers.  

The tea market is mainly global international companies or very large trading companies. They import the quality and the quantities they want.  

First, we try to precisely define the parameters we want to judge, and we check that all our judges in the jury agree on the measurement of all those parameters. 

Second, we group the products in homogeneous categories.  We don’t want to compare what is not comparable, but just to have a comparable notation for products that are seamlessly similar. 

Third, very paradoxically, we wish not to have an international jury. Tasting is very hard to predict related to our culture. We want to have and to find out, the very interesting proof and for that a common language is very, very important. To try to say in your mother language what you feel is difficult but in a foreign language is nearly impossible.  

Last, we try to compare what the gastronomic world thinks and what the professional tea world thinks, and I can assure you that we find very interesting differences. 

Dan: Quality is visible to all. Color, pluck, and the precision of leaf preparation and style as is the absence of defects such as oxidation of the leaves. Taste is subjective, yet skilled tea tasters agree that certain teas possess exceptional characteristics. Please explain AVPA gastronomic approach in evaluating tea.

Dan: Consumer preferences power markets, AVPA educates and helps inform tea selection by consumers. Will you share your thoughts on the importance of traceability and delivering a fair price to those at origin.

Philippe: Traceability for me is very, very important because what the consumer is looking for is to know the family, the region where the product is coming from. Nowadays you have a code, a picture of the very farm where the product has been grown. That leads to a notion, you know perfectly which is a geographical indication.  

A lot of these small producers have no financial means to get a brand or a trademark, but they can get a geographical indication and collectively capitalize upon it (that’s the way we do it in Italy or in France or maybe in Japan). 

Very good products are known by their geographical indication and a geographical indication is a way to get that intangible value, which will transform the lives of the group. 

As far as fair trade prices for me, it’s a very, very difficult notion. I don’t believe that you built a regular commercial relationship based on the fact that one in the deal is a poor guy.  

I saw it very well in coffee: If I am poor, I can sell my coffee. If by selling my coffee I become rich, I cannot sell it anymore.

And the second problem: What is a fair price? The cost of living is not at all the same in Sri Lanka, in China, in Colombia or in Canada.  

So the notion of a fair price is a concept developed in developed and consumer countries.

Frankly speaking, deep studies for coffees show that over $1.00 gained by the fair trade logo, 90% of that stays in Europe.  

I prefer to help the farmer to get a natural good value by the quality, and by the fact that his brand or the geographical indication is reviewed by the consumer. This is better than by an act of charity.

Competition Tea

By Dan Bolton

Tea competitions that “speak” for their respective markets are great for the industry. In the tea lands, skilled growers and tea makers can infinitely adjust their pluck, style, and grade for export but first, they must understand market preferences. Respected annual contests such as the Emei Dah Pan Competition in Taiwan and the Lu Gu Farmers competition, which dates to 1976, are a model for peer review but in France AVPA judges companies from around the world for excellence “based on gastronomic rather than standardized refereeing.”

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