• Rediscovering 174-year-old Tea


    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 


    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.

    Ethnobotanist Aurora Prehn describes the 1850s tea collection a Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

    Aurora Prehn
    Aurora Prehn describes tea collection at Royal Botanic Gardens near London, UK

    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.

    Robert Fortune: A Plant Hunter in the Orient

    His story is fascinating.

    I read a wonderful biography by Alistair Watt (Robert Fortune: A Plant Hunter in the Orient) that really covers his whole life and career. He’s a horticulturalist by training and is a plant hunter who traveled to Asia, mainly China, on five expeditions between 1843 and 1861.

    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. 

    Collection No. 33725. Three examples from a 24 painting set illustrating the cultivation, and processing of tea leaves into a slow roasted wulong as seen in modern Wuyishan.

    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. 

    Kew Collection

    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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  • Q|A Philippe Juglar

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


    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.”

    AVPA President Philippe Juglar (Agence pour la Valorisation des Produits Agricoles)

    Philippe Juglar
    AVPA President Philippe Juglar

    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.

    Philippe Juglar

    Philippe: Do you know how we judge wine in France? The best one of a certain region? 

    The wine that mirrors the pattern of the wine of that region.  So you have an organoleptic profile for, for instance, Burgundy, and the best wine of this specific region of Burgundy is the one with a profile which is the nearest to the theoretical one, which is completely intellectual. 

    We never compare two wines from two different regions, that is nonsense.

    In AVPA we prefer a local transformation of the rural product. 

    First reason, to give a larger share of the value chain to the country of origin.  

    The second reason is to obtain exceptional qualities. When the processing of the agricultural product is made by the grower himself or the nearest possible from the grower, then you get exceptional products: You change your grower into apassionate, dictator of his own product, and his reaction is completely different. There is no discussion. You just want to have the best with the best practice.  

    The third reason is that in producing countries you now have emerging markets. Why import from America or from Europe?  

    Tea is, by definition, processed in growing countries, which may be the reason for those exceptional teas you have in China or in Japan because they have processed their own teas for thousands of years.  

    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.

    Juglar presents 2018 tea award to Chaminda Jayawardana, director at Lumbini Tea Estates, Sri Lanka

    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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  • India’s Earth-Friendly Tea Factory

    Jalinga Tea Factory
    A worker a Jalinga Tea Estate in South Assam making biomass pellets from tea waste to fuel tea dryers

    India’s first carbon-neutral tea estate is constructing the country’s most sustainable tea factory.

    Contractors at the Jalinga Tea Estate in South Assam, India’s largest organic tea grower, will complete India’s first zero-emission tea factory in July. With a capacity of 900 metric tons, the solar-powered factory is a large-scale model of efficiency using pellet-fired dryers, improved composting, biochar, and biomass gasification. Jalinga is India’s only Soil & More Impacts certified CO2 neutral estate.

    The factory is jointly financed through the Jalinga Climate Tea Research Foundation (JCTRF), a partnership between Jalinga Tea Estate and Atmosfair, a German non-profit committed to reducing CO? emissions by promoting, developing, and financing renewable energy projects in more than 15 countries.

    Jalinga Tea Factory
    Jalinga has produced organic tea since 2004 at this organic certified factory.

    Patrizia Pschera, Atmosfair’s Manager of Climate Mitigation Projects, writes that Jalinga “is making great efforts to minimise CO2 emissions and to make tea cultivation sustainable.”

    JCTRF is developing and testing climate-friendly ways of growing and processing tea while promoting adaptation to changing climate conditions, she explained. “The aim is to establish a self-sustaining concept for the climate friendly and ecological cultivation of tea that can be transferred to tea gardens all over Assam,” according to Pschera who authored a case study on the project published on the Atmosfair website. 

    Pschera praised the estate for “making well thought-out and far-reaching changes to its production, which goes further than buying CO2 neutrality through certificates.”

    In May, Atmosfair will visit Jalinga with reporters and a camera team from ZDF, a German TV channel making a documentary.

    Jalinga Director Ketan Patel said the factory is half-finished and would be complete with solar panel installation by July. “It will run on 100% biomass pellets and briquettes and replace coal completely. Electricity will be generated through solar panels,” he said.

    The factory will cost €300,000 ($360,000) to build and equip; an investment split equally between Atmosfair and Jalinga.

    “This is my most passionate endeavor to date,” said Patel, a long-time advocate of Earth-friendly endeavors on the 650-hectare estate.  Jalinga is a third-generation family business farmed organically since 2004. In 2018 Jalinga Tea Estate received the North American Tea Conference’s “Sustainability Award” presented annually.

    Low emissions cook stove

    The estate has adopted several climate-friendly social initiatives. Workers are supplied low-emission cookstoves instead of using firewood to improve air quality within dwellings, Patel explained, a simple innovation that reduces deforestation and improves the health of workers and their families.

    “Jalinga is a demonstration site, we intend to commercialize the technology and share it with the whole tea industry,” said Patel.

    “Atmosfair will look at the carbon emissions in the factory and develop carbon credits and take these back into the EU. They sell these carbon credits to airlines, government, etc.,” he said, adding, “It’s a win-win situation for the industry and environment.”

    Pellet-Fired Dryers

    The Indian government has the mandate to cut carbon emissions. One of the biggest problems in the industry is the reliance on coal to fuel dryers. Burning fossil fuels leads to the release of pollutants into the atmosphere. The availability of coal is also an issue. Coal mining is now illegal in Meghalaya, raising costs and making coal less available. Patel said that coal leaves a residue on tea plants, soot that is not suitable for human consumption.

    Jalinga will rely on tea waste, an excellent fuel when converted to biomass pellets. Prunings, waste leaves, and grass from weeding have relatively low ash content and generate 20 MJ of energy per kilo.

    “Many crop residues remain unused every year. Their decay in local dumps produces the greenhouse gas methane. At the same time, tea plantation operators dry the tea leaves with coal, releasing CO2. The JCTRF will test how plantation operators can use a pelleting machine to compress crop residues to use them as fuel instead of fossil coal,” said Patel. “We will be doing extensive research on climate-friendly ways to produce tea, both in the plantation & the factory so that the whole chain can lead to zero carbon tea production,” he said.

    Toward Carbon Zero

    The garden is also doing extensive R&D on a carbon removal program that will drastically improve soil fertility, explains Patel. Jalinga has been using compost from a special composting method (Novcom compost) in combination with manure to fertilize the tea plants for more than 15 years.

    “We are continuously trying out new ways of creating compost with green matter available in the estate. We have an in-house lab that tests the compost, compost water, and soil regularly for microbial growth, microbial diversity. Nitrogen content is also measured off-site,” he said.

    In a Facebook video, Patel explains that Jalinga follows the three pillars of climate-smart tea:

    • sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and income
    • adopting and building resilience to climate change
    • reducing and removing greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions

    “Our policies are aligned with the 17 goals developed by the United Nations that aim for a better and more sustainable future for all,” he says.

    Jalinga supplies private-label tea to more than 150 5-star hotels with exports to the UK, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, and soon Russia, Australia, and Japan.

    Next up is a brand launch.

    Meeting the India Tea Board mandate to produce earth-friendly tea at a profit while enhancing India’s ability to market quality tea ? Jalinga is leading the way.

    “Currently tea needs a quarter million metric tons of Nitrogen from non-renewable methane; 138,000 metric tons of Potassium from fossil sources and 27,500 metric tons of Phosphorus to dig from fast-depleting reserves. Conventional farming has the tools to meet demand, but supplies are fast running out. Peak phosphorus comes in 2030,” according to Nigel Melican, founder Teacraft.


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  • The Many Teas of India


    The 1.4 billion people who live in India consume about 20% of the tea produced globally, including most of the tea grown there. Consumption averages 840 grams per person annually. Growth slowed to 2.5% in 2020—much weaker than in previous years—largely due to retail closures, but India has not lost its taste for tea, it is just prepared more at home. Aravinda Anantharaman takes us on a tea tour that reveals there is lot more to savor than chai.

    The Many Teas of India

    Chai
    Chai is a blend of black tea and eight spices

    Many of India’s Teas are a Far Cry from Chai

    India’s association with chai is a long and strong one. Chai connotes milky sweetness, a social break in the day, train journeys, spices … but here’s the thing, it’s not the only kind of tea that enjoys cultural popularity in the country. Here are a few teas from across India, with deep cultural affinities … and quite a far cry from chai. 

    In the South, coffee is the popular beverage except in Kerala where tea is a staple. The Sulaimani is a tea from Kerala’s mapilla Muslim community in the Malabar region. While it’s origin is undocumented, there are references to its connection with the Arabian beverage called the ghava made with dates and black pepper. There was sea trade between the Arabian and the Malabar coast so there could be some truth here. Kerala is also home to spices like cardamom and pepper and the Sulaimani celebrates this — it is made with black tea, cardamom and cinnamon, lime juice and sugar or honey. Some add a pinch of saffron too. 

    Moving west towards Gujarat and Maharashtra states, where the Parsi community are based offers another version. Tea for the Parsis in India is choi, black tea with mint and lemongrass, and if available, spearmint. Famous for their baking skills, the Parsis enjoy their tea with something sweet, a repertoire of dishes like kumas, mawa cake and poppatjis (each with a story of its own). They also enjoy a proper English-style tea service Choi is made with any black tea — leaf or CTC or dust — steeped in boiling water along with the mint and lemongrass. It is sweetened and served with a spot of milk. 

    Kahwa

    In the North, Kashmir has the kahwa. It’s not an everyday drink but an occasional one, usually served before and after a feast. The kahwa is made with a bit of green tea but saffron and cardamom pods are the mainstay of this beverage. It’s sweetened and garnished with slivers of almond. Sometimes a little milk is added making it the doodh or milk kahwa. As befitting its celebratory status, the kahwa is served from a beautiful samovar.

    But everyday tea in Kashmir is the noon chai or salt tea. This is made from a green tea concentrate. To serve, milk and salt are added to the concentrate. The tea has a faint pink colour from the addition of soda, and is enjoyed for the warmth it delivers.

    Salt tea is also the preferred tea in the northwestern parts, in places like Ladakh. Sharing ties with Tibet, the tea here is po cha or salted butter tea. 

    In the East, where so much of India’s tea grows, there’s no dearth of tea choices. However, in Kolkata, street side tea is lebu cha which is lemon black tea with a touch of black salt — no milk but a rather inviting beverage with spicy tangy sweetness to it. 

    Further east, tea is preferred black and smoked. In Manipur and parts of Assam and Nagaland, tea has been enjoyed even before the British brought it here. Tea is made from leaves harvested from wild-grown bushes. Its withered, dried, and stuffed into bamboo and allowed to smoke over the stove for an extended period. Smoky black tea is a staple. 

    I suspect there are more teas that would make it to this list. Which just emphasizes the truth about tea — that its a versatile beverage and its place in a culture comes from how they have made it their own.


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  • A Tea Suited to Fine Dining

    Copenhagen Sparkling Tea
    Three alcohol and two non-alcohol blends offer mixologists new options.

    Sparkling Teas are Nicely Suited to Gourmet Dining

    Jacob Kocemba, a Copenhagen-based sommelier credited with creating a new genre of low-alcohol teas has produced a range that’s elegant, contemporary and interesting.

    It all started when Kocemba was head sommelier at a restaurant in his native Denmark. His head chef requested a wine to pair with a new dessert for the next day. It was a dessert that used an expensive French strawberry.

    “In my wine cellar I had 1,700 wines,” says Kocemba, “but none of them matched the dessert.” He decided to step away and sleep on it. The next morning, there was still no wine he was happy with. So he went to the pastry chef, tasted each ingredient that was going into the dessert, then tasted them all combined. In a moment of inspiration, he stared for a moment at his tea shelf and saw many possibilities. That night he created a drink with tea that was an unexpected success that became special but not yet finished.

    “Someone introduced me to carbon dioxide. I had every fifth weekend off, and started working with it,” says Kocemba. In 2011, a couple of years after his first forays into tea, Kocemba started the Kocemba Sparkling Tea Company. Three years later, he was back working as a manager in a Michelin-starred restaurant. But evidently, he could not leave the story of sparkling tea incomplete. So in 2016, once again, he quit his job to pursue his work with sparkling tea. In 2017, he partnered with Bo Stan Hansen to launch Sparkling Tea Co. in Copenhagen. 

    Kocemba talks about sparkling tea as one does of wine or champagne. It’s a category unto itself, with plenty going for it. But is it for the wine lover or the tea devotee? Both, says Jacob. “You will find a lot of links to the tea, you will recognize it as a tea drinker. Others will recognize the balance and sweetness and acidity, depending on what they are familiar with.”  

    The sparkling teas made by Kocemba are carefully crafted. Take for instance the BLÅ, a non-alcoholic tea, and one of the most popular teas in their range. It’s made with a whopping 14 teas, including an Earl Grey, the Lady Grey, a Fujian tea, both green and black teas from Assam, a Darjeeling, and an Indian jasmine tea — all organic and single-origin.

    Each tea is extracted at different temperatures. “Just like champagne,” says Jacob. 

    Sparkling Tea offers two non-alcoholic and three alcoholic variations. Vinter is based on chai. Kocemba’s inspiration was Glögg. “In my opinion, it tastes like shit,” he confesses. But rather than dismiss it, he set to ask how he could translate the flavors into something drinkable. The result was Vinter, with the warm hit of spices from chai, that are joined by notes of bergamot oil from an Earl Grey. 

    Without doubt, Kocemba’s teas are complex. He uses from 6 to 13 teas to achieve the desired outcome. If white tea brings the velvety texture, green is sought for depth and umami while black tea lends a backbone to building layers. The blended teas are bottled with white wine or grape, chosen for their natural sweetness, and to enhance the flavors of the tea. A sparkling tea, is served chilled, in a champagne glass. 

    In 2019, Kocemba and Bo created a private label for the hallowed Fortnum and Mason. Jacob narrates an interesting story of how that came about. “One of the employees of Fortnum and Mason followed us on Instagram. He liked us. We were in London and wrote them a mail asking if we could drop by. They were stunned at how we look at tea.” Jacob created two non-alcoholic sparkling teas based on their teas, both still in production. The brand lists this as the most innovative product in their 300-year history! 

    It brought them attention and visibility, but Kocemba is not in a hurry to chase numbers. “We want to build this category,” he says. It is a difficult product to produce, evidently demands deep understanding of flavors and a lot of skill and precision. Jacob admits that it’s not an easy genre to propagate because of the craftsmanship it requires. At Sparkling Tea, he still makes all the bottles, with a batch taking 6-8 weeks to produce. 

    It is a category that offers plenty to both wine and tea drinkers. Adds Bo, “Both will experience a completely new and innovative way of enjoying tea, which broadens the use of tea and makes it relevant at even more occasions.”

    Now, that ought to be reason enough to carry a bottle to the next dinner party.


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