• Friday Roundtable: Water, water everywhere

    Welcome to the Friday Roundtable, where we want to hear about your tea experience. Each week we present a topic that affects us all as tea business owners and tea consumers. Let’s talk tea.

    This week we’re thinking about water. The importance of water cannot be underestimated when it comes to tea preparation. Too hot and you’ve boiled your greens. Too cool and you’ve left the complex flavors sitting in your pile of tea leaves. Too many minerals in the water and you’ve dulled the taste. “Dead” water, that’s been boiled multiple times, is also said to ruin the taste.

    There are many questions we could have asked about this topic. For example, we could have asked you to confess to your propensity to microwave your water (shame, shame). Instead, we wanted to ask about how you ensure you have the best quality water.

    Some tea makers will only utilize bottled water, an expensive prospect for heavy tea drinkers. There are purifiers in pitcher form like Brita and PUR. There are advanced models that are plumbed into your pipes. Newer versions, like Brondell’s H20+ Cypress, aim to reduce the plumbing challenges by sitting on the countertop and connecting to the faucet.

    I’ve tried all of these methods. How about you? What is your preferred way of obtaining high quality water for your tea?

  • Wild Tea Hunter

    Author: J.T. Hunter
    Illustrator: Shana Zhang

    The allure of China stimulates author J.T. Hunter’s sense of adventure as he takes readers off the beaten path into the major tea producing regions in search of uncultivated tea.

    He writes with a sensitive appreciation of ancient Chinese tea culture. His respect for the tea growers and tea masters is drawn from his willingness to sit and listen carefully in their homes and shops where he sometimes stays for days at time — long enough to learn tea’s subtleties.

    WildTeaHunter_CoverHis is a book that brings into focus not just the taste, but the experience of tea.

    He shares his knowledge in depth, introducing the characters and describing the humble villages, the mountains, forests and terrain that appear exotic in travel brochures. Yet the people he meets are quite approachable.

    Take Master Yu, who introduced him to Wild Lapsang Souchong, revealing not just the taste sensations, but the reverence of a culture that prizes the feeling of tea.

    “Every tea has a different Qi quality; Wild Lapsang Souchong has a rising energy. Notice how the sweet chocolate aftertaste sticks to your mouth, adding a sense of fullness… feel the energy rise through your body,” writes Hunter who describes a sensory experience that requires preparation well beyond that of tea drinkers in the West. Hunter’s lifelong study of Qigong, the ancient Taoist practice of moving energy in and around the body through breath and visualization, has readied him.

    “Cleansing the internal and external body before drinking tea is a Taoist practice,” he writes. Clean your mind of thoughts by breathing deeply… repeat for a few cycles. Then wash your hands and face; follow by drinking a cup of pure hot water to cleanse the internal. Only then do you savor the tea.

    “Taoist sects believe that we are constantly absorbing energy from nature. This is why Taoist monks live high in the mountains, surrounded by beautiful, wild forests with fresh air and good energetic alignment. Tea is a way to ingest energy, it helps them attain a higher level of enlightenment,” explains Hunter who uses the text to reveal his lifelong study of medicine, martial arts and religion.

    While Hunter’s book shares with us the beauty of tea and its tea artisans, it is also a practical guide to the cultivation of tea and an explanation of his own efforts to organize and make these teas available to customers of www.wildteaqi.com.

    His selling methods reflect what he has learned in his travels. For example, he groups his teas according their affiliation with the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. These elements are interlinked (water corrodes metal, earth snuffs out fire) and associated with the seasons as well as organs in the body. Black tea is born by fire, he writes, and shares some of fire’s characteristics and is most closely associated with the heart.

    Hunter’s tea study began when he traveled to China to practice healing arts in a free clinic. Tea is integral to the practice of medicine, according to Hunter. “People in the U.S. drink tea for reasons that differ greatly from why the Chinese drink tea,” writes Hunter, who then describes the intricate connection between specific tea, the organs and the elements.

    Wild Tea Qi now specializes in sourcing and sharing information about the crafting wild teas such as those of Yunnan, as well as trees in less well-known regions such as Wuchuang and Cheshui County in Guizhou province and in Sichuan province.

    “The Taoists I met in Wuyishan drank Oolongs and black teas. Those in Wudangshan prefer green. The general rule is to drink teas made locally, Hunter explains.

    His 152-page work reads as trekking adventure at times, with chapters devoted to the discovery of teas like those used to make Purple Puer, a much prized tea from Yunnan that sells for $8 a gram. Along the way he experiences the ethnic minorities of the region including the Wa, Hani and Yi tribes all in his successful pursuit of legendary trees centuries old.

    His travels raised his awareness of damage to the ecosystem and the need for sustainable practices. He issues a call to action for consumers to create a ripple that can become a big wave as the tea industry gets bigger and bigger.

    To those who ask “what can I do?” Hunter advises that consumers should become informed about where tea is sourced. “Buy tea that is sustainably harvested from trees that grow naturally in an undisturbed environment,” writes Hunter. He favors gardens that integrate with the local ecology and wildlife. In such places, flowers such as orchids grown naturally around and on the tea trees, adding an incredible flavor to the tea, he writes.

    “What started as an adventure of discovery of beautifully rich tea cultures changed my life,” said Hunter. The artisans that grow tea in bio-diverse plantations make better tea, he said. Their way of life should be preserved.

    “I felt a great responsibility to purchase their teas in order to support them,” he said, “even though I loved some teas from destructive plantations, my conscience would not allow me to buy them.”

    “My adventures continue. I hope readers will share my message of hope in support of conscious tea drinking: Our beautiful planet and a rich tea cultivation tea culture is what is at stake here,” he said.

    —  Dan Bolton is  the editor of Tea Biz.

    Format: Kindle Edition
    File Size: 2054 KB
    Publisher: Wild Tea Qi Publishing (May 28, 2013)
    Price: $8.99
    Sold by: Amazon

  • Friday Roundtable: Caffeine Questions

    My regular readers know that caffeine is a topic of particular interest to me. Tea drinkers are often in search of information about caffeine content in their cup and, unfortunately, the information disseminated is often based on rumor and tradition versus current research and science.

    We covered some of the myth and lore of caffeine on Tea Biz previously (article) but I’m always interested in what other tea enthusiasts and experts have to say.

    * What are the most frequent caffeine questions that come your way?

    * What questions would you like answered by future research?

    BTW – If you haven’t yet read Kevin Gascoyne’s Tea: History, Terroirs, and Varieties, it’s an excellent addition to the conversation. His team at Camellia Sinensis has been working on putting science behind our answers with chemical analyses of caffeine and antioxidant levels in various teas.

    – By Katrina Ávila Munichiello, 2013

  • How much of a premium does it take to make premium tea special?

    What is the threshold price for premium tea?

    From a retailer’s perspective it is tea that grosses at least $300 per kilo.

    A 50-gram pouch of specialty tea that sells for $15 puts 30-cents a gram into the retailer’s till compared to between 2.5- and 5-cents per gram for commodity tea.*

    Specialty Tea Pricing Benchmark

    Price

    Qty

    Grams

    Ounces

    Pounds

    $300

    1

    1000 grams (kilo)

    36 ounces

    2.25 pounds

    $150

    2

    500-gram pouches

    18 ounces

    1.125 pounds

    $15

    20

    50-gram pouches

    1.8 ounces

     

    $7.50

    40

    25-gram pouches

    .90 ounces

     

    $3.75

    80

    12.5-gram sample

    .45 ounces

     

    * 200 grams of Lipton Yellow Label sells for $9.50 or 5-cents per gram in grocery and the same 100-count box sells for $5.09 or 2.5 cents per gram at Costco (9-8-2013)

    The tea contained in a $15 packet may or may not be premium quality. I could be an exquisitely handmade, artisanal Orthodox or more likely a mid-grade green or black blended with fruit and flowers and flavor enhanced. It may even be a tisane and contain little or no camellia sinensis and still be labeled special. Customers view premium through the prism of price.

    To put this price in perspective, consider that growers in Africa and India produce 1.5 billion kilos of black CTC that sells for an average $3 per kilo with another 1.5 billion kilos of green tea from Asia exported at a similar average. The balance of the world’s annual 4 billion kilos of tea sells for $10 a kilo, with very small quantities of high value tea selling for up to $100 per kilo, according to Rajiv Lochan, founder of Doke Tea and a student of statistics. “So a very rough average of $5 per kilo for bulk teas can be a safe estimate,” he writes. Tea at retail, packets, tea bags and specialty teas have extreme ranges and are difficult to estimate, according to Lochan.

    Regardless of what is inside the pouch I believe that $15 for 50 grams is a useful retail benchmark in North America. If customers willingly pay $300 per kilo it must be special.

    This is a six-time multiple over the retail price of commodity tea. I borrowed this valuation ratio from the coffee industry which prices specialty grades of Arabica at a premium over “C” or commodity grade green coffee. A six-times multiple is common in negotiations for the highest “specialty grade” coffees.

    Below is a technical description of top quality coffee by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

    EMBED: www.scaa.org

    Grade 1: Specialty Grade Coffee Beans: no primary defects, 0-3 full defects, sorted with a maximum of 5% above and 5% below specified screen size or range of screen size, and exhibiting a distinct attribute in one or more of the following areas: taste, acidity, body, or aroma. Moisture content must be between 9-13% and when prepared the coffee must be free of cup faults and taints. Coffee that scores 80 points or above on the SCAA’s 100-point scale is graded “specialty.” Only 5- to 10-percent of the world’s annual production qualifies.

    Since the large premiums attached to specialty are based on the cup quality as agreed upon by a buyer and seller if the pre-ship sample does not match the arrival coffee, the container can be rejected. This results in a huge loss to the exporter.

    Descriptions of tea lack this level of precision. There is no exchange or futures market and no standard cupping criteria for tea. Prices for large quantities (or specialty micro-lots) are negotiated directly with the grower and the rest is sold at auction houses in the tea producing regions of the world.

    Should the tea industry devise a standard description of premium teas worthy of a premium price?

  • Stir It Up: Exploring Cocktail Infusions

    TWEET: What tea-based cocktails make their way into your martini glasses or champagne flutes?

    Looking for a new cocktail for your summer parties? As tea lovers we’re usually happy to add another tea element to our events. Fortunately for us, New York-based company The Teaologist is the latest entrant into the specialty tea cocktail arena with their Owl’s Brew line.

    Tea Forté was one of the early arrivals into that market more than four years ago. Tea Forté Cocktail Infusions are pyramid sachets containing tea and herbs designed to infuse in alcohol. Customers have been encouraged to develop new recipes for the Lavender Citrus, Silkroad Chai, and Lemongrass Mint pyramids and an online archive now includes gems like Chai White Russians, Lavender Pear Martinis, and Violet Lavender Gin Sours. It was a unique concept and introduced many to the idea of tea in our highball glasses.

    Owl’s Brew takes a different approach, offering their teas as liquid mixers. They wanted the convenience of freshly brewed whole leaf tea and spices that were ready-to-pour.  There are three flavors currently: the chai and coconut-based Coco-Lada, a blend of Darjeeling, lemon, and strawberry called Pink & Black, and the Naked Arnold which combines English Breakfast tea and lemon zest. There are no artificial flavors and the mixers are sweetened with agave or stevia. They can be mixed with spirits including vodka, tequila, rum, or gin, or consumed on their own for mocktails.

    Teaologist founder Jennie Ripps and co-owner Maria Littlefield both come from the marketing world. The cocktails evolved from drinks they made to serve at events they were producing. The tea cocktails made their debut at the NYC premiere of “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” and the response was immediate. The drinks were being requested by restaurants and nightclubs and for other events.

    Ripps and Littlefield felt that there was a need for a lighter, healthier mixer and saw an opportunity to create new blends and flavor profiles designed specifically to pair with spirits. While Ripps and Littlefield believe that Owl’s Brew will be fun for people to use at home, they are also finding that many mixologists in restaurants and bars are coming up with creative uses for Owl’s Brew as an ingredient in cocktail creations.

    Don’t worry if cocktail recipes don’t come naturally to you. The Owl’s Brew team supplies you with ideas on the bottles and more recipes will soon be available on their website.

    Interested in giving Owl’s Brew a try? It goes on sale this month through their website, www.theowlsbrew.com, and in a variety of retail, restaurant, and club locations primarily in NYC.

    LINKED IN: Are we taking the tea-infused product concept too far? Should we be placing more emphasis on encouraging appreciation for specialty tea on its own or are these products bringing new audiences to tea?

    — Katrina Ávila Munichiello | ©Mystic Media 2013

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