My Introduction to Japanese Tea

A Japanese neighbour introduced me to a Japanese tea ceremony.  Yes, I had this tea in restaurants prior to this introduction, but this is totally different.  Japanese tea drinking is very much not only tea drinking but the proper brewing of Japanese tea, called the tea ceremony, together makes the tea drinking experience, to me, a truly humbling exercise (I call it a romanticism of tea) for the tea drinker.

 Let me explain.  If you have seen videos of Japanese tea ceremony (do a internet search); the elaborate movements, the immense attention to details and the various tea utensils used enhances and bring the aesthetics of tea drinking to a new level.

I went to a store that specializes in Japanese tea and got myself a tin of tea (20gms), a tea whisk and a whisk holder.  Honestly, it was the tea whisk that fascinated me.  These 3 items costs me about US$60.  The tea bowl and tea tray in the pix was an inexpensive addition to complete the set.  The whisk holder is to hold the tea whisk to dry to keep the whisk’s shape.

The book “The way of Tea” by Lam Kam Chuen mentioned the history of Japanese Tea as “At the beginning of the ninth century, Japanese visitors to China took home the fashion of tea.  On in particular, the Buddhist monk Dengyo Daishi, studied in China until AD 705 and then took back some seeds to his monastery when he returned to Japan.  Initially, tea was consumed by Buddhist monks to keep themselves awake during long periods of meditation, although by the 13^th century, tea had grown popular outside the monasteries.  The Japanese began their own research on tea and evolved their own ceremony, which is very different from the Chinese way of tea.  In China, the focus is on enjoying the flavor and taste of the drink itself, whereas in Japan the focus is predominantly on the ceremony.”

Here are some Japanese terminology.  “Matcha” refers to the powdered tea leaves.  The process to make matcha is steaming, then drying the tea leaves and finally grinding the dried leaves by stone mill into powder.  “Chawan” refers to the teabowl.  Any bowl, according to my neighbour would do, but ideally a flat base bowl is good to prevent the tea from spilling during whisking.  The whisk known as “chasen” is made from a single piece of bamboo.  The tea prongs, ranges from 80 to 120, are used to whisk the tea powder when hot water is poured. 

An extremely simplified of making Japanese tea is to use and place a small spoon of tea to the chawan, add hot water (about 50ml), stir well with whisk until it foams then move whisk slowly to make the foam fine.  Tea is ready to drink.

It would be a privilege if any of my Japanese readers can share more information on Japanese tea or if possible link me to a Japanese tea farm/store where I can learn more about Japanese tea. It would be a beautiful excuse to visit the Land of the Rising Sun.

2000 Ripe Tea Brick

I had ordered this 250g ripe pu erh brick from Awazon from the internet.  Awazon's proprietor describes the tea as " This Pu-erh brick tea is product of the year 2000, carefully preserved through Dry Storage Method (a traditional way of producing fine Pu-erh tea). It is produced with Qiaomu (arbor) tea from high mountain hundred years old tea tree in Yunnan province.  It brews transparent brown liquor, and gives smooth & great aftertaste with pure Pu-erh aroma."  It costs me about US$17, freight inclusive.

Breaking this particular brick up gave me a surprise.  The cake was compact and I had to use a knife for assistance.  The surprise was the difference in appearance of the tea leaves on the outside of the cake compared to the inside.  The tea leaves seems to be of lower quality on the inside of the brick - meaning the tea leaves looked so broken and crumbly.  I have never drank this tea before and I was concerned with this findings (see pix 3/4).  In addition upon brewing the tea, I found the 1st infusion slightly cloudy due to the fine tea dust.

I contacted Awazon to let him know of my findings; that maybe the distributer that sold this brick to Awazon may have shortchanged him on the sale.  I received a reply from the proprietor; "This 2000 aged Pu-erh brick was made by Yunnan Tea Import and Export Company. Traditionally they have higher grade loose Pu-erh tea outside and lower grade Pu-erh tea leaves inside. This sort of production for Pu-erh tea cakes you may see in traditional ripe Pu-erh tea cakes, such as 7572#,7552# produced by Menghai Tea Factory and 7578# and 7598# made by Haiwan Tea factory.  I broke a brick and checked this brick, here in Kunming the inside part is also loose (as produced many years ago),  but dry (not damp, maybe Kunming has a dry climate....... It's normal sometimes you have cloudy infusion when brewing ripe Pu-erh tea...This tea is safe."

The implication of the reply seem to indicate that some production of pu erh before the tea companies were privatized, may have been compromised, in a sense, that some tea cakes and bricks have better leaves on the outside and lower quality leaves are used on the inside.  I had heard of this rumour during my visit to Kunming earlier this year, where a couple of tea dealers there had mentioned this practice to me, even though I had not encountered any pu erh tea cake/ brick that were compromised in terms of quality until now.  

The taste of the tea was pleasant and smooth.  It has a nice light floral aroma.  My local tea friend, whom I gave a sample of this tea, commented "this tea remind me of red dates....nice and fully acceptable".  Over in this part of the world, when we refer to red dates,  this meant the dried version of the chinese red date.  These red dates are usually added to soups or tonics to sweeten the taste and as well as to give a floral aroma.  My tea friend had concluded that the taste of this ripe tea brick was pleasant.  I agreed with his findings.

Do I recommend this tea? Price-wise ok and taste ok as well.  I would say that for about us$17 for a 10 yr old nice tasting ripe brick, I would recommend a purchase.  I have to admit that I cannot assess this tea properly as I do not have much exposure to ripe pu erh tea that is about 10 years old.  I have a couple of these bricks left and I have no regrets having them in my collection.

Fake Pu erh Wrapper

The 1^st pix shows an imitation (fake) pu erh wrapper.  This means that there is no such CNNP wrapper being used and sold as raw pu erh in the 1990s.

It was inevitable that I will be “caught” one day with a purchase of pu erh that was not the real thing.  Let me explain.  My friend had purchased this teacake from a teashop and gave me a sample of the cake.  He informed me that it’s a wet stored pu erh from the late 90s.  I tried the sample and found the taste of the pu erh tea to be a pleasant aged one.  The tea leaves appeared normal and  I went to this shop and got myself a cake.

I took this cake to my regular teashop for a “bragging” session (to show off my latest “wow” purchase).  A pot of this tea was brewed and a tea drinker there found the tea good.  However, the tea manager there, upon tasting, immediately commented, that this is a raw pu erh that had gone through accelerated high humidity aging, and that this wrapper was not an authentic wrapper, only made to wrapped this quick aged pu cake and to sell to unsuspecting buyers as aged CNNP raw pu.  Accelerated aging of pu erh meant that the pu erh is exposed to a high humidity environment for the purpose of quick fermentation.  This process sometimes known as “wet stored” pu erh, helps raw pu erh ferment quickly so the tea will have a aged sensation taste.   The manager also remarked that this taste of accelerated pu used to be very popular with Hong Kong drinkers some years ago.  

My Penang teamaster friend (Eric) upon receiving my pictures of this pu provided these astute comments : “It's an imitation wrapper. I also noticed that the 中 character is larger than the rest……. Also take a look at the 雲 character on the wrapper and the 云 character on the inner ticket of your Pu. Both are different! I've attached a picture of the CNNP Simplified "Yuen" from the mid 90s for you to compare. Both versions of the “yun” has to be the same. The paper used as the wrapper also doesn't resemble any from the 90s that were from CNNP. The printed characters appear to be bold and dark. This printing method is found only from 2000 onwards. All pre 2000 prints are thin and sharp. Finally, the 國 character should be in a proper square, not rectangle. “

Well, I conclude from these findings that this is a fake CNNP wrapper, which also strongly indicates that this pu erh is not from CNNP either.  The pu erh tea is real though.  Taste is not unpleasant…an aged sensation taste.  The aroma of the brewed tea is also good but it may be that the pu erh tea was exposed to certain scents during the fermentation process to achieve this final scent.  The question here is whether the tea was in a safe and hygienic environment while it is aging and whether there was any physical tempering to the cake.  I disposed the pu erh cake in the garbage after posting this blog. 

It is very important to know your tea and buy your tea from reliable sources to minimize the chances of a bad purchase.  Pu erh fakes are usually found and sold as old raw aged pu erh.  There are hardly, in fact no fakes for the newer cakes (after 2007) as the prices are quite low.  (post blog comment - there was now news that Menghai Dayi newer cakes in 2008 have fakes, please examine the security sticker and feel out the embossed threads before buying)

Tea Economics 101

This is a well written article from the Financial Times (15 Sept 2009) written by Tom Millar.  He explores the economics of tea and tries to explain the weak economics of Chinese Tea.  Here is the very interesting and thought provoking article entitled  "Why foreigners are beating China’s tea-makers on their home turf":

"China is rightly proud of being the home of tea, the world’s most popular drink. Celebratory cups of cha were sipped when China recently regained from India its historical position as the world’s pre-eminent tea producer and consumer after a 100-year hiatus.

But the country’s failure to produce a single internationally recognised tea brand is a source of frustration for cheerleaders of the native Camellia sinensis leaf.

Both at home and abroad, Chinese tea brands struggle to compete with foreign competitors. In China, Unilever’s Lipton brand has a market-leading share three times that of its closest local rival.

“Why is Lipton more powerful than 70,000 Chinese tea companies?” lamented a recent article in a Beijing newspaper.

The challenges facing China’s tea industry are the same as those facing a host of Chinese industries: product quality issues; excessive competition in the domestic market; low prices and meagre earnings abroad; and weak branding.

The root cause of these weaknesses is simple: extreme market fragmentation.

The problem begins on the tea plantations. Around 8m farmers work on plantations across the tea-growing areas of central, southern and western China, mostly tending tiny household plots. Consolidation of the land into larger plantations is constrained by China’s land laws, which prevent farmers from owning – and therefore selling – their land.

The result is that China’s tea industry is far less industrialised than in less economically developed countries such as Kenya or India. In Zhejiang, one of China’s largest tea-growing and richest provinces, there are over 1m smallholdings, each averaging less than 0.2 hectares.

Monitoring quality across millions of scattered tea gardens is an impossible task, and Chinese tea exporters have consistently had trouble meeting foreign safety standards. Chinese tea sells for an average of just US$2 per kg on international markets, compared with US$2.70 for Indian tea or US$3.40 for highly regarded Sri Lankan leaves.

Chinese exporters will not get consistently good prices for their tea in international markets until quality controls are improved across the board, which first requires far greater consolidation of plantations and tea processing factories.

At home, fierce competition among thousands of producers and brands translates into puny market shares and slim profits. Chinese teas are traditionally sold by type and place of origin, rather than by brand, and every region has its own local favourite.

Leading brands like Lipton, on the other hand, understand that creating mass value depends on nationwide marketing and an efficient, integrated distribution network. Lipton sources cheap tea from independent producers, packages it into teabags, and markets its distinctly average “Yellow Label” brew at an outrageous mark-up.

It’s not great tea, but it is great business.

In China’s highly fragmented retail market, no national brand has emerged to knock Lipton off its perch. Instead, premium players selling organic teas are attempting to carve out lucrative niches, both at home and abroad.

Take, for example, the tea grown by the Hunan Tea Company on White Cloud Mountain in the southern province of Hunan, where the warm, wet climate and the deep red-brown soil is perfect for cultivating quality tea leaves.

Behind a copse of dark green conifers, bees buzz lazily over neat rows of shiny tea bushes soaking up the summer sun. A list of rules pinned to a board instructs tea-pickers not to keep long fingernails or to powder their faces; smoking is banned. Instead of pesticides, bug-zappers protect the crop from leafhoppers and other tea-loving pests.

When these virgin leaves are picked next spring, one batch will be shipped to Japan and sold as high-grade organic tea under the exclusive Kaito Brothers label; another will be packaged for the domestic market under the award-winning Guanyuan brand, priced at a hefty US$100 for two small 10g boxes.

Wealthy Japanese and Chinese tea drinkers will happily spend hundreds of dollars on the best spring-picked leaves, much as Western oenophiles splash out on a good bottle of wine.

But speciality teas will not bring China the international brand recognition it craves. For that to happen, widespread industrial consolidation and far more sophisticated marketing are needed.

Despite having the oldest tea producer in the world, China has only begun to create a modern tea industry. It has a long way to go before local tea companies reach the economies of scale and branding expertise needed to capture the full value of their product.

In the meantime, the big revenues will be scooped up by strong foreign brands selling convenience and lifestyle. Anyone for a cup of Yellow Label?  "

My thoughts on this article are the government of China did not place tea export / production on top of their economic agenda in the past 40 years and correctly focussed its effort to transform China into a modern economic superpower.  I would like to point out that during the past 40 years , there was no major economic issues with chinese tea; in that there were no major excessive production of tea or drastic fluctuations in tea prices.  In fact, I felt that the demand for Chinese tea had risen through local and high foreign demand and prices are rising steadily.  Even Lipton is carrying a range of Chinese tea from pu erh , jasmine and Tie Guan Yin.  My solution -  The Chinese authorities can easily boost the Chinese tea market by acquiring these foreign tea brands.  This not only gives a greater market share of the tea market and it also allows easy immediate access to the tea drinker distribution network in Europe and Americas.  I believe that such a theoretical acquisition (makes a lot of economic sense actually) would work out well for the chinese tea market as the acquired tea farms, technology and research, and infrastructure (India, Sri Lanka and Africa), from this purchase, will solve most of the "chinese tea" problems listed by the author in the above article.  

Storm in a teacup? Tempest in a teapot?  Think about it when you sipped your chinese tea.

2006 Mengku ripe mini cake

This is a Mengku Ripe mini cake (140gms).  Produced by Mengku Tea Co (very well known),  I personally rate this cake as one of my favorite 2006 ripe pu erh.  Newcomers to pu erh will enjoy the earthy toasty aroma and taste while the experienced ripe pu erh drinkers will find this tea extremely smooth with a distinctly pleasant aftertaste.  

This ripe cake is inexpensive costing me about US$6 (air freight inclusive).  I had already drunk through 2 cakes and have a couple more cakes left in my pu erh stash.  I tend to drink my ripe pu erh on the stronger side and I usually add more tea leaves when I brew a ripe tea.  Its something like 8/10 gms for a 180 ml pot.  Use boiling water every time for better results.  I could get about 10 drinkable brews after discarding the 1st two infusions (pour them over my teapot).  When I had my 1st taste of this tea,  it made me mumbled a "wow".  The taste was toasty and woody....very nice feel...... and before I knew it, I had drank the whole cup.  I also observed that there were also hardly any tea stems in the cake.....just small tea leaves (click 2nd/3rd pix).

This cake is value for money in terms of quality and price.  Its available for sale on the internet.  Yunnan Sourcing described  this tea as "This is a classic ripe mini cake from the Mengku Rongshi tea factory of Lin Cang.  These cakes are made from 2005 fermented Lincang large-leaf varietal tea.  The flavor smooth with a sweet after-taste."  Awazon gave this tea a 4.5 star rating (out of 5).   This tea was also an award winner in a tea contest.

The Book of Tea

“The Book of Tea” printed by Flammarion is made up of 3 essays about tea; “Tea gardens” by Alain Stella, “Time for tea” by Gilles Brochard and “The taste of tea” by Catherine Donzal.

“Tea Garden” deals with the various tea plantations of the world, from India, China, Japan, Ceylon and other countries. He explains and compares the tea and tea harvest between the countries and the beautiful pictures (please click the pix to read the text) help the reader visualize the essay.

“Time for tea” examines how the various teas round the world are prepared and drunk.  The author asserts  “Each day, over one and a half billion cups of tea are consumed on the planet”.  The pictures accompanying these essays are poignant and breathtaking.

“The taste of tea” explores the charms of drinking tea.  An excerpt – “The tea leaf itself bears the traits of the soil in which it was grown.  Each harvest has its own special quality, whether cultivated on the plains, in the mountains, on Himalayan slopes in springtime or in Ceylon during a hot summer.  Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage.  The names of the various regions alone conjures up distant lands, and the names of the gardens are even more evocative.” 

The last section of the book lists all the famous tea rooms of the world; name of tearoom, address, tel, website and a tiny write-up on these rooms.

 I found the book to be an interesting read.  Good pictures did helped me visualized the authors’ thoughts.  An excellent read.

A tea shop in Singapore

This is D'ART Station, a tea shop found in Singapore.  Aptly located in the heart of Chinatown, access to the tea shop now is made easier with a 5 minute walk from the subway station (we locals call it the MRT).  This shop is owned by a Mr Lee and run efficiently by his assistant Miss Chong.  Address - 63 Temple Street.  Mr Lee had also opened another outlet a few streets away at 65 Pagoda Street.

I enjoy visiting this tea shop as the atmosphere there is very friendly and the people there are willing to share their tea knowledge with me.  Miss Chong had made very good recommendations of some of their pu erh and I have not been disappointed with my tea purchases there.

As seen in the pictures (please click on the pix for enlarged views), this tea shop is very well stocked with everything tea.  The shop is now having a 50% sale on their teapots (not the expensive ones though).   I find that the range of tea on sale is impressive and the tea accessories varied enough to make a tea collector (myself included) spend considerable time and money at this shop.  Talking about money, the shop do not have any electronic payment facility and all sales are in cash.

The back of the shop is where you get to try a sample of a tea.  Regular tea customers normally gather around this table exchanging stories and showing off their recent tea / teapot purchase.  I was privileged that during my latest visit, an elderly gentleman came in and showed his latest purchase; a very old liu-ann tea....and its just the liu-ann tea stems.  A pot of this tea was made and I was offered a cup.  The taste was very rich with a  herbly fragrance and a very strong sweaty cha qi soon hit me.  I found the tea buzz too strong for me but apparently the rest of the tea drinkers there enjoyed this cha qi.  

The last pix is that of a raw pu erh.  This is the last production of the Menghai puerh in a CNNP wrapper.  I was given a small sample to take home.  The tea was really mellow, super tasty and smooth bringing a smile to my face when I sipped this tea.  Fairly pricey for this particular cake, I am thinking whether to buy this cake.....most probably.