2008 Fall Tea and Food Classes

This fall we will be teaching tea and food classes in NYC and also closer to home, and speaking at the annual Smith College Chrysanthemum Show.

September 7th Sunday / 2 – 4 pm

The Six Great Classes of Tea
Institute of Culinary Education ( ICE ), NYC

Our class will highlight the unique attributes of each of the major classes of tea – green, white, yellow, oolong, black and puerh. Emphasis will be on explaining the relationship between the classes of tea and the impact on flavor from terroir, tea bush varietals, cultivation and harvest techniques used in a tea garden, and leaf manufacture. This class will be jam-packed with information and be a terrific opportunity to taste some spectacular teas. Please pass the word, and hopefully we will see you there !

September 22 - October 20th Mondays / 6:30-8:30pm

Exploring the World of Specialty Food
Greenfield Community College

Each Monday we will teach a ‘palate challenging ‘ class at Greenfield Community College. Students will learn to distinguish flavor ‘like a pro’ by tasting and evaluating distinctive, artisan examples of familiar pantry items such as chiles, chocolate, chutney, coffee, olive oil, tea, and vinegar.

This is a great opportunity for all those who have decided to eat out less and get back into the kitchen and cook. No matter if you are an avid cook or just beginning, this is a great opportunity to get acquainted with artisan ingredients and condiments and see how easy it is to add delicious flavor to your dishes.

October 31st Friday / 7pm

Opening Presentation for the Fall Chrysanthemum Show
at Smith College, Seelye Hall, Room 106

Camellia Sinensis and Chrysanthemum ( Cha and Bai Hua ):
A Delight for the Eyes and Palate

This will be a fun and educational evening. We will deliver the opening presentation for Smith College’s annual Fall Chrysanthemum Show. Join us for a slideshow of our photographs taken on location in tea regions of China, Japan and Taiwan while we discuss the origins of leaf tea, the intricacies of tea manufacture and the cultures of tea drinking around the world.

After the presentation, you will be welcomed to preview the splendor of the chrysanthemum show while sipping some delicious tea.

tea trekker visits Taiwan

This summer we made our long-awaited tea trek to Taiwan. We had been itching to go there for quite a few years, but first had to finish writing our book, The Story of Tea A Cultural History and Drinking Guide.

It had been two years since we last inhaled the fresh, sweet fragrance that lingers inside of a tea factory working round-the-clock ‘ in-season, ’ so we were glad to be heading back to tea country. We made sure that we had plenty of empty suitcase room allocated for carrying back special teas for our customers.

We chose June as the time to visit as we were told that this would be the perfect time to observe production of all of Taiwan’s famous teas - Bai Hao Oriental Beauty, Baozhong Oolong, and of course, the high mountain semi-balled jade oolongs from LiShan, Shan Lin Shi, Alishan and the Dong Ding mountainous regions. 

Despite it diminutive size, the island of Taiwan produces exceptional oolong teas that offer inquisitive tea enthusiasts a delicious array of leaf styles, oxidation levels, flavors and aromas to appreciate and enjoy. Taiwan is a land of lush mountains that are blanketed with gently-swaying bamboo forests and verdant pine groves. Mountain ranges are condensed on this small island in a more dramatic way that I could ever have imagined. One mountain range unfolds into another, and quite often, from a distance, several mountain ranges can be seen stacked one against the other, like an imprecise row of dominoes. It is difficult to know exactly where one is without the local knowledge companion well-traveled through these tea mountains.

As we journeyed through the tea producing counties of central and northern Taiwian, we visited many tea farms and tea factories that manufacture these famous oolong teas. Winter 2008 teas and spring 2008 teas were already plucked and made; we were observing summer tea production.

It is always a joy for us to spend time in tea producing areas – the tea gardens are alive with activity and the tea factories work overtime to keep up with the quantities of fresh leaf coming in from the gardens. Tea is the main topic of conversation and everyone has something new to show us and new ( or aged ) tea for us to taste. All of the tea that we tasted was from the current 2008 spring harvest. A few choice offerings from the 2008 winter harvest also appeared.

Taiwan only produces a tiny quantity of tea for export compared to the vast quantities manufactured in neighboring China. Taiwan also specializes in just one class of tea - oolong tea. A little green and a little black tea is also made, but just a little bit.

The native aboriginal Taiwanese, who tended and produced tea from a scattering of indigenous tea bushes, eventually came to learn the Chinese-style of tea production and tea manufacture from Mainland China refugees from Fujian province who settled on the island. From this intermingling of tea culture and the successful cultivation of tea cuttings that were brought from Fujian, a unique style of oolong tea developed and flourished.

It is difficult to find high-quality, hand-processed and organic Taiwan oolong tea in the USA. The very finest ( and most expensive tea ) is bought by Taiwanese and Japanese residents who received packages of tea in the post from their favorite tea farmers throughout the year.

We were hoping to locate some delicious hand-processed, high-mountain semi-balled style oolongs, and purchase a reasonable quantity for the store. Our friend knew just how to make that happen. He made a phone call then took us to visit a friend of his who works at an organic food certification plant.

Here, tea is checked for pesticides, and, if it passes, an employee from the certifying company will visit the farm in person to make sure that the sample is truly representative of what the farm produces and that nothing is amiss.

If the farm passes muster, then the tea farmer will send quantities of his or her tea to the certifying company to be weighed, packaged and sealed. The tea farmer will be paid for his tea, which is then sold by this company. We were introduced to Lisa, a very friendly and knowledgeable tea lady, who asked us what type of tea we were looking for. When she had a good idea of what we wanted, she began to pull out various samples for us to taste.

She showed us many teas in the style we wanted that were grown in the high elevation levels that we were interested in. Also of consideration was the price – some of these Taiwan high mountain teas are astronomical !

As we tasted the teas we found teas that were nice, very nice, but not what we were looking for. Maybe she was testing us. But eventually she brought out a 2008 Li Shan ‘Da Yu Ling’ winter pluck, and like love at first sight. Bingo, that was it. 

Soft, sweet, floral and snappy and fresh, like a brisk winter’s day. A simply beautiful tea with irregular shaped balls of leaf and connecting stems. Next came a 2008 Li Shan ‘Da Yu Ling’ spring pluck and we fell in love with that too. A bit headier and more aromatic, fruity and more youthful and green in flavor.

Li Shan ‘Da Yu Ling’ tea is only produced for two seasons – winter and spring. It makes us very happy to not only have one of these teas but to have both a winter and a spring tea from side-by-side harvests. Opportunities like this to taste the same tea from two seasons is something that is possible in Asia but rarely does the opportunity present itself in the USA.

This tea is grown at one of the highest elevations of any tea in Taiwan ( approx. 2600 meters or 7500 feet ) and it is hand-plucked, not machine harvested. The thin air of a high-elevation location does wonderful things for tea – it slows leaf growth, resulting in better quality and less quantity; provides the bushes with daily moisture from clouds and mist; and keeps the temperature from getting too hot and dehydrating the leaves.

So we brought as much of both as we could afford and packed it safely in our carry-on bags, saving on the shipping costs. Which is one of the reasons why we are selling these teas for substantially less that they usually fetch.

You will not be disappointed in these teas – they are aromatic, buttery, not astingent and they have a clean, crisp mineral-like quality that reflects the high mineral content of the soil the bushes grow in. 

Both of these teas can be brewed gong-fu style for at least 7 infusions – perhaps more depending on the ratio of water to leaf.  When you think of it that way, it means that you can enjoy one of the world finest teas for less than you would pay in a cafe or restauant for mediocre tea.

http://www.teatrekker.com/store/tea/oolong/oolong+-+taiwan.php

 

Who is tea trekker?

You might be wondering, who is tea trekker ?  Let us make a quick introduction here on tea trekker’s first blog posting.

We are Mary Lou and Robert J. Heiss, specialty tea experts with 34+ years of experience buying and selling fine tea. We are also tea enthusiasts who find joy in discovering well-made and delicious tea.

By our nature, we are curious about food. Our passion for tea has always fueled our desire to learn as much as we can about tea and the details of tea cultivation and tea production. Over the years, as we read and studied about tea, we eventually exhausted all of the then-available information about tea. And we began to realize that what was missing from much of this information was first-hand expertise and in-depth knowledge of the people sharing the information. 

With most of our questions still un-answered, we realized that one has to experience something for oneself in order to really understand it. So, eight years ago, we began traveling to tea producing countries to learn what we felt compelled to know. 

Our goal was to observe first-hand the production of many different teas in Asia and to acquire relevant information about each style of tea. Eight years ago, very few other American tea buyers traveled to source, and even now, there is still only a dedicated handfull of us who pursue this. Tea education in the USA has grown tremendously from where it was eight years ago, but considering that tea is a lifelong study for many in Asia, there is still much for Western tea enthusiasts to know and learn. 

From our travels we have an ever-growing stack of thick, well-used and dog-earred notebooks, and over 6,000 digital photos. After we made several of these trips it occurred to us that we were now the ones who could answer the questions that we had searched for answers to years before.

During this time Ten Speed Press contacted us and asked us to write a small book on tea for them. We were thrilled, but countered that we thought there was a need for a larger book on tea – one that we felt was missing in the world of tea and that we thought needed to be written.

They listened, and agreed. Last fall, in October of 2007, Ten Speed Press published our book, The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide. This 419-page bouncing baby is now in second printing and we are so very proud to say that it was recently honored with a nomination for both a  2008 James Beard Foundation Book Award Nomination and a 2008 IACP Cookbook Award Nomination.

But one book is by no means the end of the story of tea. Today, we still feel the same curiousity about tea and tea culture – perhaps even more so. Each trip builds on the knowledge of the last one. When we travel to Asia, we become the students of the tea workers, tea factory managers, and tea garden managers that we meet. Collectively, these are the tea masters that we learn from. 

We return not just with new knowlege but also with perspective, insight, clarity and greater understanding, and, of course, more questions. Perhaps it was Asian wisdom that said a question is only as good as the other questions raised by its answer. 

On each tea trek we have been on, the tea trail has taken us different places. And much of our education is also learning the intricacies of the cultural approach to tea drinking in each country that we visit. How each unique tea culture sets it’s tea table and expresses it’s views towards brewing, serving and drinking tea is directly related to the teas manufactured there.

But no matter what tea country we are visiting, we return home and share our first-hand knowledge with our tea customers. It is priviledge and honor for us to be a part of this ongoing tea education, and we intend to be a major voice in tea education for a long time. We are always ready to grab our cameras and notebooks and head out into the tea gardens.

So stay tuned and visit our www.teatrekker.com often. While our website is new, our experience in tea is not. In addition to selling hand-selected, traditionally-made artisan tea at very reasonal prices, we have other great plans for this website. 

We believe that a global perspective on tea is missing from much of the tea information being bandied about the internet. And good, solid information, as well. Accordingly, www.teatrekker.com will bring a global perspective to tea and tea culture by featuring many different voices. We will post articles and stories contributed by tea colleagues all over the world, including other American tea vendors with a story to tell.

And for those tea enthusiasts who will be traveling, we will compile a listing of places of interest that are globally located: tea shops, tea houses, tea museums, etc. And we hope that the ‘tea trekkers’ among you out there will keep us appraised of the people and places that you discover on your journeys along the tea trail who are noteworthy advocates for honest and delicious tea.