Chinese yixing teapot in China--Taking a leaf out of the tea expert's book;
THE joy of tea: this week Brian Writer, whitehaired, benign, 71 years old, introduced me to refinements and delec-tations that I never knew existed.
In the little tasting room of his company, Reginald Ames, tea merchants and brokers on an industrial estate in south-east London, was a line of 18 bowls of tea ranging in colour from pellucid white through yellow and green to nearblackness; teas from Darjeeling and Assam, Sri Lanka, China, Africa and Japan, unblended, meticulously prepared with boiled fresh water allowed to cool to ideal tasting temperature.
And behind them, on little cardboard dishes, were tealeaves of similar hitherto-unimagined variety and beauty. I had entered a world few in this teabaggy age are ever permitted to see.
"This is spring crop Ying Zhen, " says Mr Writer as we taste a white China tea, "also called Silver Needle. It is picked before the sun comes up and dried in the sun.
That's why it remains white. It is expensive but you can brew a pot of tea five times and still get the same flavour, though it does become lighter.
"Green tea is green because it is steamed then dried. It must be made with water that has boiled but is no longer boiling. Black tea is black because it is allowed to oxidise." The simpleton in me supposed that the dark teas would be the strong ones. "Black teas are heavier on the palate than white or green teas, " says Mr Writer, "so you are not wrong. But some do taste quite light." He has had decades of experience dealing with China and enjoys it - the Communists ran the tea industry very well and with the Chinese a deal is always a deal.
"The Chinese have been growing tea for 4,000 years, " he says. "They have a huge amount of skill and of course there was never any shortage of labour. It is all handpicked."
LAPSANG Souchong, says Mr Writer, was originally discovered in Fujien province where the soil has high tar content. It has a smoky taste to it.
"The Gunpowder tea we drink in England is a tightly rolled leaf that opens out to its full size and gives a strong green liquor, " he adds.
"Notice the difference between the earlier and later season teas, " he says as we taste Darjeelings. "The early season pick had an astringent, bright liquor; picked later it has more flavour and fullness; by autumn it has a ripe flavour - rather like the difference between a bright, young, early-season peach and one picked in autumn." I am looking at leaves in a world that has become unused to tealeaves. The tea in teabags, wherever they are from, is processed differently. Rather than being rolled flat, the tea is put through machines that cuts, tears and curls it.
"The tea in teabags is not sweepings as some people like to say but the best flavour is always leaf tea brewed in a teapot. Teabags give you the colour but the flavour is never so good." I followed Mr Writer along the line - him 50 years in the trade, a doyen of tasting and choosing tea.
Soon I was lost. Or perhaps like a whisky drinker befuddled by Bell's and Teacher's blends and now confronted by the finest single malts, the virgin at a tea tasting was soon overcome by the subtlety and unexpectedness of it all.
Leaf tea of any type is a relative rarity; the teapot and hot water jug, not to mention tea cosies, close to museum pieces - 96 per cent of what we drink now is from teabags.
Half a century ago any selfrespecting grocer would have chests of different blends of tea which they would weigh out into packets for their discerning customers, while Brooke Bond, Typhoo and Lyons supplied the bulk of the market.
Grocers would make their own blends, often after having taken a course in teamanship.
Commercial television put an end to most of that and we became the nation where "we all agree, Tetley make tea-bags, make tea".
For a tidy people in love with saving labour and more able to spend money, it was an offer too good to refuse. (Un-til the mid-19th century, by contrast, tea had been an expensive commodity - members of the working classes bought secondhand tealeaves from the better-off and let it steep longer to compensate for the fact that it had already been used once. ) MR WRITER must be one of tea's ultimate connoisseurs; over the decades he has travelled the world, checking, tasting, finding varieties that will bring pleasure to the discerning.
He only deals in the good stuff.
Most is not hideously expensive but his costliest China White sells for GBP 50 a kilo wholesale. Daunting!
One might expect him to justify this sum by emphasising its rarity, beauty, desirability - all of which it has. Fine teas, like fine art or fine wine, offer a higher pleasure.
What Mr Writer says about his China White is this: "Remember you get 200 cups out of a kilo - far cheaper than Coca-Cola. And you can rebrew and rebrew it." That is fair enough - we are talking about tea to enjoy and to savour, not tea to bolt down.
"What is the secret of a good cup of tea?" I ask, expecting an answer of demanding complexity: "Fresh boiled water, " he replies, meaning that the worst thing you can do is reboil the water left in your kettle.
"You almost always get a good cup of tea in a café, " he says (I think he might even include a caff).
You might think any chance of selling high-grade tea was long ago submerged by our high-priced frothy coffee fad. But no. Our new foodie inclinations means that more people are paying a little extra or looking a little further.
Taylors of Harrogate's famous brand is called Yorkshire Tea - a blend of leaves from East Africa, Assam and Sri Lanka. You find it in mainstream supermarkets. It costs a little more than your bog standard because it's a whole lot better.
No sweepings in these teabags!
Among Taylors' top men is Keith Writer, 35-year-old son of Brian - born with a silver teaspoon in his mouth. Keith has been slurping tea since he was three (though in a tea-taster's, not a three-year-old's way). Outside his office window in Harrogate, he can see Yorkshire tea of a different sort - small bushes of the China Jat variety, planted in a sheltered quadrangle, chosen for their hardiness to survive the Yorkshire winter (or try to). "It's just a bit of fun, " says Keith, though it could one day make a Japanese-style tea garden.
In London's grandest hotels, afternoon tea has become such a fashionable event that often a table is not to be had. And apparently people presented with a choice are going for ever more specialist brews. More Souchong than Typhoo.
Ah, the joy of tea! - I have had a whiff of it. I shall never look at a teabag the same way again.
yixing teapots,also called zisha teapot, is known as the best in Chinese teapots or China teapots.
In the little tasting room of his company, Reginald Ames, tea merchants and brokers on an industrial estate in south-east London, was a line of 18 bowls of tea ranging in colour from pellucid white through yellow and green to nearblackness; teas from Darjeeling and Assam, Sri Lanka, China, Africa and Japan, unblended, meticulously prepared with boiled fresh water allowed to cool to ideal tasting temperature.
And behind them, on little cardboard dishes, were tealeaves of similar hitherto-unimagined variety and beauty. I had entered a world few in this teabaggy age are ever permitted to see.
"This is spring crop Ying Zhen, " says Mr Writer as we taste a white China tea, "also called Silver Needle. It is picked before the sun comes up and dried in the sun.
That's why it remains white. It is expensive but you can brew a pot of tea five times and still get the same flavour, though it does become lighter.
"Green tea is green because it is steamed then dried. It must be made with water that has boiled but is no longer boiling. Black tea is black because it is allowed to oxidise." The simpleton in me supposed that the dark teas would be the strong ones. "Black teas are heavier on the palate than white or green teas, " says Mr Writer, "so you are not wrong. But some do taste quite light." He has had decades of experience dealing with China and enjoys it - the Communists ran the tea industry very well and with the Chinese a deal is always a deal.
"The Chinese have been growing tea for 4,000 years, " he says. "They have a huge amount of skill and of course there was never any shortage of labour. It is all handpicked."
LAPSANG Souchong, says Mr Writer, was originally discovered in Fujien province where the soil has high tar content. It has a smoky taste to it.
"The Gunpowder tea we drink in England is a tightly rolled leaf that opens out to its full size and gives a strong green liquor, " he adds.
"Notice the difference between the earlier and later season teas, " he says as we taste Darjeelings. "The early season pick had an astringent, bright liquor; picked later it has more flavour and fullness; by autumn it has a ripe flavour - rather like the difference between a bright, young, early-season peach and one picked in autumn." I am looking at leaves in a world that has become unused to tealeaves. The tea in teabags, wherever they are from, is processed differently. Rather than being rolled flat, the tea is put through machines that cuts, tears and curls it.
"The tea in teabags is not sweepings as some people like to say but the best flavour is always leaf tea brewed in a teapot. Teabags give you the colour but the flavour is never so good." I followed Mr Writer along the line - him 50 years in the trade, a doyen of tasting and choosing tea.
Soon I was lost. Or perhaps like a whisky drinker befuddled by Bell's and Teacher's blends and now confronted by the finest single malts, the virgin at a tea tasting was soon overcome by the subtlety and unexpectedness of it all.
Leaf tea of any type is a relative rarity; the teapot and hot water jug, not to mention tea cosies, close to museum pieces - 96 per cent of what we drink now is from teabags.
Half a century ago any selfrespecting grocer would have chests of different blends of tea which they would weigh out into packets for their discerning customers, while Brooke Bond, Typhoo and Lyons supplied the bulk of the market.
Grocers would make their own blends, often after having taken a course in teamanship.
Commercial television put an end to most of that and we became the nation where "we all agree, Tetley make tea-bags, make tea".
For a tidy people in love with saving labour and more able to spend money, it was an offer too good to refuse. (Un-til the mid-19th century, by contrast, tea had been an expensive commodity - members of the working classes bought secondhand tealeaves from the better-off and let it steep longer to compensate for the fact that it had already been used once. ) MR WRITER must be one of tea's ultimate connoisseurs; over the decades he has travelled the world, checking, tasting, finding varieties that will bring pleasure to the discerning.
He only deals in the good stuff.
Most is not hideously expensive but his costliest China White sells for GBP 50 a kilo wholesale. Daunting!
One might expect him to justify this sum by emphasising its rarity, beauty, desirability - all of which it has. Fine teas, like fine art or fine wine, offer a higher pleasure.
What Mr Writer says about his China White is this: "Remember you get 200 cups out of a kilo - far cheaper than Coca-Cola. And you can rebrew and rebrew it." That is fair enough - we are talking about tea to enjoy and to savour, not tea to bolt down.
"What is the secret of a good cup of tea?" I ask, expecting an answer of demanding complexity: "Fresh boiled water, " he replies, meaning that the worst thing you can do is reboil the water left in your kettle.
"You almost always get a good cup of tea in a café, " he says (I think he might even include a caff).
You might think any chance of selling high-grade tea was long ago submerged by our high-priced frothy coffee fad. But no. Our new foodie inclinations means that more people are paying a little extra or looking a little further.
Taylors of Harrogate's famous brand is called Yorkshire Tea - a blend of leaves from East Africa, Assam and Sri Lanka. You find it in mainstream supermarkets. It costs a little more than your bog standard because it's a whole lot better.
No sweepings in these teabags!
Among Taylors' top men is Keith Writer, 35-year-old son of Brian - born with a silver teaspoon in his mouth. Keith has been slurping tea since he was three (though in a tea-taster's, not a three-year-old's way). Outside his office window in Harrogate, he can see Yorkshire tea of a different sort - small bushes of the China Jat variety, planted in a sheltered quadrangle, chosen for their hardiness to survive the Yorkshire winter (or try to). "It's just a bit of fun, " says Keith, though it could one day make a Japanese-style tea garden.
In London's grandest hotels, afternoon tea has become such a fashionable event that often a table is not to be had. And apparently people presented with a choice are going for ever more specialist brews. More Souchong than Typhoo.
Ah, the joy of tea! - I have had a whiff of it. I shall never look at a teabag the same way again.
yixing teapots,also called zisha teapot, is known as the best in Chinese teapots or China teapots.
yixingteapot - 2. Jul, 08:18
