The Story of Tea

by Mary Lou Heiss

  OVEN-DRIED GREEN TEA

  This modern variation on basket-firing uses forced hot air to fire the leaf in a contained space. During firing, the leaf is either moved through a chamber on a vibrating conveyor belt (similar to the method employed to bake modern loaves of bread or cookies) or fired in pans that are inserted into an ovenlike cavity and tossed occasionally. This efficient process produces large quantities of uniform product, but leaf manufactured into tea in this manner lacks the subtlety and individuality of leaf processed by a more traditional method. This manufacture is used primarily in southern China to reduce the heat and energy needed to process tea (and during the warm-weather months, when heat generation is not desired in any tea factory). For much of the run-of-the-harvest leaf, however, this method is satisfactory and yields inexpensive, acceptable-tasting tea.

  We recently visited an extraordinary tea factory in the Lu Shan mountains of Jiangxi Province, where they use two huge banks of ovenlike dryers. Similar in appearance to the French-made ovens popular with artisan bread bakers worldwide, these ovens produce a remarkable tea, one of China’s most famous and highly regarded: Lu Shan Clouds and Mist. Most assuredly, this factory replicates a type of basket-firing, but the tea produced is exquisite, expensive, and world-renown.

  The Lu Shan tea factory’s custom-designed oven-drying system (Jiangxi Province, China).

  STEAMED GREEN TEA

  This style of tea is used primarily in the production of authentic Japanese or Japanese-style green tea. Steamed green tea is typically leaf that has been mechanically harvested, most often by what is called shearing. Shears can be electric or gas-fired and can be handled by two people walking along garden rows, creating the beautifully manicured gardens one sees in photos of Japan (see “Uniquely Japanese” in chapter 2). There are also single-operator shearing machines that are driven above the row on oversized wheels. For this style of tea the look of the leaf is not a critical element to the enjoyment of the brewed tea the way that the physical appearance of the dried and wet leaf is considered an integral component of Chinese green tea.

  To manufacture steamed green tea, the leaf is processed according to the method used for all green tea. To create the signature flavor of steamed green tea, however, an additional step is added during the early stages of processing, during which the primary leaf undergoes a brief period of steaming. This steaming period can vary from a half-minute, while the leaf is transported through a steaming chamber on a conveyor belt, to longer, during which the leaf remains in a chamber (see here and here). This deep steaming produces tea such as Fukamushi Sencha and gives the tea more depth of flavor and a focused taste.

  Steaming changes the nature of the chlorophyll in the leaf. Steamed-leaf tea presents a more vegetal, sometimes kelpy character, often likened to the flavor of spinach or other leafy greens. This flavor is described as simply being more “green.” Steamed green tea is the tea taste of choice in Japan, and everyone has a favorite brand. The art of developing a signature flavor in Japanese tea is based on the blending of primary tea, known in Japan as aracha. Be sure to look for this form of green tea in Japan; it is consumed as a relatively inexpensive simple tea. Aracha varies in style, taste, and look, but it is unique in that most finished Japanese green tea is blended.

  Because of the dominance of the style (the steaming) in the flavor profile, leaf structure is not as important as it is with handworked green teas. The leaf is reasonably uneven, because dissimilar particle sizes are mixed together in a batch. Steamed green tea liquor brews up cloudy in appearance, the taste is generally heavier on the palate because of the increase in soluble solids in the brew, and the intense flavor lingers longer. The differences in flavor between various batches of steamed green tea are subtle but clear, and the aroma of both dry and wet leaf is quite different than that of Chinese green tea.

  Steamed green tea that has been finely powdered is called matcha. Ceremonial-grade matcha used for Japanese tea ceremony can be shockingly expensive, while the culinary grade (used to make ice cream and marinades, and for general cooking purposes and everyday drinking) is more reasonable (see “Varieties of Japanese Tea” in chapter 4). Brewing steamed green tea is a bit fussier than brewing other green teas. Extra care must be taken with the water: purity and a cooler infusing temperature are essential. Our Japanese colleagues recommend using soft bottled water such as Volvic. Even though these leaves have been exposed to high heat during the steaming process, they do not tolerate very hot water temperatures when brewed. The inherent sweetness of high-quality Japanese green tea can become bitter if the brewing water temperature is too hot (see chapter 6 for detailed brewing instructions).

  Although subtle in difference to one another, steamed green teas are an integral subcategory of the green tea class, and they should be thoroughly explored. A controlled tasting of several sencha teas from Japan is a wonderful way to experience craft rather than terroir—how a tea blender can combine the leaf of several varietals from one or more producers to create a signature taste. This type of comparison is difficult to do with Chinese green teas, however, as the style of leaf preparation nearly always changes with the geography. Sencha is fantastic for cooking and forms the basis for wonderful stock, salad dressings, and marinades, and when powdered, for dusting desserts, confections, chocolates, and baked goods.

  TEA WISDOM: A CONVERSATION WITH DEN SHIRAKATA

  The following is taken from an interview with Den Shirakata, the president and CEO of Shirakata Denshiro Shoten (Shizuoka, Japan) and Den’s Teas (Torrance, California).

  Japanese green tea has distinctive characteristics and it is very different from other green teas. Since the freshness is the most important factor for Japanese teas, I believe that the distinctions are pulled out and made clear only when the tea is fresh. It is common for tea companies in Japan to store their teas in chilled warehouses or facilities, but this is a new concept in America. We import our teas directly from our factory by air shipment and store them here in a chilled warehouse. Most of my tea arrives vacuum-sealed, and I have paid a lot of attention to building the best conditions for keeping the quality of Japanese teas as fresh as possible. I want American tea lovers to experience a genuine flavor of Japanese green teas that are kept under the best conditions—as they would experience them in Japan.

  In Japan we treasure aroma and flavor. With flavor we examine sweetness, sharpness, and body. Sweetness comes from theanine, a chemical component of the leaf; sharpness comes from bitterness, and body is the mouth feel contributed by the catechins. Aroma has two types—one is the natural, grassy aroma of green tea and the other one is a roasted aroma. The roasted aromas come several different ways—from leaf that has been roasted or from green tea that has the addition of toasted rice (such as genmaicha) or from toasted twig (such as kukicha). I believe that the most unique process of Japanese tea is in the “roasting.” How you handle the final processing of the leaf against the heat with skillful tending determines the unique flavor of each producer.

  We purchase most of the tea that we will use in an entire year in May and June during the first flush season. Every time we need to sell our tea, we take some crude tea—aracha—inventory from our warehouse and remanufacture it in our factory, which means sifting and cutting, roasting, blending, and packaging. To me tea is so interesting. It seems easy but it is difficult to control. Although the green tea market in the United States is big right now, the market for Japanese tea is still small. I think that the interest in green tea is here to stay, and I am hopeful that our share in the green tea business will grow.

  Yellow Tea

  Yellow tea is a most unusual and difficult-to-define class of tea. We have offered several selections of it in our store for many years and have an enthusiastic audience for it; nevertheless, it remains cloaked in mystery and misunderstanding. Tea experts outside of Asia have a difficult time explaining exactly what yellow tea is, and in the West the tea is often mistakenly sold as green tea. Yellow tea has its ow
n process, however, and should be correctly understood and offered as such. On a tea-sourcing trip to Sichuan Province, it was our good fortune to find a traditional Chinese tea merchant who was able to accurately describe this limited-production tea (see a related story, “The Imperial Tea Garden and Wu LiZhen’s Tea Bushes,” in chapter 4).

  YELLOW TEA, DEFINED

  Yellow tea is wonderfully fresh and does have much in common with early spring green teas, one reason for some of the confusion surrounding yellow teas. It is made from either very early spring buds or a mao feng pluck and then processed by the same methods as green tea, up to the point of the initial firing. Following the initial drying, just before the first firing, yellow tea undergoes a significant, additional step called men huan, during which yellow tea leaf is lightly and slowly steamed, then covered with a cloth to allow the leaves to breathe (in this case they reabsorb their own aromatics). This step translates into English as “sealing yellow.”

  This smothering cover can last for several hours or up to several days, during which time fragrance and sweetness increase. This gentle moisture control changes the chemistry of the leaf and makes yellow tea distinctive. Less apt to develop a grassy or assertive flavor, yellow tea is reliably smooth and lush in the cup. Astringency is rare, as the smothering procedure inhibits development of those flavor components in the finished tea. After this extra step the manufacture of yellow tea resumes the identical course as that taken in green tea manufacture. Similar in concept to the processing of Japan’s Fukamushi Sencha, yellow tea is also easy to brew, is pleasant to drink, and stores well.

  There are very few yellow teas manufactured today because of the extra work involved and the general lack of knowledge of the class. There are several, however, and they are well worth trying. Anhui Province provides our teashop with Huo Mountain Yellow Sprouting, a large-leaf mao feng yellow tea that is reminiscent of the glorious early harvest green teas from the Huang Shan, only softer and more lush. Sichuan Province is famous for Mengding Mountain Snow Buds (Mengding Huang Ya) and Bamboo Tips (Zhu Ye Qing). These two yellow teas are early budset plucks. These buds are short and slender, and brew a pale yellow, sweet, fragrant cup. Sometimes this style of pluck is called sparrow’s tongue for its fine, thin, crescent shape. Bamboo Tips is one of our all-time favorite teas and is painstakingly manufactured and hand-sorted (see here). In the Chinese view of tea, yellow tea is celebrated as “mature tea,” a reference to the mellowing effects of men huan, the resting period it is allowed during manufacture.

  White Tea

  The least complicated class of tea to describe, but not the least difficult to produce, is white tea. The manufacture of white tea is an ancient process that, like the sun-dried green tea of Xishuangbanna in the deep southwest of Yunnan Province, predates all other tea manufacture.

  “FRESH” TEA

  Yellow tea, a so-called fresh tea, should not be confused with “new” tea. Envision artisanal spring tea production in a remote village, where tradition might dictate that certain local teas be “rested” during their processing. Locally, this tea would be referred to simply as fresh tea. The Chinese apply this term to a range of conventionally made teas that are minimally processed and usually locally consumed. It was not until the 1990s, when Western tea enthusiasts began to discover the amazing world of authentic and traditional Asian teas, that the concept of “fresh” or “spring” tea was introduced and embraced by tea drinkers worldwide.

  Asians in general and the Chinese in particular have enjoyed interestingly processed spring teas (that is, fresh teas) for centuries. We believe that much of what the Chinese drink as fresh tea seasonally during March through May, which is processed by traditional local custom, is often yellow tea but is known to them only by Chinese pictorial nomenclature, not the classic color-coded tea term.

  WHITE TEA, DEFINED

  White tea in its original, pure form consists of only the tender, unopened budsets of particular varieties of China bush tea plants that are cultivated especially for this class of tea in Fujian Province on the eastern coast of China. Like other famous place-specific teas, such as Hangzhou’s Longjing and Tieguanyin from Anxi, white tea has a specific geographic terroir, style, flavor, and definition. In the best of years the production of authentic Fujian white tea is small.

  The Big Sprout varietal has a bud that is proportionally large to the size of its leaf (Fujian Province, China).

  Fujian white tea is produced in only three restricted locales: Fuding county, Shuijie/Jianyang county, and Zhenghe county—all north of the geographically important Minjiang River. The tea bushes there must be cultivars (developed in the late 1800s) from tea bushes indigenous to these locations, of which 95 percent are members of the Da Hao (Big Sprout) variety of Camellia sinensis var. sinensis. The vegetation of these specific plants—Fuding Da Bai (Fuding Big White), Zhenghe Da Bai (Zhending Big White), Narcissus, and Xiao Bai (Vegetable or Small White)—is uniquely able to produce buds and leaf that, after processing, reveal a covering of fine, downy white hair. Some white teas are used in the creation of presentation (or so-called blooming-flower) teas and for certain strictly top-shelf jasmine-scented white teas. White tea is picked in the early spring, before the buds have a chance to develop into leaves. For Fujian white tea plucking the weather conditions must be perfect—no rain, dew, or frost can occur during the harvest. The buds must be fully fleshed and plump, not too thin or too long. The tea maker must know how to counter the many slight variations in the condition of the fresh leaf, to coax the best flavor and style from the leaves. The magic of this historic tea lies in its sheer simplicity—light-colored infusions, sweet subtlety (without any of the grassy undertones of green tea), and flavors that suggest honey, chestnut, and peaches.

  White tea budsets are shaded for approximately the final three weeks of their time on the bush. Legend tells us that in the days of the early Chinese emperors, only virgins wearing white silk gloves were allowed to pluck the budsets that would become white tea. Today the buds are simply meticulously selected from the few gardens that are esteemed for the production of these superb tea varietals. According to tradition, these budsets are dried only in a shaded area with good air circulation, such as a pavilion. This technique prevents “greening” (chlorophyll development from exposure to the sun) and enables the fresh tea to dry rapidly without the need for externally applied heat. As these variables are difficult to combine, the limited production of genuine Fujian budset white tea commands a high price every year.

  Since the days of the Song emperors, the traditional habitat for white tea has been Fujian Province in China. Today, to the dismay of these tea producers, a small amount of traditionally made budset white tea is now produced in Anhui Province and in the tea-growing regions of Assam, Darjeeling, Nilgiri, and Sri Lanka in South Asia. Many tea producers regard white tea as a process of manufacture rather than as a unique product that is the sum total of terroir, history, and experience. We distinguish three types of white tea on offer in today’s marketplace.

  First is the traditional budset white tea from the recognized original sources in Fujian Province. The premier version of this is Bai Hao Yin Zhen (Flowery White Pekoe or Silver Needle). Second is the “new-style” leaf white tea from many sources, including excellent versions from Fujian Province, such as Bai Mudan and Shou Mei (the latter a more highly oxidized white tea that is popular in dim sum houses in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong). Third is the traditional-style budset white tea from other sources. This might be Anhui Province’s glorious Imperial Silver Needles, or a newcomer such as southern India’s Craigmore Estate Nilgiri white tea. All three forms of white tea belong to a distinct class and should never be offered as a subvariety of green tea, although white tea does have elements in common with green and other classes of tea. A group of tea masters with whom we explored a white tea withering room in Fujian Province described the key difference between white and green tea as follows: in white tea manufacture there is no de-enzyming, but
there is slight oxidation; to manufacture green tea there is de-enzyming, but no oxidation. These opposite early processes in the manufacture of these two classes have a profound effect on the ultimate development of these two teas.

  The two versions of the white tea class—traditional-style budset white tea and the modern new-style leaf white tea—should not be offered as being the same (or interchangeable). Their appearances are distinctly different, so they are impossible to confuse. In the marketplace white teas should always be identified by both style and place of origin. If you are purchasing white tea in an opaque container and the label does not reveal what is inside, buyer beware! Furthermore, what the label states should match the tea inside the container. Traditional-style budset white tea (whether from Fujian, Anhui, or elsewhere) should be 100 percent buds (no leaf), and Shou Mei should have no (or very few) buds and be more oxidized.

  TRADITIONAL-STYLE BUDSET WHITE TEA

  The original, traditional Fujian budset white tea is Bai Hao Yin Zhen (Flowery White Pekoe or Silver Needle) and its first cousins Silver Pekoe, Silver Tip, and so on. Made exclusively from a select picking of plump spring buds, Bai Hao Yin Zhen is the most expensive grade of authentic, traditional-style Fujian white tea. It is estimated that more than ten thousand handpicked buds are needed to produce just 2.2 pounds (1 kilo) of this exquisite tea. As the young buds are plucked only from the Fuding Da Bai or Zhenghe Da Bai tea bush varietals, Bai Hao Yin Zhen is light in color and tinged with a soft greenish-gray cast. The buds are covered with tender, downy hair that gives the tea a velvety appearance. The liquor is pale in color and delicate in flavor, reminiscent of ripe melon, fresh apricots, or peaches.