A mastery of tea tastes(1)
LOS ANGELES
A cupping set, a little pitcher fitted snugly inside a teacup, is the traditional way to taste teas and is used on tea plantations around the world to judge quality and character.
I've been drinking tea all my life, but never like this. In front of me is a black lacquer tray with five white porcelain cups, one of them with a lid and curious indentations in the rim. I am about to join a cupping, a tasting of eight different leaf teas from Camellia sinensis, the tea bush that supplies almost all the classic teas we drink. Our guide, Gail Baral, has traveled throughout the major tea producing countries - Japan, China, Taiwan (often called Formosa in tea terms), Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka (home of Ceylon teas), and India. All tea starts with the same leaves - we're not talking here about herbal and flavored teas. "Growing tea is like growing wine grapes," Miss Baral declares, "it varies with temperature, altitude and humidity and picks up the flavor of the earth, the terroir."
Like wine, teas from different places taste totally different, and Miss Baral imports more than 70 types for her store, Algabar Home and Life. "Tea can be picked simply as leaves, or as buds, or as a bud and a couple of leaves with stem," she says. "The leaves may be hand rolled after picking. This one from Japan for instance, I call Samurai Sword - it's steamed to develop the color before drying." She passes around a bowl of dark green spikes resembling pine needles.
Time to taste. We tip a half-teaspoon of leaves into our tasting cups (one teaspoon is the correct amount for a full cup of tea). Water heated to 175 degrees is poured in, topped with a lid to retain heat and the timer set for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, Miss Baral demonstrates how to use the tasting cup: "Lift it with your thumb holding on the lid. With your other hand, hold the tasting bowl against the cup. Wait for the beep ... there we go!" She tips the cup and lid sideways over the bowl so the brewed tea strains into it, while the rim indentations catch the leaves. Simple after the first try.
We lift a spoonful of warm infusion to our mouths and swish it across our tongues, very like tasting wine. This is a delicate white tea with refreshing, slightly floral perfume. The leaves become silver needles that unfurl in the water, and we all peer at the drained leaves on our upturned cup lids. I nibble a leaf, which tastes fragrant and quite tender (white or young green tea leaves are excellent in chicken broth).
Next comes Jade Dragon, a green tea from China that is picked only from mid-March to mid-April, on days with no rain or frost. This rare tea must be carefully selected by a tea master, then wok-roasted so the finished flavor is crisp with a slightly sweet finish. Such teas are expensive, but tea is brewed from several batches of water, with each infusion developing different characteristics. Five batches is a norm, but hand-crafted black teas can run to 10 infusions or more.
We continue tasting teas of increasing intensity, moving to oolong that is picked green, then left to partially oxidize (sometimes, incorrectly, called fermentation) so the flavor deepens. Wild Goddess, for instance, is grown on rocky elevations at 4,500 feet, which develops its heady floral aroma with a subtle honey sweetness. Not all teas are for everyone. An organic oolong is too much for me, rich in minerals and with a roasted raisin aroma that I find slightly bitter.
Last come the more oxidized, black teas familiar from my English childhood. Like green teas and oolongs, these can range from large-scale, commercial productions, usually with small shreds of leaf and a flat taste, to artisan teas that can be compared to rare vintage wines.
The best Darjeeling, for example, must be grown only in the province of Darjeeling in the Himalayan foothills of northern India. We savor a unique organic Darjeeling, a Fair Trade tea that was biodynamically grown and processed. The aroma is of Muscat grapes, with a mellow astringency and brilliant mahogany golden color.
Four elements affect a cup of tea, says Miss Baral: the amount of tea, length of infusion time, water temperature, and the water itself. Hard water containing calcium will produce scum, but soft water is not good either, as some mineral content is needed to develop the flavor of the tea leaves. She advises first choosing your tea, then experimenting with bottled waters to find which suits the particular tea. "Never use boiling water," she cautions. "Fresher green and oolong teas should be brewed at 175 degrees (water boils at 212 degrees). Listen for bumping noises as water comes to a boil, that's around 175 degrees. For black tea, the water should be almost but not quite boiling."
