Mediocritea-Plight of the tea entrepreneur »

I’ve just returned from a whirlwind trip to China. I was sent a ticket by a Chinese corporation that is thinking about opening a chain of retail tea shops. Their plan is to create a ‘tea beverage’ and they want a trustworthy supplier. The couple that was fueling that idea, one was American and the other had lived in the US for a decade. American brands are popular in China and they felt that they could appeal to a younger Chinese demographic, not wanting to be identified with the older generation, by creating tea beverages. In theory, if they used good quality tea that could be discerned in the beverage, they could advance their customers to better quality tea. I have heard this plan for years here, that some consumers will come to appreciate quality tea through flavored teas, ready to drink iced tea, chai lattes, and a long list of beverages that now use tea as an ingredient.

I have also heard that Americans/Westerners would never appreciate/pay for good quality tea. I read an article written by a respected German broker published in a trade magazine 6 or 7 years ago saying that it was a waste of time selling the best quality tea, and it was better and more profitable to stay with good middle of the road teas, mediocritea. Our experience has been that once anyone has had a cup of quality tea, Westerner or otherwise, that is all it takes. I don’t think you get to fine wines through wine coolers.

I continue to read about failing tea businesses across the US.  I really feel bad for them. Starting your own business is a very difficult experience whether you succeed or fail. For most of us it is putting everything we have on the line. If you have been listening to the hype for the last number of years tea is the place to be if you want to get into an exploding market. All you need is a good plan, some basic business sense, and a good supplier and you are in business. So why are so many failing? Mediocritea?

Everyone is blaming the economy, and yes, the economy is tough. Try getting financing for growth or inventory, close to impossible for most of us for the last couple of years. I don’t think though that is the core of the problem. I think it is because the quality of most of the tea available is mediocritea, and no amount of flavoring, blending, tea bag innovation, or marketing is going to change that. If your customers are not saying wow, when they taste your tea, you have a problem. The problem only gets worse as the consumer gets more educated and sophisticated.

It is not a secret in the industry that there is better tea out there. It is the secret that no one talks about with consumers. One tea wholesaler told me that he didn’t want to move up in quality because he was currently making a great markup selling mediocritea, and he didn’t have to bother with explaining the difference in price. He told me this a long time ago and he is still doing well, but I wonder about his customers.

The theme of the World Tea Expo this year is going to be quality. I’m anxious to see how then are going to define it this year. Consumers are having a hard time continuing to believe that mediocritea is quality tea.

When I decided to use the word mediocritea I googled it, just to make sure that there wasn’t a company currently named that, and found this site created in Australia. They have done a video called “Tea Bag Sucker”. Really good stuff, plus they have published a book where you can research all possible tea puns, before you name your website.

Tea is a compelling drink. Once you have had a cup of good tea you are going to have a real hard time going back to mediocritea.

Austin

2009 Oolong Tea Tour Podcast-Making Rock Oolong pt3 »

Welcome to our tea and tea culture video podcast with Zhuping Hodge, tea master and owner of Seven Cups. Last year we launched three very successful tea tours to China. Many hours of video were taken and we want to share them with you. In the previous podcasts Zhuping toured the rock oolong tea factory. Now watch as she sits down with famous tea master Mr. Liu. Please note this is part 3 of 3 videos with the famous rock oolong master.

Today’s topic: 2009 Oolong Tea Tour Podcast-Making Rock Oolong Part 3

Thank you all for your comments regarding our podcasts. We would like to create future podcasts on topics you all are interested in, so please contact us with ideas.

Welcome Laila, Mongolian blue spots and all! UPDATE »

What a great way to start the new year with the birth of a baby girl to our beloved friend and long time tea house manager, Keiko Naito and her partner John Archer. Here is the email announcement from Keiko who is currently living with her family in Kyoto.

“Folks who are not on Facebook… Of course, I would deliver the News
to you, too!

Keiko Naito has a piece of good news. After having almost 48 hours of
contraction and less than 15 minutes of actual delivery of a baby,
Keiko and Archer finally get to meet our daughter! Yes! Our baby is
born! It took more than 5 days to deliver her after Keiko’s water
broke, but she is Genki,  drinking and sleeping well. People who want
to know about my long battle of labor(I think every mother has their
own story to tell about their labor. ) , I will tell you about it
later.

Keiko’s baby has pitch black hair like herself! At this point, she
looks more yellow kind than white. (You go figure what it means
yourself ) It seems she even has Mongorian Blue spots on her back!!
do you know what they are? I hear even some doctors in North America
don’t know about them. Now, it is another chance For you to know about
Asian babies! :p She is born at 4:45pm on February 15th. She weighed
6.7lbs.

Our daughter’s name will be revealed soon and, Yes. She is a Tiger.
Yes. She is Aquarius.

I forgot to say 新年快楽！! Happy New Tiger Year!! I guess I celebrated
2010 Chinese New Year’s day in a unique way, By having intense
contraction all day!

Love,
Keiko & Archer”

We can’t wait to see her.

Austin

BABY  UPDATE:

The baby’s name is Laila. (Genki means cool in Japanese, which I wasn’t cool enough to know) What a cute girl. Here are some photos…

Tea and an Open Mind »

Master Liang

There are thousands of anecdotes and stories about tea being used to open the mind and spirit, and there is plenty of research that confirms tea’s benefits for the brain.  Recently, however, I had tea open my mind in a new way.

I grew up drinking matcha, the Japanese green tea powder used in the Japanese tea ceremony.    I learned the basics of Japanese tea as a child from my grandmother, who adopted many aspects of the different Asian cultures from her life in pre-state Hawaii, and even converted my bedroom into a Japanese tea room when I was twelve.  (My mom was an interior designer, so I had access to a lot of resources the typical twelve-year-old in the rural south probably wouldn’t have had at the time.)  I also learned all about British and Indian teas from our English friends who came to winter in our little fishing village on the Gulf each year.

With this kind of background, I had always heard that Chinese tea was inferior, and  when I first met Zhuping I have to admit that I was skeptical.  Now, several years later, I have passionately embraced the spectacular beauty of Chinese tea, but I never really developed a taste for Chinese black tea.  In fact, I bought a bag of Spring Dawn a few years ago solely because of Austin’s enthusiasm for it, and when I made it at home the next day I hated it.  I ended up giving it away.  (Just so you know, I love Spring Dawn now that I know how to brew it properly.  Plus, I think the 2009 harvest was exceptional.)

Just like I was biased against Chinese tea for most of my life, I was also biased against black tea – up until recently.  A couple of months ago, Mikel in the warehouse offered me some special rare Lapsang Bohea that had been given to Seven Cups/Green Dragon by Master Liang, the tea master over Lapsang production.  It was a revelation!  I had never in my life enjoyed black tea so much (although I do like Dian Hong Gong Fu iced in the summer occasionally).  I was astounded to discover a black tea that, in my opinion, rivaled the sweetness and complexity found in some of my favorite Rock Oolongs; my bias against black tea was instantly shattered.

It makes sense, however, that I would love this tea so much.  The term “Bohea” comes from a mistranslation of “Wu Yi,” which is where the Lapsang teas and Rock Oolongs come from.  In a way, these teas are close sisters to one another.  And, as it turns out, we at Seven Cups have some of the best of both.

I now enjoy our Lapsang Bohea on an almost daily basis and regard it as one of my favorite teas.  That’s saying something, because I REALLY love tea and have a collection of hundreds.  In my opinion, it’s right up there with Silver Needle, Big Red Robe, Ceremony-grade Matcha, Oriental Beauty, and Gold Medal Honey Orchid.

That’s exciting for me, because I’m the type of person who loves learning new things and having my mind stretched.  I studied Social Theory, Racial Theory, Theology, Feminism, and other mind-stretching subjects in college and like to have my presuppositions and assumptions challenged, and to me, tea is one of those things that keeps me on my toes.  The tea culture and industry are constantly evolving, and so is my palate, and part of enjoying tea is the constant opportunity to learn and experience something new.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though tea has been proven to have beneficial chemicals that help brain health, the experience and culture of tea can be mind-opening in and of itself.  One can learn about other cultures, about sustainable farming (and about the outright tragedies and crimes endemic to commercial tea production), about sensory integration, about ritual, about religion or meditation, about health, and even about oneself.  That, to me, elevates tea to something beyond a consumable product, and truly epitomizes the entire idea of “lifestyle products.”  Tea really can become a gateway to a better quality of life in so many ways.

Be well!

Eric

The Unfathomable Mystery of Tea »

Oriental Beauty Taiwanese Oolong

Sometimes I am amazed at how much bad information there is out there about tea. I can’t even tell you how many people come in to Seven Cups or the Botanical Gardens with their friends and want to look intelligent by saying something about tea, and it turns out that what they say is completely wrong. Someone once said that the British invented tea. (That made me laugh, but they were serious.) Dozens of people have come in and confidently declared that white tea is simply the new buds of green tea, or that white tea has no chlorophyll (including one so-called “tea expert”). And even more people have said that they heard that green tea had more caffeine than coffee and will keep you up all night if you have just one cup!

The fact of the matter is that tea is a vast and unfathomable field of study. For example, there are over a few hundred different kinds of Long Jing (Dragonwell) with different names and coming from different regions and different bushes, each with its own character, so how can anyone give a blanket statement to all green tea?

And it’s not just that the average American doesn’t know tea because he or she grew up in a culture that doesn’t really appreciate it. Even tea experts often get it wrong. And sometimes we do.

Last month I was walking by the chrysalis room at the Botanical Gardens and had an idea: let’s have a special event during Asian Butterfly Month where we teach people about how the green leaf worm is an essential part of the production of Oriental Beauty, one of my favorite Taiwanese oolongs. I talked to the powers that be at the Botanical Gardens and they got so excited about it they called the local news stations, all of whom asked for an official press release because they all wanted to do a story on it, and even asked if Zhuping and I would be willing to give live interviews on air.

My idea was an instant hit. Word about it spread like wildfire, and the curator of the Butterfly Exhibit excitedly told me that she had written to her entomologist friends in Asia to ask them to send more information. It was a win for us, a win for tea education, and a win for the Botanical Gardens.

But then we hit a wall. As I started doing my research to prepare for the event, I started coming across some information about the green leaf worm, which everyone had said was essential to the Oriental Beauty production. I wanted to find the scientific name, and when I found it and looked up pictures I was horrified – this green leaf “worm” wasn’t a worm at all. The local people used a word that can be translated as worm, but in reality it was the Tea Jassid – a type of cicada. The real name of this little creature that helps make this tea so special was “Smaller Green Leaf Hopper,” and was nowhere close to being a worm-like creature. Not even in its larval stage.

When I told Zhuping about it she was incredulous. But sure enough, after some more research with her, we discovered that the Chinese character for worm could be interchanged with the word for hopper in some regions, and so a vital detail was lost in translation.

Well, this launched us on a quest to start fact-checking some of our own resources, and thankfully, Zhuping is considered one of the world’s leading experts on Chinese tea. (By the way, Zhuping is certified as a tea scholar, but she considers herself a “Tea Ambassador” because she thinks it is impossible to truly ever know all of the teas and their history.) She’s actually been to just about every tea growing region and has personally studied with the farmers and tea masters there.

The only way this bad information fell through the cracks was for political reasons; Zhuping has never actually been to Taiwan to verify the information on the few Taiwanese teas we sell. Austin does the sourcing for us in Taiwan. Zhuping is now able to go because she has American citizenship, but was previously not allowed to visit. By and large, our information is probably the most correct information out there, but we were both mortified and amused when we started looking into some of the bad information we found on other sites and resources.

Even some of the most famous tea “experts” have loads of bad information, and Austin recently read a book on tea that was so full of errors he felt embarrassed for the author. In fact, Zhuping says that there is no way to ever learn about tea enough to truly call yourself a master, because every year things change in the tea culture and tea industry, and politics and marketing drive huge amounts of misinformation. One can never get “the truth” from a book or online; the only way to really know something about tea is to experience it in person, whether by drinking the tea, examining the leaves, or visiting the farms themselves. And you know, this whole thing not only taught me the importance of fact-checking and how deeply mysterious the tea trade can still be, but it also taught me a cultural lesson.

China doesn’t have a history of our Western black-and-white dichotomous paradigm. The Chinese culture, by and large, doesn’t see truth and falsity as absolutes. So to the local people in some parts of Asia, it’s totally accurate to call a cicada a worm because it munches on tea leaves. I’m not sure I can take myself far enough out of my own cultural blinders to really wrap my head around the idea that something can be true even if it isn’t, but there’s a lot of that in the tea industry, so while some of us may get up-in-arms about outright lies (like that white tea has no caffeine), part of embracing the wonder of tea is also embracing its mythology – and when one gets into myth, lines between truth and fiction begin to blur.

Be well!
Eric

Tea for Health (And Hedonism) »

Immortal Peach Yixing Pot

It seems we get a different kind of customer at the Botanical Gardens outpost than we do at our main teahouse here in Tucson. At the teahouse we tend to get what Zhuping calls “tea people,” those who know tea and drink tea for the sensual experience, the taste, the aroma, the story (or sometimes simply to just enjoy a nice atmosphere with free Wi-Fi). It seems that most of the people who come into the Botanical Gardens tea room, however, are more interested in the health benefits than anything else.

I was talking to Austin about this the other day, and he talked about the joys of drinking great tea for purely hedonistic reasons. That got me thinking about the tea ceremony. In the traditional Chinese Oolong tea ceremony (which I can perform for you outdoors in the Grove of Peace and Harmony here at the Botanical Gardens, by the way) we use special utensils and techniques specifically made to engage and enhance all of the senses.

People get really excited when I show them how to use a fragrance cup for oolong tea, or when we show them how to “bake” the tea by putting the leaves into a Yixing pot that has been heated with boiling water and then emptied. Using the fragrance cups, they get to experience the natural tea fragrance in a much deeper and hedonistic way, soothing their senses with warmth and beauty. Using the little tasting cups, people get to experience the three unique ways to fully experience oolong tea – the aroma, the taste, and the fabulous lingering finish and after-aroma soothing the throat and sinuses. In this way, tea is fully experienced rather than simply being consumed. And the health benefits are simply an afterthought – if even thought about at all.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the health benefits of tea. But as a lifelong student of tea, growing up with a grandmother who did the Omotesenke Japanese tea ceremony, I learned an early appreciation for the richness of tea culture and the depths available in the full sensory banquet tea so generously provides to us.

Now, after several years of studying tea on my own and with Zhuping, I have learned myriad ways to enjoy great tea, whether by making the tea leaves dance in a gaiwan as a gesture of thanks for the divine gift of green tea, or by boiling black Puer in a traditional Yunnan copper pot to release the natural date-like sweetness found in great Puer teas – a sweetness that continues to come out even after a couple of days infusing the same leaves again and again!

All of these add up to a truly hedonistic experience with its own inherent value apart from the health benefits. Sure, research is showing that white tea can be extremely effective in treating inflammation, out-performing Non Steroidal Anti-inflammatory drugs in some lab tests. But wouldn’t you rather enjoy the almost rose-like flavor and intoxicating aroma? Wouldn’t you rather see the tiny crystalline hairs dancing in the cup, reflecting the light like a snowglobe? And yes, green tea is loaded with anti-oxidants and may prevent cancer, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s, but wouldn’t you rather just drink it for pure pleasure?

Well, one of the great things about tea is that you don’t have to choose one over the other. You can lose yourself in the sensory pleasures tea affords, AND you can experience better health because of it. And heck, I think pleasure is probably healthy in and of itself.

Be well, and enjoy life!
Eric

2009 Oolong Tea Tour Podcast-Making Rock Oolong pt2 »

Welcome to our tea and tea culture video podcast with Zhuping Hodge, tea master and owner of Seven Cups. Last year we launched three very successful tea tours to China. Many hours of video were taken and we want to share them with you. Follow Zhuping as she tours Mr. Liu’s rock oolong tea factory. Please note this is part 2 of 3 videos with the famous rock oolong master.

Today’s topic: 2009 Oolong Tea Tour Podcast-Making Rock Oolong Part 2

Thank you all for your comments regarding our podcasts. We would like to create future podcasts on topics you all are interested in, so please contact us with ideas.

The Safety of Chinese Teas »

Recently I sent out a newsletter that had a picture of puer being fermented. Someone sent me an email that said that the photo was not appropriate for people who were already afraid about the safety of Chinese products.

I can understand why that might be a perception commonly held. There have been some well-publicized scandals about lead paint in toys, and unsafe dog food. In relationship to tea there is David Lee Hoffman in his nineteenth century Christian missionary garb sniffing out chemicals in bags of tea like some bomb sniffing dog, implying that the tea is safe if it is sold by his company. The ‘tea documentary’ even had a scene of a crop duster spraying toxic chemicals on an implied tea garden.  Can you imagine a bi-plane flying thought the misty, cloud covered Chinese mountains, while Mr. Hoffman explains worm excrement to farmers whose ancestors invented organic farming and crop rotation thousands of years ago? The truth is that Chinese tea — if it is exported legally — can be trusted to a degree that no tea from any other country can claim.  I know that is a staggering statement, so let’s examine it a bit.

In 2008, China passed some very strict laws involving the export of tea. I wrote about this development earlier in the year. The World Tea News, however, did not publish it because they could not verify the information in my press release, even though I supplied them with sources to contact in China who spoke English. The laws are complicated (they are Chinese laws after all) but here it is in a nutshell: For any tea to be legally exported it must be inspected, this part of the law was not new, but the inspection has become a lot more stringent. You must be a registered and licensed company in order to present tea for inspection, and the tea must come from a registered and licensed tea base. In order for a tea base to be registered the producer must submit detailed documentation to the Department of Inspection and Quarantine about their farming practices, as well as soil and water samples.

Building upon the work of Luo Shao Jun, who is the Director of the National Tea Quality Control Center and the Director of Hangzhou’s Institute of Tea Supply and Marketing (in brief, she is the top-ranking government official in charge of the Chinese tea industry), the tea is evaluated for quality based on color, smell, and plucking configuration. The tea is also tested for contaminants and is passed or failed based on the food safety standards of the importing country, in our case the FDA. If the tea passes it is submitted to Chinese customs by a licensed export company.

This process provides for a fully documented supply chain.  The Chinese government does not take kindly to people who are responsible for export scandals, as evidenced by the recent execution of the head of the Chinese equivalent of the FDA. No other country goes to these levels of regulation.

Of course that doesn’t mean that all tea that makes it to the US is exported legally. There are ways to game the system, but to do it through the process I described above is risky and hardly worth it. The second way is to smuggle it to Hong Kong. It’s pretty easy to do, but you have to pay. The importer still must navigate past the FDA, but if your paperwork is in order, that is not a problem. The FDA almost never actually tests products. You can bring tea in your suit case, and if you have a big enough family, you can get a lot of tea into the country that way. You can also buy tea on Ebay that is mailed from China in small enough amounts that it can be under the radar of the legal process. There are a couple of websites that are illegal in China that operate under the radar by hosting in the US and blocking the URL from being viewed in China that do the same. I don’t mean to say that the tea they are selling in the US is unsafe, but I am pointing out that they are circumventing the safeguards established on both the Chinese side and the American side. Tea smuggling has always been popular for consumers because it’s cheaper to do it that way.  John Adams is said to have remarked when drinking tea was considered unpatriotic, ‘Can’t I just have a bowl of tea that is smuggled past the British?’

I will say more about the use of chemicals, fertilizers, and pesticides in a follow-up post, but I want to point out that Chinese tea, especially tea grown for export in China, is very safe. There are some teas that should be consumed with caution, mainly those harvested in the summer in Anxi and certain areas of Yunnan and Hubei. More on that later.

Austin

World Tea News To Charge Subscription »

This a comment that I wrote following Heidi Kaiser wrote on the blog T Ching announcing that the World Tea News will have it’s own URL and charge a subscription. The is a photo of the Wall Street Journal on a driveway, as if there is somehow a parallel between the two.  The tea industry has very little in the way of good tea publication, though there are some emerging on-line, but I have not been very happy to see the World Tea News becoming the default periodical about tea given their association with the World Tea Expo.

Although Heidi has written some good pieces since she has been in at the “World Tea News”, I don’t feel that the content presented in the “World Tea News” rises to the level of news, almost all of which one can come to by setting a few Google alerts, hardly worth the price of the subscription. Because the “World Tea News” is a marketing arm of the World Tea Expo, formally Take Me To Tea, the only tea trade show in the US, it seems unlikely that there could be in unbiased reporting from the WTN. Even though the World Tea Expo is the only game in town, it doesn’t mean that they speak for the the tea industry. WTN does however provide a good central location for reading the press releases issued by tea companies and is a little less self serving than Adagios Tea Trends, and certainly not “independent news and information from the only source that focuses exclusively on the specialty tea trade”. It is really pretty amazing that they should make that claim.

It is true that the tea industry needs good information, and that there is very little be be found either in online or in print. I hate to hear the line, “we are all in this together” because it means that we are all agreeing to a being satisfied with a shocking level of mediocrity and tolerance for a level of deceptive marketing that we know is not accurate, but we wink at it because we are ‘all in it together’. It is true that being in the specialty tea industry is hard from a business stand point, (I even think that term ’specialty tea’ is misleading to the point of being meaningless) and that we have to work together to establish a market for better quality teas. There is a growing list of very good content development people and companies that are really making an effort to disseminate better information about tea. The thing that makes good information about the industry so difficult to come by is the amount of deception involved in marketing tea that we all enable as a shared passive conspiracy. The truth is that there is a lot of ugly news out there regarding the tea industry that is not being mentioned and I don’t see the World Tea Expo risking its market by talking about it.

That being said, I think that Heidi has done an excellent job as editor there, and I don’t believe that good journalism should be free. Heidi, start your own publication. I’ll subscribe to that. There is certainly a need in our industry.

Tea In The Botanical Tucson Gardens »

I am in our new teahouse in the Tucson Botanical Gardens and enjoying a cup of. Meizhan oolong, one of my favorite WuYiShan rock oolongs. I am reminded of the tea drinking scholars of the Tang Dynasty that preferred to drink their tea in a natural setting. The garden is beautiful. When to Tucson in 1987 I fell in love with the lushness of the Sonoran Desert. A few years later I was exposed to good Chinese green tea through my friendship with a Chinese graduate student who came from an area rich in tea and tea culture. My life was set on an unexpected course as a result. I never returned to live in the city that I had loved so much and the North Beach espresso that I couldn’t get enough of. It is perhaps unusual to associate tea and the desert, but as I sit here this morning it seems perfectly right.

The Chinese settled in Tucson more than 150 years ago. They are not thought of having been so, at least in most peoples minds, but they have always been a part of the settling of the West, and of course they brought tea. There was a very vibrant Chinatown here until it got wiped out along with a good chunk of the old barrio. A lot of the residents were bilingual in Chinese and Spanish.

Selling tea in the desert is a sweet pleasure. Austin