{"id":10585,"date":"2014-07-13T18:52:08","date_gmt":"2014-07-13T22:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=10585"},"modified":"2014-07-13T18:52:08","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T22:52:08","slug":"the-lore-of-tea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/the-lore-of-tea\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lore of Tea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"4<\/a>Whoa! Down the rabbit hole I tumbled this week.<\/strong> I started reading about tea in several books I recently purchased. What a story. What a delight! Many hours spent between the pages absorbing culture, history, types, classifications, production, terroirs and marketing.*<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve read bits and pieces about tea before; mostly history and cultural notes; some tidbits about specific types and specific bits I’ve gleaned from online sources. I never read any significantly detailled work about picking, grading and production previously. Nor was I fully aware of the range and depth of teas, the complex terroir of tea and the variations in (and recommendations for) making and drinking tea.**<\/span><\/p>\n

I had a vague notion, of course. My kitchen shelves stock several boxes and packages of tea in both leaf and bag form. I know the rough difference between white, green and black teas (black which the Chinese call red tea…). I know that tea from China and tea from India and tea from Sri Lanka are different, but exactly how and why, or how they got their names and manners, I could only hypothesize.<\/p>\n

Now I am replete with information and wide-eyed in wonder, albeit I still have a lot to learn – and I puzzle over some concepts. Perhaps not enough bookshelf space left, mind you, to be fully educated in tea, because clearly I need to buy more of these publications. (Can one ever own too many books? Yes, but only if you run out of living space.)<\/p>\n

I am also informed about how to make a good cup of tea – temperature, container, infusor and more. I don’t have a simple method of determining water temperature (mayhap I need another kettle, one with a digital temperature setting?) but it appears the correct temperature matters a great deal to the resulting drink.<\/p>\n

\"Tea<\/a>Like most folks, I suppose, until recently tea was mostly a drink that came in a box full of bags you plunked into a cup, added boiling water, and let steep. Then came some milk.***<\/span> Maybe a touch of honey or sugar, too.<\/p>\n

Voila: a cuppa. And several more to follow during the day.<\/p>\n

That is, I’m learning, to tea culture what a bottle of my homemade plonk is to viniculture<\/a>. Crass. Pedestrian.
\nTea – real tea –  offers so much more than a bag of grocery store tea dust. And I ache to learn more about it.<\/p>\n

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Yes, it’s called dust<\/em>. Unflattering, I know. care for a cuppa dust, my dear? I have some nicely bagged fannings in the cupboard…<\/p>\n

One of those things you learn as you read. Wikipedia tells us:<\/p>\n

When crushed to make bagged teas, the tea is referred to as “broken”, as in “broken orange pekoe” (BOP). These lower grades include fannings and dust, which are tiny remnants created in the sorting and crushing processes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wikipedia further expounds on fannings:<\/p>\n

Fannings are small pieces of tea that are left over after higher grades of tea are gathered to be sold. Traditionally these were treated as the rejects of the manufacturing process in making high quality leaf tea like the orange pekoe. Fannings with extremely small particles are sometimes called dusts.<\/p>\n

Fannings and dusts are considered the lowest grades of tea, separated from broken-leaf teas which have larger pieces of the leaves. However, the fannings of expensive teas can still be more expensive and more flavorful than whole leaves of cheaper teas.<\/p>\n

This traditionally low quality tea has however experienced a huge demand in the developing world in the last century as the practice of tea drinking became popular. Tea stalls in India and the South Asian sub-continent, and Africa prefer dust tea because it is cheap and also produces a very strong brew – consequently more cups are obtained per measure of tea dust.<\/p>\n

Because of the small size of the particles, a tea infuser is typically used to brew fannings. Fannings are also typically used in most tea bags, although some companies sell tea bags containing whole-leaf tea.<\/p>\n

Some exporters focus primarily on broken leaf teas, fannings, and dusts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is to say that most bagged tea is not the best quality – even though some of it seems pretty damned good to my as-yet uneducated palate. At 6 a.m., I’m not sure I am up to critical examination of my cuppa and simply want the hot, modestly-caffeinated drink to course though my veins, dust notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

I expect it’s a lot like wine or tequila: there are many subtleties and complexities that are not evident on the store shelf, or to the average consumer (a tea aficionado in the grocery store is akin to a tequila aficionado in the LCBO, I expect… over-educated for the thin selection of mostly sub-par products). One must be educated to appreciate the finer points of imbibing.<\/p>\n

I’m sure there are courses in tea, like in wine and tequila, but I am at present merely an autodidact without a local source of product to support my burgeoning knowledge. Books, I rely on books.<\/p>\n

So, I wonder, those “premium” editions of grocery store brands – Lipton Yellow Label and Tetley Bold for example – are they better quality fannings? Or simply more flavourful blends of the same quality dust? What differentiates Red Rose from Yorkshire Gold or Barry’s tea? Or should I eschew these common brands and focus instead on whole leaf teas purchased at specialty shops?<\/p>\n

\"TeaDust, as a terminology, is not very attractive, but then I never thought the confusing term “orange pekoe” was either. Until I read about what it means and its curious etymology. What exactly is<\/em> orange pekoe (OP) that is on every box of tea bags?<\/p>\n

I have learned it’s a term used in tea grading<\/a> of black teas (not green or other teas) and refers to the unopened bud.<\/p>\n

OP may be an Anglicized form of a Chinese phrase describing the light down of the emerging tea bud. Why orange? Possibly for the Dutch (House of Orange) connection, possibly for the colour. Experts disagree.<\/p>\n

Orange pekoe whole leaf can be further subdivided into more subtle gradations:<\/p>\n