Re: "Dark" Tea
Posted: Mar 28th, '11, 18:05
I heard Bill Waddington (of Teasource) describe the trip firsthand on which he first heard about the teas labeled as "dark" teas in his catalog.
He took it for a type of pu erh, but the growers and sellers he talked to insisted it is most definitely not pu erh, because the probiotic that interacts with the leaves is different. They said that while it needs to age a certain time before being ready to drink, it does not benefit from years on end of aging the way pu erh can.
All he had with him at the time was what was in his suitcase on the way home, because this was between his return and the arrival of the shipment of what he had bought on that trip. I was very startled by the two samples I tasted, because they had tastes in them I had never encountered in any type of tea before. I wangled one of the suitcase cakes to take home with me (it's not offered in the catalog), and tried to figure out what I could from the wrapper. From what I could make out with the help of a friend, it gave both plain brewing instructions and instructions for making the "milk tea" drink of the far northwest of China, and it was primarily intended for that market.
That all fits with what IPT posted above. Bill had to stick some kind of English label on it, and that's what he went with at the time. His mission is not to be the ultimate scholarly tea authority, but to get Americans good tea without denting their wallets much. So his response to a kind of tea that was new to him was to cup some insane number of samples and bargain until he got a few he thought good at a very low prices for his introductory offerings. He said that the way he builds relationships with growers and sellers takes many years, and so it would be quite some time before he attempted to offer more expensive versions of this class of tea.
He took it for a type of pu erh, but the growers and sellers he talked to insisted it is most definitely not pu erh, because the probiotic that interacts with the leaves is different. They said that while it needs to age a certain time before being ready to drink, it does not benefit from years on end of aging the way pu erh can.
All he had with him at the time was what was in his suitcase on the way home, because this was between his return and the arrival of the shipment of what he had bought on that trip. I was very startled by the two samples I tasted, because they had tastes in them I had never encountered in any type of tea before. I wangled one of the suitcase cakes to take home with me (it's not offered in the catalog), and tried to figure out what I could from the wrapper. From what I could make out with the help of a friend, it gave both plain brewing instructions and instructions for making the "milk tea" drink of the far northwest of China, and it was primarily intended for that market.
That all fits with what IPT posted above. Bill had to stick some kind of English label on it, and that's what he went with at the time. His mission is not to be the ultimate scholarly tea authority, but to get Americans good tea without denting their wallets much. So his response to a kind of tea that was new to him was to cup some insane number of samples and bargain until he got a few he thought good at a very low prices for his introductory offerings. He said that the way he builds relationships with growers and sellers takes many years, and so it would be quite some time before he attempted to offer more expensive versions of this class of tea.