Tea Growing Regions Part 4

Ron: Korea, there are some beautiful teas from Korea; they are usually a little bit similar to the Japanese Green teas pretty much. They have some of the same vegetative characteristics, but they are not quite as grassy as the Japanese Green teas. Frank Webber: Okay. Ron: So Korea has some beautiful, this is a very small tea garden as the family estate in Korea which produces this type of tea, and it’s quite lovely. So, same kind of flavor profile with some of the Japanese Green teas. Some other important countries, we just kind of touch on is India, so India produces prominently black teas, always has, because it was colonized by the British, and you know— Frank Webber: Black tea was the flavor. Ron: Black tea was the flavor and so we see mostly black tea is coming out again. Now India is the largest exporter of tea in the world. It doesn’t mean that they produce the largest amount, I mean I am not sure that the numbers are for China for example, but India exports around about 880 million kilos of tea a year. Frank Webber: That’s a lot of tea. Ron: It’s a lot of tea, yeah. So, India is very interesting. Within the country there are different flavor profiles, what’s always very well known is Dar jeeling, this is a beautiful Dar jeeling, this a very high grade, Makaibari is a beautiful estate. So this one is the finest tippy golden flowery Orange Pekoe one, okay now we got. The general rule of thumb with the grading system is that at the end they are all OP’s, they are all Orange Pekoe, and it is not ‘pikow’ it’s Orange Pakoe, so the more letters you see the higher the grade of the leaf. Frank Webber: Because they’ve added more descriptors. Ron: That’s right, so you know it’s a finest tippy higher assortment of tips, golden tips, so it’s a bit of a confusing system, and it’s confusing because A is not used in all countries and B, it doesn’t tell us anything about the flavor of the tea. It only tells us about the grade and the quality of the leaf size. It doesn’t tell us whether this tea comes from the Dar jeeling, it got slightly nutty and at the muscatel flavor and it is a nice light, you know airy type of tea, or whether it’s from Assam, or whether it’s malty and rich in honey like, so doesn’t tell us any of that. Frank Webber: So it’s just describing the physical attributes of the leaf. Ron: That’s right, and so the interesting thing is that, Orange Pakoe, which is essentially termed and was derived as a tribute to the Dutch royalty, the house of orange and then Pekoe is the pluck. We associate widely with Black tea. I just want a full cup of you know like you and you like Milomo, you like your nice Kenya black. It’s full coming black, so people associate that with black tea, which is wrong? And the irony is that when you go to supermarket and you pick up a box of tea bags and it says on there Orange Pakoe. Guess what’s inside? It’s no near Orange Pakoe, because in Orange Pakoe leaf grade would be much bigger than what you see in there, right? So Dar jeelings have beautiful very high grown at the foot of the Himalayans, very high altitude. They are very thought after for the spring harvest. They produce a very delicate light buttery, got this nutty muscatel flavors. A beautiful cup of tea, beautiful light; it’s something that we don’t recommend putting milk and sugar in, because when you put milk into a tea, it somewhat mask the flavors a little bit, so you need to have full body tea, like a nice Assam would be great. So Assam also being in India, it stretches in North Eastern India on both sides of the Brahmaputra valley. Frank Webber: Okay. Ron: It’s a beautiful moist monsoon, a beautiful hot and moist climate. Assams contrary to Dar jeelings is thawed after for their second harvest, so their second flush, which is the summer harvestings. In spring, they produce also beautiful teas but they tend to be a little bit lighter. Frank Webber: Okay. Ron: And then the summer they produce a full bodied, you know, honey like rich maltiness, and this is a bukiao which is one of my favorite estates. It’s the name of the tea guard which just like Makhaibari the name of the tea guard in Dar jeeling, and it’s just a nice rich round full cup of tea. So India produces—also in the Nilgiris in Southern India, it’s another growing region and that would be a little bit closer to what we find in Ceylon or Sri Lanka. India predominantly black tea, predominantly full body teas from South or from Assam and the Dar jeelings very thought after. Frank Webber: Something that I really like about tea is that, I can come in and say I want something from a particular tea garden and whether I want first or second flush, and you can provide that to me, because all of that is tracked and taken care of. Ron: Yes, we have about 140 different varieties of tea, and there are always new ones coming in, and it’s interesting because it changes, and bokiao may not be the same exact the same taste next year because the climate has something to do with it. Having said that they are fairly stable, I mean they are fairly produced fairly stable. Frank Webber: Sure. Ron: Flavor profiles, in wine it fluctuates a bit more fine sometimes, but yeah it’s an interesting world. It’s very much like wine.