Tea Growing Regions Part 5

Frank Weber: Which brings us to the next region which is Ceylon or Sri Lanka. Male: Sri Lanka. Frank Weber: Ceylon goes by its former name still. Ceylons are also widely known. They're beautiful medium body teas. They are single nice and they have coppery kind of that brisk in air. There are few growing regions in Ceylon, in Sri Lanka usually around—they’re also very mountainous regions they do have some lower ground regions as well. Male: Okay. Frank Weber: This one comes from Nuwara Eliya which is one of the finest regions. Ceylons are used for a lot of flavored teas because they take on flavoring because of their rich maltiness, they bring a lot of their own unique flavored to it. And Ceylons are—it’s not a bad thing, but they are somewhat more medium bodied, so you can play around with flavoring with them a little bit better, so you’ll find a lot of the scented teas you know your earl gray which has the oil of bergamot. Male: Sure. Frank Weber: Or vanilla scented black teas and so fort we use Ceylons teas form. Ceylons also make great ice teas they don’t cloudy as quickly some other black teas. Coming to your favorite this milima. Milima is a tea garden in Kenya. Male: Okay. Frank Weber: And there are teas produced in other countries in Africa as well. Cameroon, Rwanda I mean there are quite a few. The milima is one of the few tea gardens that are still produces orthodox style. An orthodox style is loose leaf tea production two leaves in a box versus the CTC cup where you shred the leaves. A lot of Kenyan teas go into strong blends and a lot of them are used for tea bag production. Milima is a bit different it’s still a nice sizzler a lot of use swapping of the golden tips with the younger shoots so that it gives a bit more of a delicate flavor profile if you can say so. Kenya blacks are always very rich in full bodied cup of teas, so if you’re looking for something that you want to put some milk and sugar, and then Kenya would be great on us some would be great for that as well. Going for the down the line another interesting growing region is Taiwan. Male: Okay. Frank Weber: Taiwan is famous just like Japan produces only green teas, Taiwan produces pretty much only oolongs there are some green teas there as well, but Taiwan is famous for oolongs. And oolongs I find it very interesting teas because they are some of the hardest teas to make and they’re not as widely appreciated as black teas and green teas. You don’t hear a lot in the media about oolong except there was something about Oprah about “woolong”, and all the sudden we get all these phones calls, “Do you have woolong?” and I said, “Yes, we have oolong”, “No, no, no woolong” I say “well it’s the same thing it’s just as different dialect in Chinese. Male: Yes. Frank Weber: Like Pu-erh is “pu era” can be bold depending whether it’s Mandarin or Cantonese. Male: Cantonese. Frank Weber: So there was this person who said, “We have this woolong tea from this one mountain and it’s the only one that makes you slim and trim and all these wonderful things.” Having said an all teas increase your metabolism. Male: Yes. Frank Weber: So yes all teas will help with that. Oolong is used a lot in China for—it’s a company with heavy meals with heavy fatty meals because the tannins in oolong can cut that a little bit better and make you feel less full. Male: Okay. Frank Weber: When it comes to health benefits they are all still in the same range green teas, black teas and so fort. Oolong is an interesting tea because they are semi-oxidize, so what that means is the leaves are picked and then withered, some of their moisture evaporates and now the leaves are bruised, so they go into these large bamboo tumblers. Male: Okay. Frank Weber: You have to think of the size of this room. They go in there what happens is a leaf are thrown around and they just bruise and crack the cell membranes. Male: So just the action of the tumbling and hitting each other. Frank Weber; Yes exactly, and what that does it opens up the cell membranes and it allows the juice to come up. Male: Okay. Frank Weber; So the oxidization starts, so you know it starts much quicker much easier that way. Now the tea maker has to be very careful because this oxidization process is anywhere between 20 and 80% depending whether you want that tea to be closer to a green tea or closer to a black tea. So something like this is closer to green tea you can tell by the color already. So oolongs have this beautiful floral orchids kind of characters with this slight smokiness and they're quite lovely teas. Once the tea is half wedge a certain level of oxidization that is being check every 10, 15 minutes just to see how much they have browned then we introduce heat because heat kills the enzyme. Male: Okay. Frank Weber: It causes to stop and now we can continue to shape the leaves. Oolong like this is usually shaped in cheese cloth device that just tightens it more and more rows into this big, big bowl and then rolls the leaf into this shape. Once that is done they’re being drive and they usually bake they usually often dry with oolongs. And as I said Taiwan produces some beautiful, beautiful oolongs. We also have some oolongs from countries that up until a while ago world as famous as for their oolong production because Taiwan and China are always here for countries that produce oolong, but now we also have some oolongs from Dar jeeling for example. Male: Okay. Frank Weber: And you know you see some oolongs coming from Ceylon and from other countries, so it’s interesting that the consumer has driven the need for or the want for different types of teas and a lot of that we see now is grown into green teas, some are oolongs, just black teas, so some other tea producing countries have responded to that as well and we see India who produce pretty much only black tea is also now producing some green, some white, some oolongs you know. Male: That’s fantastic, so there’s huge variety of tea available. Frank Weber; Yes it’s thousands. Male: And you know you can spend the rest of your life just tasting tea. Frank Weber: I’ll probably will. Male: Oh! Thank you very much. Frank Weber: My pleasure. Male; Thank you.