Chinese Tea Video

Check out this video shot by David Duckler, the wholesale manager for Infinitea - Uptown. It will only sort of make you want to travel to China. We are planning a Infinitea Teahouse guided tour of China next year, would anyone be interested? And yes David is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

The Mysterious Life of Pu-Erh

During processing, tea is said to “ferment,” with different types fermenting more or less depending on the desired result.  This is false, scientifically speaking.  Actual fermentation requires a biological organism to be active in the tea during processing.  In the tea world, when someone refers to fermentation, they most likely mean oxidation.  The same process that turns old cars rusty – it is no wonder why the industry got away from the term.  So they call it fermentation, for the sophistication of the sound of the word.

This all, of course, boils down to semantics.  Why would it matter if an industry calls something by another name?  Because, I suggest, of Pu-Erh: a magical Chinese tea, and one that actually does undergo fermentation.  Calling everything fermented is like calling every type of wine a port.  At a certain point it ceases to describe anything at all.  And Pu-Erh is well worth describing.

Pu-Erh gets title from the region from which it originated (Pu-Erh is in the Yunnan region of China, which is located in the south-central portion of the country.)  Nowadays, it refers less to a region and more to the unusual nature of the tea.  Traditionally, Pu-Erh tea was cultivated, then packed and buried in the ground, where it was left to, you guessed it, ferment.  This process does two things to the tea.  It tends to give it a deep, extremely earthy aroma (think of a farm).  It also tends to give Pu-Erh teas their smooth, wonderfully sweet finishes, without weakening the front end flavor at all.

Another oddity of Pu-Erh tea is that it is traditionally “caked.”  This means that, instead of being shipped and stored as a loose pile of dried leaves, it is compressed into a cake that can be as small as a quarter, or as large as a basketball hoop.  The origin behind caking is pure convenience.  It was easier to ship, had a longer shelf-life, so to speak, and was easier to measure along the steppes of Asia where it was regularly traded, sometimes in the place of currency.

The Misunderstood Experience of Tea

Tea, as it is understood in the States, is a wonderful beverage…under the right conditions.  Tea is great when you are sick.  Tea is great when you need a healthy break from coffee.  Tea is great with a plate of General Taos, and is exceptional paired with what the English call a “biscuit” (which is really more like a cookie).  But how about tea as an every day, every situation beverage?

Upon first glance, tea seems pretty one dimensional.  It is tan.  It is hot.  It tastes like lemon or sugar or whatever has been added to it.  Otherwise it would be bitter.

For a good portion of our lives, this is the image of the drink.  It was the Lipton our moms gave us when were was playing hooky from school.  It is the same narrowness of experience that has created an American disinterest in tea, especially here in the Midwest, where people prefer the solidness and reliability of a good cup of coffee.

But, with the reality of tea’s reputation, there is an experience gravely overlooked.  A cup of cinder yellow, slightly floral aroma, like a garden in late spring, hinting of an unrecognizable fruit, and then a taste at the front of the tongue, the side of the tongue, the center of the tongue.  Both drying and sweet.  Both simple and complicated.  And a finish of slightly-sugared apricot.

Then there is the process of tea.  The perfect steep.  How the richness of a tea comes from its oils.  How the bitterness of a tea comes from its tannins, which can be controlled by steeping time and water temperature.  Then there is the geography of tea.

The tea described two paragraphs back is a Third Flush Darjeeling, which comes from a small mountainous region of northeastern India, i.e. “Darjeeling.”  “Third Flush” refers to the season in which the leaves were picked.  A First Flush tea is picked in the spring.  A Second Flush is harvested in the summer.  A Third Flush is autumnal.  Aside from the season of its cultivation, the region, quality, and processing of a tea play a big role in its end product.  As you may imagine, it gets progressively confusing from there.

Everyone is different, but for me what is important is that I am able to sit here, writing this, and drink a cup of perfectly steeped tea, needing no lemon wedge, no scoop of sugar, no honey or milk or equal in order to be sweet and interesting.  It is perfect, pure, and with every new tea I try, I feel the world shrinking and feel as though I am becoming a little bit more attached to it.

Infinitea in Imbibe Magazine

Check out the link below to see Infinitea recommend teas along with the "big boys" Rishi-Tea and Harney & Sons.  We're getting huge!

http://www.imbibemagazine.com/Finding-a-Tea-for-Every-Taste

The Forgotten Health Benefit of Tea

One day, a few thousand years ago, China’s emperor Shen Nong was out doing research for his great encyclopedia of medicine, eating every herb he encountered in the forest and recording the results.  On this fateful day, he ate something deathly poisonous.  The world began to go dark when the breeze lifted a few tea leaves to his face.  Recognizing fate at work, he took them and ate them, recovering immediately.  Or so goes the story.  From this day on, tea has been known as a medicine.  Modern studies recognize the powerful antioxidants at work in the tea plant, giving many Americans a powerful motivation to make tea a part of their day.

Yet, the most powerful health benefit of tea is completely overlooked by modern science: tea asks of us a few moments out of our day to prepare and appreciate it.  This means that we are forced by our daily ritual to relax and recover, forced to take time to think about what we have achieved and what we wish to achieve.  Twenty minutes of daily relaxation is just as critical to our physical health as twenty minutes of daily exercise if it manages to keep our stress levels in check.

Around the world, cultures have developed unique tea ceremonies.  In China, the ceremony is so important to daily life that it survived the turmoil of war, famine, and revolution in the 20th century.  Despite the push to modernize, traditional ceremony is as strong as ever.  The Mandarin word for the act of preparing tea can translate to “free time.”  This idea of enforced leisure is embodied in the thimble-sized cups used to sip the tea.

In Japan, tea has become a kind of religion.  In Okakura Kakuzo’s landmark piece, The Book of Tea, he describes teaism as “QUOTE.”  Some of us might dismiss this “adoration of beauty as a healing method as something unfounded and abstract, but modern scientific studies directly link happiness, stress and physical health.  Finding an easy and pleasurable ceremony to add to your day will not only provide the antioxidant healing power of tea, but also the psychological benefits of Kakuzo’s teaism.

The Impurity of White Tea

White tea has recently gone through a huge surge in popularity.  From Lipton bottled iced tea to the high end bulk leaves found at Infinitea Teahouse (and stores like us), white tea has gained a foothold in the American market, finding its way into cupboards and fridges everywhere.  But why?  It’s unaffordable, untraditional, difficult to produce, difficult to ship, and light enough in the cup to fool most Americans into wondering if someone forgot to add the leaves. 

One reason for the popularity is the health benefits.  White tea comes from very young leaves and goes through very little processing compared to green and black teas.  This means that the health benefits of the tea leaf are not lost through processing.  Nearly every day, a study comes out proclaiming the health benefits of white tea, the latest being evidence that it stops the creation of new fat cells in a person’s body.  With the health food industry at full swing, it is easy to see how the beverage has been exploited by marketers. 

Another reason for the influx in white tea is the taste.  While not having a bold taste like a Starbucks mocha, white tea is picked before the leaves are open, which gives it a natural sweetness, containing little of the grassy flavor that turns many palates away from green tea.  It also mixes well with fruits, allowing for such combinations as peach blossom or plum berry which are popular over ice in the summer. 

As justifiable as white tea’s popularity may be, there is always a down side.  As larger and larger companies figure out how much money might be made on such a product, quality begins to sag.  Many of the grocery store bagged teas that claim to be “white tea” contain less than 50% white tea, and the iced teas you find at the gas station are not much better, as they often contain vastly more sugar and other additives than pure white tea.   This is not to disparage the entire industry.  Many companies have gone out of their way to maintain quality and consistency. 

As convoluted as this all probably seems, it mirrors the experience of nearly every type of “health food.”  It begins as a pure and valid source of good health, and ends up being no more than an overpriced, beautifully marketed sugar pill. 

In essence, white tea has fantastic health benefits.   It is calming, promotes longevity, fights bacteria and viruses, and reduces the risk of rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, wrinkles, and some forms of cancer.  It also has a great, natural taste.  But be careful, what you may think is a cup of pure white tea may actually contain very little of it.