Java junkies debate the merits of Kenyan over Jamaican Blue Mountain. Even modest wine drinkers know chardonnay from sauvignon blanc. But tea? Whether it stems from the day Boston Harbor became one big pot brewing with colonial discontent, or its image as a pinky-in-the-air pleasure for upper-crust matrons, tea has yet to get the widespread attention of Food Channel fanatics.
Of course, at $288 a pound for the good stuff, it’s not something you want to gulp “out of a Styrofoam cup rushing to work,” says Bill Todd, of Todd & Holland Tea Merchants in River Forest.
Todd is one of those for whom, as Henry James wrote, “There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour devoted to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.” Yet a recent Darjeeling tasting around a kitchen table in the rear of his shop was less ceremony than seminar, a down-to-earth effort to reveal the characteristics of what has been called the Champagne of teas.
“Take the tea on your tongue,” he directed, “force it against the roof of your mouth, squeeze it out of the back side of your tongue, then swallow it. Feel the dryness on the roof of your mouth? That astringency is the only thing your mouth will taste in drinking tea. People who don’t like that are never going to like tea.”
After following his instructions, it was easy to think, “If this is expensive tea, I’ll take my Tetley any day.” That astringency was evident all right–nice and chalky, like licking a blackboard–and with three hours of tasting to go, the prospect of learning to appreciate it wasn’t appealing.
Truth was, Todd had poured a commercial Darjeeling tea, from a bag, to make a few points. First, tea bags often are filled with “fannings” and dust, the smallest and lowest grades of the processed tea leaf. Second, a tea can be labeled Darjeeling and contain as little as 5 percent Darjeeling tea.
“There may be a blend of 30 different teas in that tea bag,” Todd said, “one for color, another for aroma, another for astringency, and one for just taking up space. And whatever amount of Darjeeling was in there, it wasn’t very good. As you get into better teas, that astringency should be pleasant, relatively clean.”
Down to business
Todd waxes poetic in his company’s mail-order catalog (“A bright tea liquor with a subtle aroma of end-of-summer flowers…”) but in class he cuts to the chase, asking tasters to look for the dryness and overtones of flowers or muscat grape that define Darjeeling. Noting that tea is “essentially an aromatic beverage,” he urged his students to follow his lead as he steered them through a sampling of six 100 percent Darjeelings.
“Inhale some air, then take some tea and really slurp it into your mouth,” he instructed. “Keeping your mouth closed, swallow the tea, then breath out through your nose.
“What you’re doing is sending the tea to the back of the throat, vaporizing it, taking warm air from the lungs and breathing it over the olfactory bulb, which sits at the back of the sinus cavities, and that’s where you get the aroma and flavor of the tea.”
Grown in the Himalayan foothills of Darjeeling, a district in northeastern India, the tea is harvested four times a year: twice in the spring, once in summer, and again in the fall. The leaves of each flush, or growth period, have distinctive characteristics, and each has its champions.
Teas picked early tend to have a stronger floral bouquet and a more pronounced astringency; autumnals generally possess more complex flavors.
“In ranking Darjeeling,” Todd said, “everybody talks about the first flush as being the better of the flushes. Most people don’t think the autumnals are as good. I’d rank them first. But it’s all just a matter of opinion.”
What’s more, Todd insists that first flush Darjeelings often improve with age.
“My feeling is, if you get a 1998 first flush, it will be a much better tea a year from now. Darjeeling will `vintage’ for five or six years and actually get better and better. At some point, it’ll go off and in three of four weeks it will belong in a tea bag someplace.”
Grasping subtle taste differences is one thing; knowing the nomenclature is another. Darjeeling labeling does echo that of proprietary wines. The better teas bear the name of the estate on which they are grown (and sometimes where on the estate they grew), the time of harvest (first flush, second flush, autumnal), and the year of harvest.
Todd’s top Darjeeling is marked Darjeeling SFTGFOP-1, Namring Estate Upper Garden No. 3, Spring Flush 1994.
“There are 68 or so certified, Class 1 Darjeeling estates,” Todd said, “as well as some Class 2 or Class 3 estates lower down the hills.
“The S stands for Supreme, which indicates the light color of the tea liquor. The higher the altitude the tea is grown, the slower it grows, the more delicate the flavor, and the lighter the tea liquor. But the growers put that S on there. It’s entirely subjective and has absolutely nothing to do with the flavor of the tea, only what the tea liquor looks like. FTGFOP stands for Fancy Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe. `Fancy’ is a higher grade, meaning the tea contains some of the golden tips of the bud, which are the most tender. Flowery Orange Pekoe means the tea was made with the first three leaves of the bud growth.”
Brewing a perfect cuppa
Once a person makes the step up to fine tea, preparation is critical. For black teas such as Darjeeling, Todd recommends a water temperature of 212 degrees (that is, boiling) and a brewing time of three to five minutes.
“The most important thing is to remove the leaf when the brewing time is up. And you have to evacuate the whole pot: Don’t leave half a pot with the full pot worth of leaves in it.”
If your brew isn’t strong enough at five minutes, next time use a little more tea. If it’s too strong at three minutes, use less tea next time; don’t steep the same amount for two minutes.
Perhaps even more crucial to enjoying a good cup of tea is a measure of respect.
“You have to downshift,” Todd said. “Say, `OK, I’m going to concentrate on this.’ Because tea is an extremely subtle beverage. It’s much more subtle than wine. For serious tea drinkers, the ceremony of drinking is as important as the tea they drink.
“And ceremony does not mean a specific, rigid way of doing it. You can drink while reading a book or just sitting at the kitchen table. The important thing is–slow down.”
