Tea is reputed to be the most popular refreshment drink in the world after water. The difference is that tea is usually served hot, while water is regularly consumed cold. Although getting reliable facts on the topic is difficult, in Britain for instance it is estimated that 165 million cups of tea are drunk on average every day. That compares to 70 million cups of coffee. The picture is similar in many other countries world-wide. So What does tea offer that coffee does not? And more importantly: why is tea often made so badly?
To have a better picture let’s have a look at the entire process starting from harvesting the tea plants until finally drinking a cup of tea. I am curious too because myself I am a regular tea drinker, my favorite time of the day to drink a cup of tea is always in the morning. If I can do it somewhere surrounded by nature that’s the perfect spot to relax and enjoy my cup of tea.
So let’s see how this unfolds. My cup of tea started its life as some new shoots on a seemingly unremarkable evergreen shrub that thrives only in tropical or subtropical climates. Although there are many types of tea, they all related from the same plant: Camellia Sinensis.
You could walk past this plant and never know it was the source of so much delight our ancestors did so for thousands of years. The shrub likes humidity and rainfall, but not high temperatures, and so there are a handful of places that are ideal for growing it, like the high altitudes of Yunnan province in China, the mountains of Japan, the Himalayas of Darjeeling in India, and the central highlands of Sri Lanka.
The best tea plant in the world, or at least the most expensive, is Da Hong Pao from the Wuyi Mountains in China, which can easily sell for a million dollars per kilogram.
Regardless which tea plant you like the most, the geographical location, the altitude and the exact conditions of the individual growing season all affect the taste of the tea leaves. One of the major headaches for tea producers is to figure out how to blend tea from many different geographical locations in a way that maintains a consistent taste for their product month after month, and year after year. The difference between green and black teas (and the other variants such as white, yellow, oolong, etc.) is how the leaves are processed.
Every season, all the new shoots of the tea plant are picked by hand. They immediately start to wilt, which triggers enzymes that break down the molecular machinery of the leaves, turning the green chlorophyll pigment first brown, and then black. If you ever have left a bunch of herbs too long in your fridge, you will have witnessed this effect.
Green Teas – are produced by heating the leaves immediately after picking. The heat deactivates the enzymes, and so keeps the chlorophyll intact, and thus the green colour, too. Often the leaves are then rolled, which bruises their cell walls, allowing the molecules responsible for the flavour to be easily extracted. The flavour palette of green tea is made up of astringency, from a family of molecules called polyphenols (you’ll most probably remember them from the tannins in wine); bitterness, from the caffeine molecules; sweetness, from sugars; silkiness, from pectins; a savoury, brothy taste from the amino acids; and a bouquet of aromatic oils. It’s the careful balance of these different elements, rather than the maximum extraction of each, that yields a great cup of tea.
Black Teas – are produced from the same leaves as green teas – they are just prepared differently, In the case of black tea, after the leaves wilt, they are rolled and their enzymes help break down the molecular machinery through a reaction with the oxygen in the air. This is a process called oxidation and it changes the colour from green to dark brown, producing a different set of flavour molecules. Many of the polyphenols, like the bitter tannin, are transformed into more savoury and fruity-tasting molecules. Because these molecules that make up the flavour of black tea are the result of the oxidation, they are not so susceptible to being destroyed by subsequent reactions with the oxygen in the air. Thus, after drying, black teas can be stored for Ionger periods of time than green teas without losing their flavour. Job done, you might be thinking. Just add water to whichever of these teas sounds best, and you’ll have a refreshing drink. But tea can be ruined all too easily. Besides the quality of tea plant, the quality of water you use plays a crucial role.
Another caffeine-based drink, such as Coke, will be very similar in taste wherever and whenever you drink it. This is because the brewing process is controlled in a factory, and the flavour of the drink is not significantly impaired by being stored and transported. Thus much of the potential for error has been removed. You can serve it at the wrong temperature (according to your preference), or in the wrong vessel (also according to your preference), but the chemical composition of the Coke is going to be reliably the same each time you order it. Inventors have long tried to do the same for tea by liquefying tea extracts to make an instant tea beverage that can be made in drink machines. So far, drinks made this way have never caught on, perhaps because they taste almost completely unlike a refreshing cup of tea. The reason for the difference is thought to be that so many of the key chemical components that give tea its distinctive flavour degrade and disappear soon after brewing.
Tea is as sophisticated as wine in terms of its flavour profiles, and the high prices reflect some of this, but it is also prone to some of the same snobbish vices of the wine industry, where scarcity and marketing are often used as a proxy for quality of product. There is also such an enormous breadth of tea – from green tea, to oolong, to the yerba mate of South America, to the black teas of Sri Lanka – that discovering what you like can be time-consuming.
Personally, my perfect cup of tea changes throughout the day. In the morning, when I’ve just woken up, I like strong breakfast tea with little honey – I find it comforting, alerting, but not too demanding. In the afternoon, I crave a black Earl Grey tea – the subtle combination of citrus and bergamot punch through the dreariness of a grey rainy afternoon.
I prepare my own tea very easy, simply because I know what’s good for me. The problem with people who aren’t tea drinkers is that I never know what to offer them when they visit me at home. “Would you like a cup of tea?” is the most welcoming phrase I know. It often rolls off my tongue before a visitor has even closed the door. The offer sounds trivial but its meaning is multifaceted; it could mean a lot of things: for example the most common meaning is “Welcome to my home”; likewise it means “I care about you”; it means “I have these delicious dried leaves that were harvested and processed thousands of miles away in an exotic climate; aren’t I sophisticated?” – well, it used to mean that, when tea was first popularized in Britain in the 18th century.
Since then, making a cup of tea has become the default especially as a British welcome ceremony, more customary than kissing, shaking hands, hugging or any of the other, admittedly more intimate, welcome rituals practiced in other countries. In France , Spain, Italy or Romania we often kiss each other as a way of saying “welcome to my house”, then comes the question, “would you like to drink something, a tea, a coffee or a beer maybe”?. The thing is that a cup of tea is always available.
Then to add more quality to your tea, using a teapot is of utmost importance, particularly in Japan but in the UK too. The care and attention lavished on it, the sounds of the pot being filled with hot water, its aesthetic appearance, the time spent waiting for the brew and the assembly of the cups are all part of the ceremony. When performing the tea welcoming ceremony you have to use good water. Given that tea is mostly water it’s easy to see how this ingredient would have a marked effect on the flavour. In our daily routine Water could taste a little different depending on its source. The vast differences in taste between a natural spring and a kitchen tap are obvious, but even from place to place tap water can taste radically different. The mineral content, the organic content and the presence of chlorine and other additives are the primary sources of flavour and smell in a glass of water. If you want to brew a lively cup of tea, you’ll need to use water with a bit of mineral in it.
On the other hand distilled, pure water tastes flat, is colorless, clean and cold. Too high a mineral content won’t work either; the flavour of the water overwhelms the flavours in the tea, which is true of highly chlorinated water, as well.
Normal tap water – is usually fine, but the pH of the water has to be neutral. Acidity often has a metallic taste from the corrosion of the metal pipes that carry water from source to tap, while alkaline water often tastes soapy. Mustiness tends to come from the by-products of microorganisms. Sometimes, especially in the mornings, water has been sitting in the pipes for a long time; if the pipes are old, or made from certain metals, or there is acidity, they can corrode a bit, giving the water an ‘off’ taste. If it seems like this is happening, you should just let the water run for a while before you fill the kettle.
If you live in an area where the water is “hard” – meaning it has a lot of calcium dissolved in it, usually because of the underlying geology of the region – the calcium ions inside the water will combine with the organic molecules in the tea and form a solid film that floats at the top of the cup. This is called scum. Tea scum makes tea look less delightful; it can really ruin the welcoming tea ceremony. If you have hard water, you can get rid of the scum by filtering the water, or by using a teapot that captures it on its inside walls.
Once you’ve secured the right water, you’ve got to boil it. The temperature of the brew determines which flavour molecules will be dissolved into the water, and so determines the balance of taste, flavour and colour in the tea. If the temperature is too low, many of the flavour molecules won’t dissolve and the tea will not only be bland, but will have a weak colour too. But too high a temperature can be just as bad; too many of the tannins and polyphenols that give the tea its bitterness and astringency will dissolve. Green teas have an especially high concentration of these, so they’re best brewed at temperatures between 70°C and 80°C, if you want to avoid an excessively bitter or clawingly astringent cup.
So now you see how many variable you must take into account to make a great cup of tea for you and especially more complex task to do for your guests. Of course your guests won’t tell you your tea was at most mediocre, they will just thank you for your hospitality. But at their next visit, you’ll ask again if they would drink cup of tea again probably they will prefer a coffee or something else.That depends on how good your tea was last time.
This is why making a Tea is a big Art and this is why tea is often badly made.
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