Tea, Thé, Cha, Chai.

SIMPLICITY

Whatever the name,
wherever the place, whenever the time, the uncomplicated infusion
of leaf in water awakens the body, refreshes the senses, and
soothes the spirit. A Beijing mother starts her day by lighting
the fire that heats the family kettle. A Mumbai street vendor,
anticipating the afternoon scurry, balances a tray of teetering
glassfuls. A British lord ends his evening meal with sips
from an heirloom cup.

Tea knows no boundaries.
It is available everywhere and within the reach of everyone,
costing just pennies per cup and requiring only hot water
and the patience to linger a few minutes while the leaves
impart their singular flavour. Next to water, tea is the world’s
most consumed beverage.

From Australia
to Zanzibar, more than seven hundred billion cups a year are
prepared in one way or another---some the result of elaborate
rituals, others the product of an unceremonious drinking of
a store-bought tea bag. Some are sipped slowly with the kind
of relish often reserved for a fine wine. Some are slurped
hastily on the way from here to there. Many are enriched with
milk, sweetened with sugar or honey, brightened with lemon,
or enhanced with the bouquet of herbs and spices. The preparation
is a matter of tradition and taste, the time spent a question
of priorities, but the enjoyment of dry, wrinkled leaves steeped
in water is universal.

CAMELLIA
SINENSIS

The plant that
so inspired myth is Camellia sinensis, a Far East native related
to the Garden bloomer. Just two varieties account for most
of the world’s tea. The shorter, small-leafed China plant
can survive a century or longer, but grows no more than fifteen
feet high. The more prolific Assam can reach sixty feet, but
has a life span of only about fifty years.

Both varieties
favour a tropical to subtropical climate with sunny days and
plenty of moisture. The cooler temperatures of high altitudes
restrict growth and concentrate flavour, so many of the best
teas comes from the mountainous regions such as India’s Darjeeling,
Nepal’s Illam, China’s Yunnan, and Sri Lanka’s Uva. Tea
gardens, as the plantations are known, range from tiny plots
to huge estates that cloak hillsides in a carpet of deep green.
The branches are pruned to intensify growth and facilitate
harvesting.

Most plucking of
the leaves is by hands, when the flush, or new growth, appears.
The timing and frequency of the flush, and therefore of the
harvest, vary with the climate. Women do most of the harvesting
since their smaller hands are better suited to fine plucking,
the picking of only the first two leaves and a bud that is
the mark of a fine tea. Coarse plucking, reserved for teas
of lesser quality, may include three or more leaves. From
the garden, leaves are carried to the factory, often no more
grand than a corrugated garden shed, where they are variously
withered, fired, rolled, and fermented to become tea.

TRANSFORMATIONS

Just as wine, champagne,
and cognac are permutations of Vitis vinifera, black, green
and oolong teas are different expressions of Camellia sinensis.
The key distinction between the three types of tea is oxidation,
a reaction of the plant’s enzymes to oxygen that is commonly
referred to as fermentation. Black teas are fully fermented,
Oolongs are partially fermented, and Green teas, as well as
rare and expensive White teas, are not fermented at all.

Green teas, in
fact, are but a few steps removed from the wayward leaves
that flavoured Emperor Shen Nung’s legendary first cup. Straight
from the garden, the freshly picked leaves are quickly steamed
or fired to deactivate the enzymes that would otherwise cause
fermentation. Rendered soft and pliable by the heat, the leaves
are then rolled, often by skilled hands, into characteristic
shapes: snail-like spirals for Pi Lo Chun, eyebrow twists
for Chun Mee, slender needles for Lingyun White Down, tiny
pellets for Gunpowder. Finally, the tea is dried in mechanical
dryers or hot pans to reduce moisture and thereby arrest any
further effects of botanical chemistry.

For Black teas,
the process begins with withering. Leaves are spread in thin
layers on racks or troughs and left in a warm environment
anywhere from eight hours to an entire day. The leaves wilt
naturally, losing their characteristic stiffness and as much
as half of their weight. They are then rolled, which releases
the enzymes that interact with the atmosphere to bring about
fermentation. Next, the twisted leaves are placed in cool,
humid rooms where they are spread on slabs in inch-thick blankets.
As their natural juices react with the moist air, the layers
heat up like a backyard compost pile, then cool gradually,
in the process turning from yellow to red to dark brown.

The famed Formosa
Oolong, often referred to as the champagne of teas, gets its
sparkling, fruity flavour from a shortened withering---four
to five hours---followed by a partial fermentation. When the
outer edges of the leaves have changed to a greenish brown,
the tea is fired to stop the reaction, then rolled and dried.

Whether green,
black or oolong, the finished tea is graded. The ubiquitous
Orange Pekoe (pronounced PECK-oh) of tea-bag fame is a grade
used in India and Sri Lanka, not a type of tea. Most is packed
in foil-lined wooden chests and shipped to auctions in cities
like Kolkata, Colombo, Djakarta, Mombasa, and Yokohama, as
well as the European tea centres of Hamburg, Amsterdam, and
London. There, highly trained brokers representing importers
from around the world assess the latest crop for appearance
and flavour, then place their bids. The auctions are subdued
affairs, more gentlemanly politesse than horse-trader hullabaloo.

APPELLATIONS

Assam. Balasun.
Berubela. Bohea. Bombagalla. Chittagong. Chun. Mee. Da Fang.
Darjeeling. Dimbula. Dragon Well. Earl Grey. Emei Ruizi. English
Breakfast. Foughwang Tanchung. Formosa Oolong. Galaboda. Genmaicha.
Goomtee. Gunpowder. Gyokuru. Hainan Black. Hojicha. Irish
Breakfast. Keemun. Kooloo. Kukicha. Lan-Hsiang. Lapsang Souchong.
Lichee Black. Lingyun White Down. Liu Xi. Makaibari. Maloon.
Matcha. Millikthong. Mityana. Namring. Nilgiri. Nonaipara.
Nunsuch. Nuwari Eliya. Pai Mu Tan. Panyang Congou. Pettigalla.
Pi Lo Chun. Piupao. Pouching. Pu-erh. Puttabong. Ratnapura.
Rose Congou. Rungarora. Russian Caravan. Sankar. Se Chung.
Sencha. Shui Heien. Tencha. Theresia. Ti Kwan Yin. Tommagong.
Tunxi Green. Uda Radella. Uva Highlands. Yin Zhen. Yingteh
Black. Yulu. Yunnan.

H2O

Water is, of course,
as essential to tea as the leaves themselves. Without those
molecules of hydrogen and oxygen, there would be neither leaf
nor tea---and the water itself makes a difference. Early Chinese
tea masters are said to have had palates so sensitive, they
could identify whether a cup was brewed with water from the
edge of a river, from the more sprightly midstream, or from
a well. Lu Yun, the first to chronicle tea in his eighth-century
classic, the Ch’a Ching, espoused spring water as best, followed
by river water, then well water. In Manhattan’s early days,
tea-loving Dutch settlers identified springs and installed
pumps at points around the city specifically to ensure flavoursome
brews.

Without doubt,
freshness and purity count. The oxygen in water contributes
to infusion; water that has languished in a hot water heater,
household pipes, or a coffee-shop urn goes flat, loosing this
essential element. Similarly, water can, quite literally,
have the life boiled out of it. With regard to purity, the
calcium, magnesium, or iron in hard water undermine tea’s
aroma and taste (some major brands adjust blends regionally
to compensate), and may also cloud the brew or even form an
unseemly film on the surface. Therefore, the careful connoisseur
begins tea preparations with soft, fresh water and cuts the
heat as soon as the kett

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