// October 4th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // All, Bachelor's guide to cooking without Shan
so here is another tea i received the other day – again, straight out of china. no further information as such, although it was bought in Guangzhou (which help, im sure :). getting brewing tonight – lets see how it turns out!
There is Champagne, France; Tequila, Mexico; and Parma, Italy — all places turned trade names known for their unique, high-quality foods. Now, if China has its way, there could be another: Puer. This lush corner of Yunnan province in China’s south is home to one of the world’s hottest teas. Puer tea may not look like much — it is typically sold in heaps resembling cow patties — but one mug of these aged leaves can fetch up to $1,000. The drink is touted for its health benefits and is loved for its light, earthy taste. It is already a hit in Hong Kong, where rare teas are a status symbol among the city’s élite, and it is generating hype outside China, too. Three high-profile Silicon Valley techies recently tweeted and blogged their way through a Puer tea tour of Yunnan. Dieters, meanwhile, are buzzing about rumors that Victoria Beckham, the svelte former Spice Girl, drinks Puer to lose weight.
Making Puer tea as internationally renown as Roquefort cheese could expand China’s tea exports while adding a bit of luster to a food industry infamous for its health scandals. But building a Puer brand will depend on getting control of a market riddled with imposters, financial speculation and controversies.
The need for stricter control of the Puer industry became clear two years ago, when the Puer market went on a destabilizing roller-coaster ride. Some Chinese buy tea as an investment, much like Europeans buy wines. In the early part of the decade, thousands of cash-rich urbanites poured their savings into the Puer, causing prices to double, then triple. “People were buying anything,” says David Lee Hoffman, a California collector. By 2007, the finest aged Puer was — quite literally — worth its weight in gold. As demand soared, however, quality suffered, fakes flooded the market and prices fell.
That’s when Beijing stepped in. In an effort to restore confidence, piracy-prone China tightened controls to define exactly what should be considered real Puer. As of December 2008, only teas produced in Yunnan province’s 639 towns and 11 prefectures and cities can be labeled “Puer.” Branded tea must also be made with a certain type of leaf, using specified technology. Yunnan leaves aged outside the province are no longer considered authentic. The goal, officials say, is to protect Yunnan’s heritage and build an internationally viable, niche brand.
Not everyone welcomes the rules. It is unclear if other Chinese provinces will adhere to the regulations and grow different teas under new names. The new standards, for example, shut out tea producers in neighboring Guangdong province, who claim that the tea they process is as authentic — perhaps even more so — than Yunnan’s. Guangdong tea makers contend that it was Pearl River traders, not Yunnan farmers, that originally perfected Puer. Zheng Mukun, a tea master from Guangdong, says the province’s claim dates to the Qing dynasty, when tightly packed leaves were fermented over the course of the three-month journey, by horse, from Kunming to Guangzhou. The blackened leaves became popular in Hong Kong and industrious southerners began to experiment with fermentation. At the 1957 Canton Fair, Zheng says, local tea masters shared their recipes with colleagues from Yunnan. Ever since, the provinces competed to produce the best teas. Earlier this month, at a trade fair in Hong Kong, a table of Guangdong tea vendors called the regulations “unfair” and “ridiculous.”
more here (time.com)
Oh, and this is interesting too:
George Orwell called it a mainstay of civilization; William Gladstone praised its revitalizing powers. But to Henrietta Lovell, founder of London’s Rare Tea Company, the traditional British cuppa is overrated. “People in the U.K. are used to drinking really cheap, industrially produced tea,” she says.
Determined to get Brits to try new brews, Lovell’s Rare Tea Company (www.rareteacompany.com) sources and sells exclusive, uncommonly tasty teas from Asia and Africa. It was on a business trip to Asia in 2000 that Lovell, a former project manager, discovered her passion for a superior sip. “In China, businesspeople would show off by buying a $120 pot of tea at lunch,” she says. “I’d never tasted anything like it.” Made from leaves grown and processed on small mountain gardens, those exquisite infusions were far removed from the bland British teabag — which can contain leaves from up to 60 factory farms. “I realized that Britain was drinking the equivalent of blended whiskey,” recalls Lovell. “We’d never tried the single malt of the tea world.”
Lovell now imports 14 hand-harvested whole-leaf teas, ranging from a delicate, grassy white silver-tip tea ($10 for 25 g) made from spring buds grown in China’s Fujian mountains, to the robust, olive tones of the Satemwa Estate black tea ($15 for 50 g), cultivated on the slopes of Malawi’s Mount Thyolo. Although Lovell’s leaves can be found in the mugs of Hollywood royalty (Anjelica Huston’s a fan), they have also captivated regular tea lovers. “I got the builders who worked on my flat addicted to jasmine and white silver tip,” she laughs. “And I’ve even persuaded London taxi drivers to take tea instead of money.”
A Brewer’s Art
Making the perfect tea requires good leaves and a light touch
1 Place a pinch of leaves in your teapot and boil some freshly filtered water. If you’re making white, green or black tea, stop the kettle just before it boils. Otherwise, the tea will taste more tannic and less sweet.
2 High-quality whole leaves can be re-infused numerous times, but lose their flavor if left soaking in hot water — so measure out the water in the required number of cups before pouring it into the teapot.
3 White silver-tip tea should be left to brew for 4-6 minutes. Green, black and oolong only need 3 minutes.
4 When serving, pour out all of the tea. The remaining leaves will be relatively dry and ready to use again. The water penetrates deeper into the leaves with each infusion, revealing new flavors.
5 Drink your cuppa neat. Don’t spoil it with milk or sugar.
via here (time.com, again)
Welcome to this, the first posting to the new ‘Bachelor’s guide to cooking without Shan’.
