3 favorite insights from tea tastings done in class in weeks 1,2, and 5:

photo by Willow-Creek Feighery / which do you consider your cup of tea?

1. Our group really enjoyed tea tasting sipping teas while listening to the story of tea from a historical perspective of someone who knows the worker and the British/Indian history of tea, changing the flavors of the tea and our appreciation for the teas we were tasting.
2. As all tea comes from the same plant, Camellia Sinensis, flavor differences come not from the species, but from a variety of shifting, changing parts including;  varietal, weather, location, soil type, harvest style (which may affect quality in terms of tea product and damage), and processing (including oxidation).
3. Most Indian teas, unlike Chinese varieties, are made to be served with milk and sugar, detached from much ceremony and more for pleasure. The cream and sugar are comforting, but also help disguise the quality of the tea in many cases, and the soils are not as desirable and create a very bitter Camellia Sinensis.

Get a taste– or savor –a minute with Anthony DeVries as he compares Chinese teas to French wine varieties and comments on tannins, find the video here

Component by Tai Jordan / photo by Willow-Creek Feighery

Passed, let go, no longer with us, in a better place, all phrases used to soften an otherwise seemingly devastating blow– the reality of the truth. The truth is not something anyone in the nation of America is taught to believe in as constructive part of living and more importantly thought of being something that alone isn’t enough it needs to be embellished in order to be captivating enough for someone to listen. It’s true no one can handle the truth we are taught to run from it so we do. At some point some also think what’s that point of the truth if still many line up to buy various goods, specifically tea knowing what they know. To some extent ignorance is bliss for some this works out because one can’t actively engage in oppression if they can still claim they “didn’t know what they were doing”, but what is the excuse if you do know? What happens now? Reading The Darjeeling Distinction by Sarah Besky really forced me to think about the injustices the systems of the colonial era instilled and how in post-colonial times they have continued to structure modern day practices– or do they?

Originally the workers on these plantations were given something that was deemed as “fair” in terms of compensation– house improvements, land, food, money etc. However, as Tea became more centralized in mass production and not the quality of the production it has become vastly different from its original system; in terms of the follow through required of the plantation management team. Fairness and Justness are now ideas painted for the enjoyment of the consumer a way to pat one’s self on the back and say I did my good deed for the day I do not actively involve myself in worldly injustice.

Fair trade does not exist for the betterment of the worker’s family, condition or status. Laborers called farmers, plantations often referred to as gardens, smiling faces of women plastered to billboards romanticizing, glamorizing, and distancing the consumer further from the colossal problem that is fair trade. The saddening part is that after listening to a talk by Yoshiko Harden I came to realize their system is perfect. The reason I say this because there is no such thing as a flawed system. If we stop to think for a moment who the system was designed by, who it was supposed to benefit, and who currently keeps the system intact, it’s all the same people who put it in place to being with- Businessmen.

It has always been a business. Someone figured out that Tea was a goldmine and didn’t have to work very hard to disenfranchise a people because there were no labor restrictions already in place. They knew people needed work so why not create jobs in exchange for a specific unexplained compensation of some sort. Only later post-colonial era did someone say this is unjust. The institution of fair trade was implemented for a number of reasons one of them being as a means of minimizing the financial gap between laborers, plant. Managers, and the market. Now doing more hurt than good it is the blanket regulations that exploitation operates under legally!

Terroir is being abused and misused as a marketing ploy. Reaching the consumer on the level that taste of place is only as genuine as the place it comes from plays to this idea of authenticity; increasing the market value automatically. Someone will pay more for tea “made in India” than they would for tea “made in California.”

At the end of it all I walked away with a vast sense of knowing, but now the question I am tasked with challenging is my integrity as a human of the earth and my fluid place in it. How I operate now is completely different just by asking the question is knowledge the key that enables me to go farther or does it dismantle the very people it sought to educate, is that ignorance ultimately bliss? Still processing.               

The world doesn’t need us to heal. When we have all vanished into to the distance and are the present history, the earth will heal. How do we choose to inhabit it in our short time here, and at whose expense it’s  time to step up or be stepped on the roots we come from the depths of the sea to the tallest mountain deserve more, we can do more, we can be more, we are more!

Perspective by Tai Jordan / photo by Willow-Creek Feighery

Tea tasting, for me is not as simple as it seems. This idea of tasting and where it comes from. What is it to genuinely engage in the act of tasting tea. Is it the way the tea moves across the taste buds, tantalizing sensations are sending messages to the brain; sweet, sour, bitter, bland all taste but are they flavors or feelings associated with what happens as our body reacts to the stimulus? Thus far this quarter has not been what I expected in terms of tasting tea. Before this class I had never quite gotten to experience tea the way I have now. Although not my ideal drink in a sweet or neutral pallet, tea has challenged me with sensations I am unfamiliar with and avenues I have yet to explore. The most impressionable tea tasting came not with the tea but with the place. My favorite tea related thing I tasted was in San Francisco when we ventured into TEN-REN-TEA a tea house in the heart of Chinatown, San Fran.  I was encapsulated with the aromas, the sounds, the atmosphere it all held into an experience I was unaware I was going to have. I began to listen I heard porcelain cups chattering, metal spoons stirring, tea brewing. The grassy, oaky, nutty aroma blending into the air forcing my sense to choose one. Acknowledging they could not exist as strong individually as they did together, however individually they were all unique as well the tea I tasted was a black tea from china called Keemun. The tea was astringent, oh so bitter. However, that’s what made it my favorite, I do not have the knack for bitter drinks but in that moment being in the company of friends, the green paint on the walls adding life through color to the environment, the smiles, the tea tasted different still bitter but not as bitter as it once was.