August 2024 Tea Subscription
Thank you for coming onboard Parchmen & Co and travel with us to savour our world in a cup!
We aim to bring tea drinkers into the world of extremely fine and exclusive teas. These teas used to be inaccessible to commoners in the past but today we are able to bring it to you via our extensive network of sources directly from tea farms owned by our friends in different countries.
In the month of July 2024, we are featuring a Chinese matcha, a Japanese red tea and a Chinese wulong tea, namely:
- 2024 Special Grade Enshi Golden Fruit Matcha green tea 特级恩施金果抹茶 10g
- 2023 Saitama Samaya Takano En Smoked Wakoucha red tea 高野园烟红茶 10g
- 2024 Honey Orchid Dancong wulong tea 蜜兰香单丛乌龙茶 10g
We recently made a trip to Enshi to visit Golden Fruit tea estate that supply our Enshi Jade Dew (恩施玉露). Off the main city and into the countryside, the farm and company are located in a village of Badong Town (巴东县) where the tea farms are away from pollution. To realise an end-to-end value chain for their tea business, the tea estate comprises numerous factories and buildings including tea farms, fruit farms, production factories, quality control labs, packaging factories, cold rooms and warehouses. This estate produces green and red teas in the tradition of Hubei tea culture - the famous Enshi Jade Dew and Li Chuan Red Tea (利川红).
Beside producing traditional Chinese teas, the company also produces powdered green tea. While it is true that all tea styles in Asian lands and beyond historically originated from China, some of such original styles were unfortunately lost in time in the motherland. While the Han dynasty treated tea as one of the other herbs to be boiled together in a medicinal concoction, the Tang dynasty (618 to 907) 1,300 years ago started to focus tea in itself by grinding them into powder and boiling them in a pot - hence the term 'boiled tea' which translates to sencha (煎茶) in Japanese. With the establishment of the Ming dynasty, the first emperor issued a royal ban on compressed tea as the default style of royal tribute, owing to reasons of empathy towards the tedious effort involved by the farmers in making such styles. With this, powdered tea fell out of flavour, at least in the royal courts, and full leaf teas immediately came in to fill the vacuum . Production of powdered tea continued in small remote pockets of China but never become mainstream.
Across the East China Sea in ancient Japan, on 19 occasions from 630 to 894 stretching across Asuka period (538 - 710) and Nara period (710 - 794), the Japanese court appointed official envoys to Tang China known as kentōshi (遣唐使), of which 14 missions successfully returned to Japan, bringing back elements of Tang civilization that had a profound impact on various aspects of ancient Japan and inspired such watershed events in early Japanese institutional history as the Taika Reform (645). The green beverage known as tea gradually caught the attention of royal officials. The first reference to tea in Japan appeared in the Nara records.
Around the same time, Buddhist monks Eichu, Saicho and Kukai went to China independent of the kentoshi missions to study, and brought back tea and seeds to Japan. Historians are not in complete agreement as to the identity of the individual who first brought tea to Japan. However, it is generally agreed that it was either Saicho in 805 or Eichu in 815. With the seeds, tea was cultivated around Hiyoshi Taisha Shrine (日吉大社) at the foot of Mt. Hiei (比叡山) in Shiga - earning it the title of the oldest tea garden in Japan. During that time, tea leaves were pressed into a compressed form and was known as dancha (団茶, laterally compressed tea). Japan then understood tea to be prepared by scraping tea fragments from the compressed tea into boiling water, although it was stated in Cha Ching (茶经) - the only tea encyclopedia of the time written in 760 - 780 Tang dynasty by Lu Yu (陆羽) - that the fragments of tea needed to be first grounded in a medicine mill before adding it to a pot of boiling water. When the new emperor Saga (嵯峨天皇) made a visit to Karasaki (present day Shiga) in 815, it is clearly recorded in ancient Japan chronicles that Eichu served a cup of green tea in a style associated with sencha of today - tea fragments instead of powder in water. After some years dancha lost popularity in Japan.
In the early Kamakura period (1191), Eisai (1141－1215) who founded the Rinzai Zen Sect (临济宗) in Japan returned from a pilgrimage in China, bringing with him tea seeds from China which he planted in Kyushu. He also introduced the Song dynasty style of whisking the tea powder, an improvement from the boiling method of the Tang dynasty. Eisai even wrote a book called ‘Kissa Yojo Ki’ (喫茶養生記) which is the first known book of tea in Japan in 1211.
The tea culture and practices in the Buddhist monasteries and the Japan courts were continually being reinforced by various influential personalities across different eras, culminating in the perfection of the matcha methods and ceremony by Sen No Rikyu mid 1500s. While this is so in Japan, Chinese tea drinking has abandoned matcha in pursuit of loose leaf brewing during the Ming dynasty. Ironically, this Chinese method came to be called 'qi cha' (喫茶 in traditional Chinese characters, and 沏茶 in modern Chinese characters), which is the same term used in the title of the tea book by Eisai describing the earlier method of matcha. In another similar case of tea confusion, the Japanese name for brewing loose leaf used the old term of sencha (煎茶), which referred to the Tang dynasty method of boiling powdered tea.
We are using a bamboo whisk (chasen, 茶筅) to whisk this matcha swiftly in a ceramic bowl (chawan, 茶碗) to create a foamy and smooth broth. As compared to the Japanese matcha, it is bolder in flavour and the afterflavour. Instead of using 5g to prepare our matcha, we are using 3g to 70ml of water to make a thin beverage called a usucha (薄茶) and reducing it to 40ml of water to make a thick beverage called a koicha (濃い茶). In both, we apply 35°C of water. Without a bamboo whisk or matcha bowl, one can use a small fork in a mug and stir speedily. A delicious bright green colour defines a good matcha and this is no less. Umami and roasted nuts dominate the flavour, with a thick and silky texture supporting these aromas. Adjust the dilution to your own liking, adding more water if there is a noticeable bitter note and reducing water for a thicker brew.
Last month, we introduced Sayama teas as one of the “Three Great Teas of Japan” - 'Shizuoka for colour, Uji (Kyoto) for aroma, Sayama for flavour'. During our visit in May, we visited Takano En (高野园, Takano is the family name of the producer and 'en' means tea garden).
Takano En's wakoucha (和红茶, Japanese red tea) is crafted using 'Yutaka Midori' variety (ゆたかみどり) which translates to 'luscious green'. This variety is well-suited for red tea due to its intense sweetness. [The 'wa' in 'wakoucha' refers to the major Japanese ethnic group of the Yamato (大和).] As compared to the previous wakoucha in the last month, this tea is smoked using the wood from the barrel of a Japanese craft whisky - Ichiro's Malt - a brand created in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto, founder of the Chichibu distillery in the same prefecture of Saitama.
We are brewing the red tea in our Parchmen Glass Gaiwan. Similar to the wakoucha last month, the leaves look broad and short, with reddish or golden tips. The dry leaves are dominated by the smell of new furniture, almost like the feel of one walking into a teak furniture shop, with overtone of dried orange peels. We are brewing the tea at 3.5g to 120ml of 85°C water. The smokiness is integrated into the other flavours to present a woody tone. The brewed leaves smell similarly but with sweet notes of dried longan or red dates. The tea colour is golden-orange, and the flavour is smooth and woody with hints of lemon acidity. There is low bitterness and low astringency. We brewed this tea a second time, to clearer orange and sweeter notes. The third brew is thinner in body, with slight bitterness. Similar to the wakoucha, this tea is best enjoyed in two brews.
The last tea this month is the familiar Honey Orchid wulong tea from spring this year. Pheonix Mountain Dancong (凤凰单丛) teas are popular but yet confusing. Reflecting the deep history and wide spread of products, there are various naming convention for the spectrum of teas. Basing on aroma, these are the popular ones: Jasmine (黄栀香), Orchid (芝兰香), Magnolia (玉兰香), Honey Orchid (蜜兰香), Chinese Almond (杏仁香), Peach (桃仁香), Cinnamon (肉桂香). Basing on leaf shape, there are Bamboo Leaf (竹叶), Saw Serrated Shape (锯朵仔), Pomelo Leaf (柚叶). Basing on the shape of the bush, there is Lady's Umbrella (娘仔伞). Basing on the location of the original shrub, there is: Behind Ao Fu (凹富后). Based on Chinese myth, there are: Eight Immortals (八仙), Old Deity (老仙翁), Song Dynasty Tea (宋茶).
Departing from the brew guide of using a zisha teapot on our website, we are brewing this tea here using our Parchmen Glass Gaiwan. Using the usual ratio of 3.5g to 120ml water at 88°C, we let it steep for 60 sec. As expected, the usual honey and lychee notes are clear on a base of sweetness but to a lesser intensity as compared to using the zisha teapot. On glass, the tea can be brewed twice before the woody bland notes of roasted tea become too apparent.
Thank you for coming onboard Parchmen & Co and travel with us to savour our world in a cup!