September 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 'sencha' and two Darjeeling teas from the same tea estate:
- 2024 Special Grade 'Tang Dynasty 'sencha' green tea 特级恩施大唐煎茶 10g
- 2023 Ringtong Tea Estate First Flush SFTGFOP1 10g
- 2024 Ringtong Tea Estate Second Flush 10g
Our recent trip to Enshi to visit Golden Fruit (金果) tea estate was like a return to the past. Not only did we witness the matcha production of the Tang dynasty, we also saw the steaming method using old (as well as modern) machines. Today's green tea is produced using the steaming method of Kill Green (杀青) and produces a umami laden soft green tea.
As described in the Classic of Tea (茶经) by Tang dynasty Lu Yu (陆羽), freshly picked tea leaves were first steamed to kill green, and compressed into flat round shapes using the residual moisture from the steaming. These "tea cakes" were then roasted over fire to dry them for subsequent storage. When making tea, one breaks off a small fragment from the "tea cake" and ground into a fine powder using a medicine mill - the same you see at traditional medicinal shops in the Singapore heartlands. These tea powders were then added to a pot of boiling water and cooked like a medicine. This method of boiling tea gives rise to its name - boiled tea, or Jian1 Cha2 (煎茶) in Chinese.
The tea we have today does not refer to this method of tea preparation, but rather the tea made specially in loose leaf form, just like the Japanese 'sencha' of today. We are reminded of a case of tea confusion last month, when we mentioned that the Japanese name for brewing loose leaf tea used the term of sencha (煎茶), which referred to the Tang dynasty method of boiling powdered tea. Tea made specially for such brewing is also named 'sencha'. In a way, the term has expanded from a method of brewing to also include a style of tea leaves. In the latter meaning, it refers to green tea made via the Tang dynasty of steaming and then cutting and shaping the leaves into thin strips. For this Tang dynasty 'sencha', the picking is 1 bud 1 leaf and the steaming is short duration at 20 sec. This is known as asamushi - a light steamed tea (浅蒸茶) in Japanese sencha making. You can expect a lightly steamed tea to be laden with umami, sweet and floral. Emulating the Tang dynasty style, the leaves are not fully deveined like the modern Japanese style.
We are brewing this tea in our Parchmen Glass Gaiwan, at 70°C of 120ml water to 3.5g of tea for 30 sec, with one more rebrew. The dry leaves are dark green strips of various length, and they smell grassy. During the brew, flowers and spinach dominate the aroma, translating into a sweet and umami laden brew, with notes of white flowers and melon. The smooth mouthfeel is impressive, as a lightly steamed tea usually retains more astringency. In fact, the combined flavour profile against its smoothness gives an impression of a mango juice. Add ice to your hot brew at 50% of your brew volume and you will get a light refreshing tea. But the hot brew is still a better brew.
The next two teas are from the same estate - Ringtong Tea Estate of the Darjeeling hills. From the plains of Siliguri at 200m to Darjeeling town at 2.045m, the climb of around 60km is along two main roads. The main highway from Siliguri to Darjeeling is National Highway 110, also known as Hill Cart Road. It is generally north-south orientation, passing through the towns of Kurseong, Ghoom and finally terminating at Darjeeling. The parallel road on its west is Mirik Road, extending from Siliguri to the town of Mirik, then changing name to become Rishi Road to continue northwards, where a 27km section of the road after Mirik forms the border between India and Nepal, before turning east to join Hill Cart Road at Ghoom town.
Ringtong Tea Estate has the China variety of tea which were seeded from the earlier Chinese varieties smuggled out from China in 1849 and 1850 by Scottish Robert Fortune who managed to collect tea saplings from Zhejiang, Anhui and Fujian provinces by disguising his outlandish look and huge Scottish build in Qing dynasty attire complete with a pigtail. Beside smuggling teas - totalling about 10,000 stocks of saplings over the three years from their own records, Robert Fortune also smuggled out 18 tea farmers, some of whom were left behind in Sri Lanka onroute to India, and the rest safely reached India and kickstarted the cultivation and processing of Chinese styled teas in India. His years spent in the heartlands of China exposed the weak domestic situations of the Qing dynasty beyond its strong international image as a superpower. This rare insight offered by the letters sent by Robert Fortune out of China set the stage for the subsequent colonisation of China by the western powers.
The idea of flush in India teas can best be visualised by the overnight and noticeable changing of colour of the tea bushes when the lighter coloured new leaves start to bud against the older darker coloured tea leaves since the last winter. Surely, the first flush is in spring and the first harvest of the year around mid March, whereas the second flush is the second harvest around June during summer. The first flush is from leaves that bud slowly after a dormant winter and early spring of about 5 months when the shrubs are in hibernation. In a way, the wait is longer, it is more nutritious, it is limited and it is the first harvest of the new year, hence it carries a more premium feel. The second flush is the second harvest and about two months after the first flush. By then, the sun is already strong and tea shrubs continue to bud right after being plucked. The shorter growing period means the tea is less nutritious as compared to first flush. Darjeeling teas undergo an overnight withering but a very short oxidation. From the perspective of Chinese tea making, it is like a green tea that has been oxidised. As such, the tea is light in colour, bright in flavour, with floral notes. Second flush teas are amber in colour, richer and deeper, and dominated by fruity, grapey and muscatel notes, hence they are known as the 'champagne of tea'.
We are brewing both flushes in our Parchmen Glass Gaiwan, at 3g to 120ml of 85°C water for 45 sec.
For the first flush, the brew colour is golden yellow. The brewed leaves smell of stewed fruits, with floral notes piercing through when the leaves cools, accompanied by a hint of nutmeg and pepper. The brew is chewy and juicy, full of white and yellow florals - think jasmine, marigold - on a soft buttery background, with black grapes occasionally revealing themselves. Mouthfeel is thick and smooth. As it cools, it becomes more sparkling, creamy and grapey. This tea can be brewed twice, with a perceived thinning of the brew the longer it is brewed.
For the second flush, the brew colour is amber. The brewed leaves are woody, followed by a perfumy sweet grapey note, turning to notes of grapes and red dates as the leaves cool. The brew is sweet, thick and juicy, with clear honey and grapes, with hints of red dates and longan. The notes of black grapes in the first flush becomes more pronounced in the second flush, from hot to cold. The floral notes in the first flush have transformed to become a fruity note, and the spicy notes have disappeared. We are brewing this tea twice, with slight astringency in the second brew.
Enjoy your teas of September 2024!
Thank you for coming onboard Parchmen & Co and travel with us to savour our world in a cup!