Tea

Required Reading

It was a couple of years ago, on a visit to Harney and Sons Tea headquarters in Millerton, N.Y. A good part of the floor in the middle of a fairly large room was covered with cloth and bamboo mats. Spread out and stacked up on the coverings were hundreds of objects. There were tea chests, boxes, tins, tea pots and kettles, preparation and serving wares, related implements, books, documents, photographs, and miscellaneous artifacts of Asian origin. Anticipating the question, Paul Harney answered, “That’s Michael’s book”.

A couple of years later, we have The Harney & Sons Guide To Tea, by Michael Harney, Master Tea Blender. The stated purpose of the 272 page, hardcover volume is “…to transform tea drinkers into tea experts.” It is, in fact, a clearly written, well-organized presentation of Michael’s own expertise developed over years of tasting, travel and trade in the world of tea. If it doesn’t make you an expert, it will provide a solid foundation toward that goal, and be a valued reference for years to come.

At Coffee Express Co., when we instruct in coffee or tea basics we seek to provide foundational knowledge that can be built on over a lifetime. As with coffee, tea is a vast subject with a long history and many varied regional traditions and styles.

The Harney & Sons Guide is a first-person exploration of tea history, geography, cultivation, processing, and culture. It classifies the diversity of tea styles, and offers practices for proper brewing and serving. A unique and useful aspect of the book is Michael’s refined method for evaluating tea by aspects of aroma, flavor, and appearance.

Lively, informative, entertaining, and unpretentious, this book is highly recommended. Available from Border’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or Harney & Sons.

Tea

Tea is hot . . . or cold. Your choice. Either way, this first cousin to coffee is one of the fastest growing and most important categories in the beverage industry. Coffee house operators, restaurateurs, and food retailers better pay attention. Update your selection, educate your staff, and inform your customers to establish your position and boost your sales.

Until recently, tea sales in the U.S. were incidental, lagging behind the specialty coffee boom. But it’s been a couple of centuries since we threw tea into the Boston Harbor, and tea is back with a vengeance.

To some degree, this surge of interest is driven by significant – and attendant publicity of – health benefits, which include cancer prevention, weight loss, and more. Lower caffeine content per ounce is said to be another contributing factor, given the aging population. Additionally, of course, the growing interest in all things culinary, sensory, and gustatory is the perfect driver for the fabulous array of flavors and aromas in the tea world.

As with coffee, there is a lot of information to absorb from thousands of years of Eastern tradition, and hundreds in the West. Categories include a stunning number of varieties: true leaf teas include greens, oolongs, blacks, and more; straight teas from China, Japan, India, Africa, and Indonesia as well as blends, flavors, and decafs. Dozens of herbal infusion, also known as tisanes, have their own history, lore, traditional uses, and methods of brewing.

In the future, I’ll talk about understanding and classifying different tea types & styles within this framework, as well as topics on brewing, marketing and merchandising in your establishment.