Old tea mate, Luo, sits in front of me in a tea shop in Dali, in western central Yunnan, wearing a familiar impassive expression. Good teas for him are about facts, and he doesn’t suffer the same pangs of romance with the leaves that I do. Today, he is the tea purist talking up the high points of a slightly high-tech tea, GABA, a tea which in some ways works against the ‘tea as stimulant’ idea that he has happily carried around for so long. He speaks in earnest, knowing full well what my cynic’s look means…that I am cynical.
Neddy is always exacting, but one of his saving graces is that his animation – which increases with amounts of tea consumed – is like a fire that spreads. When he is consuming a good tea, the room warms up with his joy…though he never loses his fine tuned focus.
For me there is an instinctive recoiling any further manipulation of that which I hold so dear, but my friend Luo is unapologetic about this new “enhancement” to tea. He is one of the few people among the many charlatans of the tea world who actually understands tea from both a scientific point of view and that of an intense and committed taker of tea.
The tea I am looking at is identical to a nice tightly rolled Bi Luo Chun green or even an Oolong. No signs of any additions to the beautiful asymmetry of the leaves. They remain coiled, ready and completely benign. I wonder at their little bodies and how their alteration (I still view them as somehow impure) and ‘induced’ properties have affected their taste and their necessary ability to stimulate.
GABA, (g-aminobutyric acid) is (and it is here that Luo’s explanation deepens the frown on my face) an amino acid and a vital neurotransmitter of the body, that among other things prevents the arteries, veins and capillaries from contracting. While having a similar effect on the muscles, the result is that the entire body benefits from an increase in blood circulation and an easing of tension. Though GABA naturally occurs in small amounts in any high grade tea, the artificial increase of GABA levels by the ever-innovative Japanese in the 1980′s, by adding nitrogen, found itself being transferred into the obsessive world of tea. GABA has been used to treat insomnia, epilepsy and even narcolepsy…and it now sits before me.
In my mind, tea, – good tea at least – contains enough natural-born elements that it doesn’t need outside manipulations or obstructions to enhance it. I see it as a gadget, though admittedly I know very little.
While all of this new information about GABA is convincing (only because it is coming from Luo’s mouth, who I trust) my wariness remains.
We finally get to the point where I the doubter and he the proponent will get to sip the tea in question. While there are three GABA teas laid out before us, he picks the curled leaves on my far left.
Luo has actually been part of a project to create GABA teas out of high quality ‘green’ tea. The tea he picks up and prepares is a Spring harvest which has ‘taken’ the GABA treatment the most successfully. When I ask what success means, Luo’s patient face gives away nothing, saying only, “the highest levels of nitrogen were achieved”. I can only wonder at how the precious leaves have suffered.
“The ‘best’ tea is picked in the early morning and ideally enjoys high day temperatures and low overnight temperatures – high altitudes are ideal – as the tea leaves by day absorb more nitrogen and lose less during the cold nights”.
With Luo, information is always imparted this way, almost clinically, but never with an arrogance. His knowledge is complete and seldom biased…mine on the other hand is almost always influenced by the source of a tea and my perpetual thirst.
After picking, the tea is left to dry and soften for a few hours and is then dumped into an airtight cask. A vacuum sucks the oxygen out and nitrogen is pumped in for a set amount of time (the little bit of information regarding how long is not imparted as the world of tea, like that of food, is rife with ‘secrets’). The rest of the process is exactly what a ‘regular’ green tea goes through.
The tea before me, being competently prepared, is from over two thousand meters, nullifying the need for nasty sprays. It is the ungainly stems and the nubile green end-buds that typically carry the highest natural levels of GABA.
“The sour smell and taste of GABA tea is an indicator of high amounts or levels…it is also what has prevented GABA tea from becoming popular thus far in China”. This sourness that he speaks of comes sifting into my nostrils. While most here in Yunnan who take tea don’t mind a bitterness, sour is not something normally part of tea vocabulary.
This sour tea smell isn’t unpleasant; it smells as though someone has mixed a good green tea with something vinegary, and for whatever reason the nose seems contentedly curious. My hackles raise in protest, but only just…there is something easy to like about the smell.
Sips, and especially first sips, hint at what is to come but by no means nail down a tea and its qualities (or lack thereof). However, the first sip of the Spring GABA is a nice stimulator hitting several regions of the mouth at once. Though nitrogen enters the body with every breath, and is vital for the cardiovascular system, the immune system, and the central nervous system, it is GABA (the gamma-aminobutyric acid) which apparently creates the feeling of relaxation. For the cynic in me, it is the tea that is important & impresses, rather than the apparent qualities or turbo-charged elements it contains.
Ensuing cups later, the tea hasn’t lost any of its strengths or subtleties and the mind is slowly being eased into this GABA ‘way’. A second GABA, a recent autumn harvest, is far sweeter and actually leaves the tongue wondering if there is more to come. If this is in fact the GABA levels influencing the taste, the higher levels do seem to come closer to pleasing my ever impatient palate.
“As with all teas, it is the base tea quality that is most important”, Luo reminds me. Part of any essential tea drinkers ‘must remembers’, this bit of information often gets passed over.
While any tea retains its inherent levels of GABA better if served cold, we are using cold as opposed to hot water to infuse with. Luo is on a roll now and my cynical look must have disappeared as he is now peppering me with information. Without warning (and there rarely is with Luo) at one point he proffers up a bit of essential and spontaneous ‘Luoist’ brilliance: “When I first tried GABA, I couldn’t stand it, but in time I began to need a daily dose”.
Later that night, fearing the predictable sleeplessness due to the stunning amounts of tea consumed (of which GABA was only one), my phone rings. It’s Neddy.
“You will sleep well tonight – guaranteed”. Much as I would have liked to have told him otherwise, I was in a mood to just hibernate, and he knew this precisely, with GABA and its apparent effects having softened the intense bliss of a tea high.