Bada: Yunnan’s Unsung Puer

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Jeff Fuchs

Bada Mountain exists as part geographical divider and part ultimate tea sanctuary – a rolling space of green that is lush, benefits from the monsoon’s wet visits, and has quietly been producing teas for as long as anyone can remember. These mountains within mountains above the Burma border in southern Yunnan, have long hosted cultivated gardens and wild tea forests – forests that create catechin-laden teas famed for bitterness and vegetal potency. Wild tea forests are the equivalent of lighting the fuse of lust in the mind of a true tea drinker and this region (and Bada in particular) boasts many of these tea forests.

It is this region, “one can find the largest quantities of affordable and good quality teas”, as one tea buyer from southern Yunnan’s Jinghong city put it.

Spring season is the inaugural tea season and I have quite deliberately found myself here. The coveted Spring teas are being harvested, an expectant market waits to see the quality and quantity of the yield, and I am quietly expectant, waiting to sate my own rampant thirst. Bada’s reliability in producing both high yields and consistent (and almost predictable) teas season after season have kept it one of the “better known of the lesser known” tea mountains producing Puers.

Cool wet skies have poured damp on the land this spring and the normally temperate hills and sweat inducing vapors have given way to blue gray winds from the north. Bada Mountain itself is encased in cold mists and its prime 1500 meter forests lie almost hidden from view. Harvests are coming in slightly later due to the cold, but as a local Hani woman Mei, tells me, “late harvests often mean better teas”.

Cold blue rains have scoured the entire forest clean, and the gleam of huge serrated tea leaves sparkle everywhere. My walk into these mountains has led me to a path where I literally have to part the fogs, and as I pass through those same fogs, quickly re-envelope the route that I pass along. The forests are alive with the faint ghostly figures of the harvesters. It is important to see the source of all the green goodness that I will later imbibe in a town with no name.

A day later, I arrive at the in-between, not-quite-a-town, with no name. I have come to sip, drink and taste. The town is one of those tea-gathering points of southern Yunnan that doesn’t even have a name. Instead it is simply known as ‘Bada’. Towns in the area often do this in a kind of desperation to have their name associated with the mountain that is the base for such goodness, rather than a village name that no one will ever remember.

When a load of 300 kg’s of Bada green goodness comes on the back of a hybrid tractor encased in dirty beige bags, I join a horde of local tea buyers whose eyes have lit with an abnormal intensity as they snort, chortle and pick through the bags. Vehicles like this, laden with leaves, are all along the Bada range, and are headed toward the bigger tea market towns, such as Mengla or Menghai.

The yields this year are very good, though the harvests are late. For the tea locals and the people who consume liters of tea a day the tea is studied with something close to a somber obsession – razor sharp eyes, fingers handling, a prodding nose inhaling and then repeating the entire process. A Bada Puer in unfermented form should be bitter but not overwhelming; it should be vegetal and absolutely green tasting, and the coveted wild tree teas produce without a doubt the best teas of every season.

Tea’s from any region carry the hints and tangs of their geographic homes. High ph levels, south facing mountains, degree of drainage, and the production methods all contribute in some way to the sip that is finally taken. All great teas are identifiable rather than ambiguous – they carry a mark, a signature of sorts, something which sets them apart from other teas.

Bada Mountain can claim one of the oldest tea trees on the planet with some putting one ancient tea tree at almost 2,000 years, though it no longer is producing tea. It has become a tourist drawing point more than anything. Regardless of age, the notion that Bada has produced teas for a small eternity continues to do it no harm in tea circles. Local indigenous peoples have attributed many health-giving properties to tea as long as it has been around and many, like the Hani people, believe that the very bitterness that most westerners find so assaulting (and insulting) to the palate is a sign of quality and potent life giving properties.

Among tea’s heralded uses for the indigenous peoples, the most common references are balancing the body’s core temperature, benefiting headaches and drowsiness, expelling excess heat from the body, aiding with kidney or gallstones, and acting as a general tonic to the liver and pancreas. In fact, tea in this region can easily be called the great ‘healer’, so numerous are its alleged benefits, many of which are now proving to be correct.

Sitting in a tea shop in the town of Menghun, I am graced with the presence of resident live-wire and fervent advocate of Bada’s understated qualities, Wei. Wei is somewhere in her 40’s but refuses to say anything about her age other than to claim that her tea consumption has kept her “feeling and looking as though she is in her twenties” – it is a claim that I do not pursue nor comment on for fear of encouraging her significant amounts of energy to turn on me. Another tea maven turned me on to her years ago and I am now just meeting her for the first time. She is a devotee of Bada teas, claiming a dozen times in an animated hour that it is the tea that is an “ignored classic”. Her point, which is made with a succession of violent sweeping gestures, is that simply because Bada Mountain’s teas are available in significant amounts (and by extension reasonably priced),they aren’t often desired with such raging obsession as say a Laubanzhang, Jingmai or Hu Kai. As a little aside later in the conversation, she points to a large potted plant in the corner, and as I look I see that used tea leaves line the soil in the pot. “Even used tea leaves have a use as fertilizer…it is Bada Tea”.

At this point, I know I am in the capable though jittery hands of a true tea maniac…and there is some comfort in that.

I have long thought that a good Bada tea was a ‘sleeper’; a tea that gently slipped under the radar screen of Puer tea ‘aficionados’ . Whether a question of snobbery, ignorance or simple taste, I knew not, but what was clear was that there would never ‘not’ be enough delicious (and affordable) Bada in a given year and for that alone it deserved respect.

My hostess Wei – after a considerable amount of time spent simultaneously commiserating with me, berating fake ‘old teas’ and their proprietors alike, lambasting clients’ general ignorance of tea, and waxing eloquent about Bada – is finally ready to serve some of the tea in question.

In my experiences in teahouses in this part of the world, I know that one must be patient and allow the tea masters some theatrical performances before actually consuming anything. It is afterall a free tasting and in my mind this gives the procurer and server some drama. Some people come to cha guan (tea houses) for tea, many more for the social aspects….I have come for tea but been swept up in Wei’s dynamic personality. My paranoia though is on high alert as I know that regardless of the extroverted and delightful ramblings of Wei, my day will be decided upon whether or not the tea itself sings to me or not.

Wei at last gets down to the preparation of a first and very needed serving of green unoxidized Bada Puer. Pausing for effect and to reemphasize the point, she points to the loose leaves next to her “This is Bada Old tree tea”. This reference to a tea’s age gets muddled in the tea world.

When people speak of an “old tea”, they refer to the number of years a particular tea has been in its dried and processed form – whether it be in loose, brick, log, nest or cake form. This differs from an “old tree tea” which can be freshly picked, but is harvested from a centuries old tree.

Most tea drinkers in southern Yunnan care far less about the age of a particular tea than they do about how old the source tea tree or bush is. The sacred old tea trees are almost never sprayed or overharvested and are loaded with all the compounds and catechins that make it such a bittersweet joy.

So, when Wei tells me of this “old tea tree” tea I do feel a ripple of excitement. Gingerly taking a handful of some of those giant and oddly shaped leaves, she nestles them into the rinsed flared ceramic serving cup (gai wan) and covers them with the lid. After shaking the leaves within the heated gai wan, she offers me the opportunity to smell the dried leaves, releasing hints of what is to come.
“Sweet, sun-dried-hay” is the first thought, which then moves into a slightly more green waft as I take in more breaths.

Wei, thankfully, has become near silent, issuing only some chirps and grunts as she prepares the first rinse. Pouring fully boiled water over the roughly 10 grams of tea (she has loaded the serving cup with leaves that almost spill out. Locals prepare pungent and strong tea preferring more leaves and less infusion times rather than economizing on leaves and increasing infusion times). They can afford this as their access to vast quantities of great teas is enviable.

Filling the serving cup almost recklessly until waters spills over. A light froth forms on the surface, which Wei efficiently wipes off with the cover before resting the lid on the tea for 15 seconds. This bitter froth, a combination of unwanted bitterness and any impurities, forms with the first rinse, never to appear again.

That first unwanted rinse is used to clean and heat our minute cups before us. A second rapid infusion is poured into the tea leaves. Another fifteen seconds and I am inhaling sharp and brilliantly hot slurps in rapid succession of our Bada unfermented Puer.

The heat cannot diminish the bitter green that hits the teeth and underside of the tongue. Florals swirl in the mouth at the same time as an astringent strain swims around. Add to all of this a faint trace of vegetal and then down the hatch it finishes sweet.

Wei has been transformed into an almost sage-like ‘giver of tea’, and I am grateful not to have to comment on the tea yet, as she is already preparing the second ‘drinkable’ infusion which will tell us much more.

The second and third infusions course through the mouth and finish much as the first infusion, but somehow smoother. Bada tea’s ability to have consistent flavor wrung out of it time and time again is its great strength. Wei’s energy ramps up again, excited as she is over the endless shots of tea that have already been consumed, and the shots of tea yet to come.

Four hours, a meal, and several visitors later, Bada’s great strengths are summed up by Wei, “It is not a beauty at first sight, but its qualities catch up with you”…..”like me”….she adds. It is time to depart…but not without a 2 kg bag of Bada under my arm.

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Butter Tea – A Food, A Fuel

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Jeff Fuchs

Much maligned and spoken of with a kind of fear of what may happen to the digestive organs, butter tea for many rests in that distant category of “beverage that is interesting but I will not consume”.

For the Tibetans upon the plateau and throughout the valleys of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai, it remains much more than a stimulant beverage – it is nothing less than a necessary food.

During the great days of caravan trade, two items were of enduring and consummate value: tea and salt. With these two commodities one could trade for any item. Tea and salt were currencies in themselves and it is perhaps more than a little ironic that both elements make their appearance in the preparation of what is known to Tibetans as ‘pu jia’ (Tibetan tea).

Butter, another constant in most rural Tibetan life, unfortunately gets the ‘plaudits’ for its addition of fatty pungency. For many it is this element, which sparks rebellion (or the thought of it) in the intestines and gall bladder.

My journey to the tiny village of Chun De (two hours north of ‘Shangrila’ in northwestern Yunnan) to speak to an old trader, wandered along a road that seemed at times to have no place further to go. The landscapes around me shimmered with barley fields and were marked by plunging valleys and all of this was striated and split by dirt paths that climbed only to disappear into the sky.

The area had long been a stopping point along the famed Tea Horse Road, a route that for thirteen unending centuries ushered tea and goods into the highest plateau on the planet. Tea, for many, was the import/export of choice.

The ancient trader whose name was ‘He’ (pronounced like huh), had a spotless home and yard with a random collection of rampaging goats and lean chickens that seemed intent on rioting. ‘He’ slept in a single bed that was home to books, clothes, and it seemed all of the old man’s worldly belongings. In fact, as I looked on, I wasn’t at all sure where he actually found room to lie. The old trader and medicine man had the lean and ascetic features of one who took from life only the bare minimum – hollowed cheeks, a fine nose, and eyes that missed nothing. His eyes had a dark fire in them, and I noticed with a kind of warmth that he absently tried to fix hair which still held onto its natural black color, although ‘He’was somewhere in his seventies.

His hands were enormous and hung like axes at his lean side as he welcomed me in. This noting of his hands wasn’t random for I had always noticed that these old traders regardless of body size, inevitably carried around over-sized cleavers for hands.

One of the first things a Tibetan home will offer when guests arrive is tea and the words “jia tong”, or “drink tea” will be heard within minutes of any arrival.

“He” looked at me and whispered that something stronger was also on offer if tea or “jia” wasn’t preferred. “Arra” or whisky is another offering but it and its subsequent consumption don’t have a place here.

Butter tea is, and was, in many Tibetans’ view, the perfect food for the heights. Yak butter, high in amino acids, proteins and vitamins, provides much needed calories in altitudes that burn them in huge amounts. The preferred tea for the Tibetans was anything with ‘bitter bite’, known as “kabow”. Teas from southern Yunnan or their lighter cousins from Sichuan, found in brick form, were preferred, but any tea would do. Salt’s addition was to provide a bit of tang and sodium, which was also needed. Electrolytes, carbohydrates and many of tea’s vegetal benefits found lacking in Tibetans’ diets in one soupy concoction: a food.

My host and his powerful little wife bid me to sit in an almost pitch black kitchen, the entirety of which was a fire pit, some pots, and three truck seats placed on the floor around the fire. A chicken soup, also laden with butter, was simmering its sweet goodness into the air in wafts.

In a dark corner, layered high in an uneven stack, were bricks of tea and in seconds “He’s” wife had ripped an informal hunk of the brick off and thrown it into a pot of water that was burbling on the flames.

Next, a huge cylindrical wooden container is placed in front of Lhatse, “He’s” wife. Within this aged wooden container sits a long branch of wood with a flat disc on the end …a plunger-like instrument of sorts. A ball of fresh butter is grabbed from a wicker container and Lhatse shoves two fingers and a thumb into the cream coloured lump and this is placed into the wooden container. A small handful of salt is then thrown in to join the butter. While this is going on, “He” is a blur of activity and words. In addition to being a trader, he runs an unofficial (and free) clinic, treating local ailments with herbs that he still collects from the surrounding mountains.

“He” is muttering, smiling, treating a young man, and screaming at a nearby goat that seems intent on eating everything not nailed down.

Lhatse waits until the tea is boiling before pouring it into a small black earthen container. Then using a thistle branch as a kind of filter, she pours the tea into the large wood cylinder. The hot tea concoction breaks both butter and salt up and then the ‘action’ begins.

Lhatse uses the ‘plunger’-like instrument in a piston like motion to begin a ritual to break up and blend the three ingredients. This goes on for minutes until finally she is satisfied that justice has been done. Pouring the froth out into bowls it is time to consume.

“He” urges me to grab a bowl and takes his own silver-gilded wooden “purre”, cup, and takes a deep draw, uttering a small groan of contentment as he does so.

One interesting aspect of the tea that Tibetans crave and consume is that never before have they turned their noses up at stems or misshapen leaves. The stems, which populate most bricks of tea destined for the highlands (but scoffed at by some), are the conduits of tannins and minerals and contain that bitter flavor so desired by Tibetan drinkers. Appearances here in the mountains mean very little.

After many bowls have made it (and remained) down the gullet, Lhatse mentions to me that what is always important is that the elements are of good quality.  “Butter must be fresh, tea must be strong, and salt must always be used”.

“He” motions that it is time to move from the kitchen to his office, which was the yard. Grabbing a well-used and battered Pepsi bottle which was full of a clear and suspect liquid we sit in the sun. It is time to sip another famed beverage…one not of a leaf, but of a distilled grain.

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Tsalam – The Ancient Salt Route

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Templar Food Products

One of the ancient world’s great and unheralded trade routes was the eastern Himalayas’ Tsalam, or Salt Road. Known to many Tibetans as “The route of white gold”, much of its desiccated remains rest at close to 4 km in the sky upon the eastern Himalayan Plateau.

Traversing some of the planet’s most remote and daunting terrain, the Tsalam passed through the snowy homeland of the fierce Golok nomads, notorious wolf packs and beneath the sacred Amye Maqen mountain range of southern Qinghai province (Amdo). Largely forgotten, it remains culturally, historically, and geographically one of the least documented portions on earth. The memories of a few traders carry on its almost fabled tale.

The route itself has never before been acknowledged (nor travelled) by westerners, and the last remaining traders who traveled its length are passing away, and with them, the memories of what for many was the only access path into the daunting nomadic lands.

Leading the expedition and transcribing the tale of Tsalam will be Canadian explorer and writer Jeff Fuchs, with English entrepreneur and endurance athlete Michael Kleinwort joining him. Along with local nomadic guides and the odd mule, Fuchs and Kleinwort will attempt to travel the most isolated and unknown portion of the route – a remote path from Honkor to the Maqu area.

The expedition in May of 2011 will be done entirely by foot, leaving as little carbon footprint as possible. It will also access many of the last nomadic traders to document their precious recollections of travel along the Tsalam. The expedition is another in Fuchs’ desire to bring Asia’s long lost trade routes to light.

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Sri Lanka’s Hidden Tea Corridor

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Jeff Fuchs

Paths, the world over, have an ability to set the mind alight and hint at far off lands, or in the case before me, lands just beyond the mists. Steady sheets of blue mist plunge everything into a spectral world completely obliterating the path. When the mists, which are steaming up from the south do clear, for brief seconds, the landscape on either side drops off suddenly into green tea bushes that lap up every bit of soft moisture that the fogs bring. Just as quickly, all is enveloped once again in the blankets of white. At 1,400 metres the climate here is ideal for the famed export of Sri Lanka – tea.

I stand upon a path near the dot of a town, Haputale, in south-central Sri Lanka, which itself sits astride the provinces of Western Province to the west, Uva to the east, and Sabaragamuwa to the south. All three provinces host some spectacular teas coming from both highland and lowland estates. The morning is humid and cool and the mists rearrange the landscapes every few minutes. Some of Sri Lanka’s great estates lie in easy reach of our thirst. Uva’s harvests are universally awaited by impatient drinkers of the island’s prime black teas, and our ultimate destination, near Hatton, hosts some of the island’s highest altitude tea gardens. Close friend, Miguel, assures me, with a long knowing look, that some fiercely good teas also await us. Of almost equal interest is the route itself, an all but forgotten, forlorn pathway that links two provinces, numerous vintage tea estates, and the high and lowlands. Five of us have gathered to traipse over, through and around an old tea path that has laid virtually untouched for half a century…all the way being fueled by tea. All that is required for such a venture is a will, a thirst, and a slightly neurotic interest in tea.

Mist droplets have formed on the leaves of the tea bushes that line the path, and suddenly, in a moment, the entire wall of fog breaks, giving a first unimpeded glimpse of the route which stretches westward before us.

The path, we have been told, acted as a shortcut that wandered over mountains, into valleys, and through jungles, accessing the most remote tea valleys in Sri Lanka. Additionally, no one can tell us the exact route and it is this tiny tidbit that gives the upcoming journey something magical. It will be an experiment very much in the ‘trial and error’ tradition, with tea along to inspire and fuel us.

Hours in, having shimmied through bogs and coursed through eucalyptus forests. we pass into a valley that seems carved out of green. The mists still play peek-a-boo with the geography and the altimeter reads 2,000 meters.

A small Tamil harvester village lies abandoned with a few stray goats and a lean cow foraging on tea leaves as though someone forgot to inform them of the exodus. Further on, we see why the area has been vacated.

A landslide has simply wiped clean a good portion of the valley and the access path has been cut, with one half lying intact, while its other half lies 400 yards further down a sixty-degree slope. We have arrived in the Ohiya region where minute tea valleys and estates lie tucked into sheer stone faces. Around us, ‘shelves’ of tea plantations rise in a geometric order. Ohiya is known for smooth BOP’s (Broken Orange Pekoes) with the altitudes helping to create smoother rather than stronger teas that last longer on the palate, or in the very direct words of a tea merchant I had met in Colombo, “teas that taste like teas”.

A bit of irony is that the rarest and priciest teas of Sri Lanka are inevitably the Silver Tips, the nubile, yet to unfurl buds that grace the end of a tea stem, known to many as White Tea. Snipped gently, simply withered and dried, these are generally not collected from these higher altitude estates, but rather from lower lying, easier to access tea gardens.

Sitting with Suren, a veritable tea sage, later that night, this is clarified. The more remote the tea estates, the more difficult and time consuming to access processing plants, and given that the delicate Silver Tips begin oxidizing immediately after picking, there is a need for convenience. High altitudes, the world over, do not provide conveniences. Silver Tips need specific conditions almost immediately.

Slurping down an Ohiya Broken Orange Pekoe blend, Suren also reveals a bit more about the trail upon which we are now traveling.
“It was used by tea harvesting teams years ago. These teams would often use portions of the route to access the elite estates. Tea ‘teams’, often-entire villages, would negotiate the route, accessing distant tea plantations that required immediate harvesting.

Suren also revealed one of his perceived evils of the tea world: the charlatans in the “big cities” who falsely claim to source particular teas from areas, while all the while misleading their clients. In Suren’s words “There are very few drinkers who actually know what they are or are not drinking. One must trust the tea seller”. Suren’s eyes mist over in a simmering rage when speaking of the tea ‘counterfeiters’. I have heard these words before, which I’ve condensed simply into: “know the source then trust the tea”.

Moving on next morning with bellies happily bursting with tea and a meal of dhal and ‘string hoppers’ inside of us, our group of five move out into yet more fogs that swarm into the little valley. We ascend almost straight up from Ohiya to a high crest upon a hill where one of my obsessive curiosities lies. We make our way into the exotically named “Upper Udaveria” area and onto a single tea field simply named ‘Tea Field Number 5’.

It is perhaps a hint that something is amiss, or ‘special’ when the name of a place is so understated, yet represents something divine. ‘Number 5’ rests at just over 2,000 meters and according to locals and drinkers, produces one of the best teas on the island.

Miguel has mentioned this “Number 5” in a soft tone repeatedly over the past days, and always as he does his eyes look up skyward as if in a kind of awe. Coming to “Number 5” is sudden and suitably dramatic – the mists having temporarily taken their leave. Only a few hundred yards wide and an equivalent distance deep, it lies forlorn and empty atop a rise at 2,000 meters. Nothing whatsoever to suggest that from this little plot of real estate comes a vintage tea. It isn’t impeccably groomed or guarded. It lies as though it has been simply dropped in the middle of a jungle. Almost hidden, it simply appears, and only an errant animal (or in our case tea starved junkies) would stumble upon it. All around the field itself, the forest twists and seethes, as though waiting to reclaim the land. Glumly, I wonder why there isn’t a little tea stall lying in wait for our arrival for a liquid burst. In a kind of petulance, I snip off a couple of young shoots and shove them into my mouth in some pathetic hope that I can at least derive some little Number 5 flavor.

Leaving the famed, almost somber tea garden, we are heading into leopard country. It seems that here on this island that which is sublime is inevitably next to that which warrants caution. I almost wonder if these precious tea sanctuaries weren’t deliberately positioned within the leopard’s watchful vigil. Miguel, in his role as master of ceremonies, arches his brow to let us know that we are making our way to an even more isolated tea valley, Agarapatana. In my mind, it matters not how isolated, as long as there is a pot with tea waiting there.

Just weeks ago, in the Agarapatana area, an entire harvesting village was housebound when a massive leopard prowled boldly through town, ripping the arm off of an unfortunate tea picker. Our entire group’s eyes belie watchfulness. The path before us splices into a dozen possible routes and then disappears almost completely in an assault of bamboo, palm and scrub. It is here where we must tread a little carefully and the trick  is to make as much noise as we can, crashing through the foliage, which we are happy to do.

Rains eventually ease us into the Agarapatana valley, and then promptly stop. A rainbow sky of soft peach light opens up and we are gifted a view of tight perfect valleys broken up by paths. Pickers deftly wander home in tight groups, eyes scanning the terrain. With each valley and each set of particularities (altitude, south or north facing slopes, wind, soil) the reasons for a particular tea estate’s qualities become more obvious. Altitudes mean mists and mists act as natural filters and screens to the damaging rays of direct sun and the assaults of direct rains. The dense jungles, which rear up on all sides, keep the soil optimal and provide shaded corners. Tea leaves thrive on a diet of all things ‘indirect’. Direct sun and rain act as hobgoblins to the tea plants, damaging and in many cases forcing the tea to mature too quickly.

Steep slopes add another crucial element to the list of ‘tea necessities’ – drainage. Without the required drainage, Camellia Sinensis’ roots suffer irreparable damage, leading to an unthinkable tragedy: a ruined tea bush that needs uprooting.

It is here in the Agarapatana valley that I am to sample a tea, which crushes the tastebuds and pushes every other cup of tea consumed thus far into the wings. It is a tea that for my own tastebuds represents all that is good in a black tea. Arriving at an old tea estate house, our little ‘tea-trotting group’ is immediately served a heaping pot of tea.

A vicious thirst, parched throat, and a good three hours without a single sip of the stuff, provide an ideal appetite. It is only after a cup that the mouth and throat seem to hum and constrict with flavors that go beyond a simple cup of standard black tea. Tracking down the tea maker, a lean energetic man wrapped in a sarong, I motion to see the tea stock he has used. After hand signs, a good deal of head-wagging, and the passionate intervention of the local tea manager (who calls himself Dan), I am told (and shown) that what I am drinking is a freshly produced (one month old) first flush BOPF (Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings) single estate tea.

The man’s intensity is that of the tea-impassioned and he has the welcome ability to verbalize and understand every stage of tea while not becoming autocratic or at all pretentious. Ambiguities in the tea world are rampant, but there are and always have been certain truths. For the first time on the island I am treated to a bit of tea theater while Dan explains why the valleys (and the teas they produce) “out there” beyond the walls are special. With limbs and eyes alight, he goes on to emphasize three aspects of the tea that greatly affect the outcome: freshness, first flush picking, and single estate.

His father, also a tea estate manager before him, pushed these three mini tea mantras. I’d always felt that this tradition in the world of tea – of speaking to the people who handle, harvest and create the teas and who, without a doubt ‘know’ a tea – is the only one surefire method of finding something out beyond the same rehashed information.

“Single Estate teas have character and consistency” Dan begins.
“The first flush teas have more subtle essences and a taste that remains in the mouth longer. Fresh teas will always carry a deeper ‘tea’ taste than those that have been sitting in boxes”. With this said, he sweeps his arm in the grand gesture of someone in the midst of a command performance, which in many ways it is.

“This is what you noticed in the tea earlier – it had all three of these qualities. A true single estate tea will become a favorite for drinkers because they know what they can expect in terms of strength, acidity and flavor…and because it hits more parts of the mouth. Many tea producers lie about this”.

Leaving our little heaven of leopards, single estate teas, and charismatic tea pushers the next morning, the tea manager’s words ring true. Having downed successive jolts of “that tea”, its tang rests upon the palate long after. In China’s ancient tea regions the indigenous tea growers have an entire vocabulary dedicated specifically to tea terms, qualities and character. While here they may not have the ancient legacy, they do identify exactly with the same ideas and qualities.

Shooting south, we are now descending from our temperate mist laden heights, along a pathway that links the highlands with the heat imbued lowlands. Through vacant lands of bogs and open plains, our destination is Bogawantalawa, where tea estates lie considerably lower in altitude. Lower altitudes, less mist, more intense heat and sunlight, all blend together to create stronger, more potent tasting teas with less finish, favored by the Arab world’s faithful drinkers. The sun has arrived with lethal power and we make our way into a series of descending valleys – tea valleys of such breadth that it seems that other than the harvester’s paths there is no single block of real estate that isn’t covered by tea bushes.

Along ancient estate roads we pass, as the day’s heat cripples all moving things. Nothing moves in the oppressive heat but the tea harvester’s arms relentlessly hauling in leaves like miniature windmills.

There is the dual feeling of relief, coupled with a twinge of regret, that while a cup of tea awaits in Bogawantalawa, the pathway and our sojourn along it is for now done.

Instilled though, are a few more tea ‘truths’ from up in the mountains, along with the yet to be fulfilled yearning for a cup of “Number 5”.

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Sri Lankan Gold “Taylay” – Tamil for Tea

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Jeff Fuchs

As always, I am struck by the limbs, and in this case, the feet of the tea harvester. Splayed, covered in mud, and entirely competent, the feet that are before me are moving restlessly over the damp earth. The woman whose feet I stare at is a non-stop blur of movement, like an exotic turbine along the row of tea bushes. With hands breaking off soaking tea leaves in a constant motion, tea’s beauty and labor intensive requirements are laid bare in a moment. Mists conspire, winds rip and a ferocious drizzle provide the backdrop to this environment at 1,800 meters. Her wild chirps at a fellow picker are the only sounds above the wind, the patter of drops from the sky and the “snaps” as she snips the stem.

Kilometers outside the town of Nuwara Eliya, deep into the sumptuous green belly of Sri Lanka’s ‘Tea Country” I have come to the land of the prized Ceylon Orange Pekoes, but once again I become distracted by those who harvest, clip and work the fields. This year the ‘dry season’ has been replaced by the ‘torrential season’ with villages in the area sliding down mountains and roads simply disappearing. None of this though disturbs the Tamil women who make up the harvest teams.

Chewing the beetle nut, unleashing torrents of red saliva in loud expectorations, the woman before me clamors along the row of tea bushes with the supreme abilities of someone who knows intimately their environment. Tamils, who refer to tea as ‘taylay’, were forcibly moved here to harvest, and harvest they have for years, with an intensity and earnestness that is palatable the moment the eyes fall upon them.

The woman before me, Naella, is in her late 20’s and has for all her life plucked ‘the green’. Her hands, like her feet, are moving rapid-fire and clip the stems just below the ‘bud and two flags’. Her fingernails are tea stained. Layers of waterproof plastic cover her sari. Naella in the mist fed air appears huge and potent with a massive sack tied around her head as the hands shovel tea leaves up and over into the bag. At the end of the day, given fortune and no landslides, she will have collected 14 incredible kilograms of tea leaves. Within 24 hours of picking, her harvest will have been whittled down to maybe 1.5 kg’s and will be ready for consumption….in a cup.

Orange Pekoe is the tea that was designed and created for the west’s need to add milk and sugar to the leaf’s tannins and bitterness. Asking Naella how she prefers her tea, she looks at me with intense eyes and smiles a smile that temporarily erases the landscape around us. She utters “with sugar” before continuing on and breaking out in laughter.

Amounts in this region count, for weighing stations measure the weight of collected tea leaves twice a day, and at the end of the day, if more than the daily quota is collected – anywhere from 10-15 kg’s – bonuses are collected.

If one, however, is to stray out of the huge plantations and into regions where the tea’s qualities as opposed to quantities are paramount, one will find some gems. Within the vaunted jungles of the eastern central region (where I am headed next) are small yield manicured tea gardens producing special teas that set the tongue alight.

Silver Golden tips are premium end buds and do not go through turbo-charged withering, rolling, fermenting and drying stages. They are picked sun/shade dried and are ready in leaf form for consumption with none of the rush…the advantage to the loose leaf varieties is that at least at the end of the production there is a leaf to verify that in fact this once was tea.

The lands of central Sri Lanka in early February’s supposed dry season this year are in total flux as the entire island is under siege by water from above. Water falls and streams plunge gushing sheets of white amidst the green waves of tea.

Steam engines still make the journey up these mountains much as they did a century ago, heaving and sighing as they chugg along. Roads in the regions are in the words of one driver “a shambles”. Mists vaporize entire landscapes in ten minutes and then re-introduce them once again. Drizzle comes in swirling sheets and for all of the ‘inclemency’ this is truly ‘tea weather’ as the tea craves only indirect precipitation and sunlight.

Rolling tea hills – entire landscapes broken only by villages and the odd forest – seem to be cut into honeycomb segments. They do not shimmy in the winds nor do they bend in the rain, but rather, in their stout and toughened shapes, they ride out the weather like the stoics that they are. Tea paths carve diagonal lines, with bodies barely visible in the moody fogs, using long bamboo rods to place atop the bushes. These rods act as markers, which delineate how far on any one row one has picked. Every three to five years the tea bushes will be completely pruned and in these regions (unlike the ancient tea trees and bushes of southern Yunnan) every 15 years the tea bushes will be uprooted and have new tea bushes planted in their place.

In a tea tasting with bones and fabric sodden with the rain I sat before three cups of tea, all with the slightly baffling array of letter denominations. From left to right an ‘OP’ (Orange Pekoe), a ‘BOP’ (Broken Orange Pekoe) and finally a ‘BOPF’ (Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings) the last being the most potent and the one that most directly and successfully hit my palate. While sipping away, my mind kept straying back to those bare feet I’d seen earlier in the day working their way along the rows and the woman who owned them – so it was with tea’s journey.

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Hu Kai A Tea of the Soul

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Jeff Fuchs

Tracking or tracing a tea is often more difficult that simply finding a great tea. There are teas though that must be sampled to be enjoyed and more to the point must be ‘discovered’ in their original home. Hu Kai is one such tea.

Little known outside Asia’s rabid tea consumers, Hu Kai has made an indelible mark with a taste and quality that are unique even amongst vaunted tea circles. Consumed and purchased in massive quantities by Koreans and Singaporean tea addicts, the tea itself is a perfect example of tea’s little irony – beginning life in a green humid paradise and ending up as a discussion point being served in a distant land in a thimble-sized cup.

As with many teas, Hu Kai is named for a place rather than a quality, and the place is a sprawling, rolling landscape of soft shimmering winds and villages that are little more than blips. It’s name in time though has come to mean quality and that ever-crucial descriptive for the collectors, “special”. Deep into the belly of Yunnan’s southern Pulang Mountain regions Hu Kai the place, is inhabited by Hani, Wa, Pulang and Lahu peoples – peoples with tea, quite literally, in the blood. Though the modern world refers to the teas harvested in this area as Puer/Pu’erh, the locals simply refer to it as large leaf green tea.

Large leafed, sun and shade dried, it is sold and consumed only in its naturally ‘green’ or unfermented form. What makes Hu Kai special is a taste; some say a mere hint of orchid – not an applied synthetic essence, but a genuine waft of the plant, which itself grows rampant in the area. For some ‘takers of the green’ it is the finest tasting tea there is and must be purchased at the point of origin to ensure that one is in fact getting a legitimate Hu Kai and not some ‘pretender’. Southern Yunnan, and by unhappy extension much of China, is rife with copies, efforts, and blasphemes of genuine teas.

Arriving at a roadside tea market with tea simply bulging off of collapsible tables and bursting out of clear shopping bags one can feel a kind of legitimacy – teas that are carefully wrapped, gaudily promoted and spoken of in hushed reverence in the big cities are here simply pointed at and nodded at and ‘known’. The tea market seems to have simply been dropped out of the sky onto a bend along a dirt track road. How anyone is supposed to know about the existence of these is a point of mystery but here the beauty of this muted world of mists and musty earth is that the word of mouth is alive and well.

Hu Kai the area, is a roughly drawn out region of almost exclusively Lahu people whose highlight product can be summed up with one particular item, their tea.
A mixture of old growth trees and sturdy young bushes sit and explode upon the hills in a kind of random disorder but the real Hu Kai tea must be sought out.

Prodding my nose and fingers into bamboo encased tea, grasping through loose leaves and fiddling with tea cakes and bricks my question about where the Hu Kai is met with pursed lips and head swing off to the left. The ‘good stuff’ isn’t up for sale here. Behind her there are 5 women sitting in a circle around a woven bamboo tray sorting through leaves. For me it a timeless site and one that made tea in this form something utterly magic. Slow, methodical with the odd woman breaking into chatter or a song tea’s link with people was inextricably eternal.

A minute later I am standing beside these women under a sun that blankets the shoulders with its heavy heat. Nothing rushes here. One elderly woman explains what makes a great tea, like Hu Kai, great isn’t just a case of picking tea leaves but rather the mixing of old and young leaves, of different leaves from different trees to give a full rounded tea, the ping zhong. As she speaks in struggling Mandarin her voice dips and rises deliciously with the emphasis of her Lahu language emphasizing certain points with high-pitched ‘yeeps’.

My following question of why Hu Kai teas were known for their hints of lan hua (Orchid) was met with a collective smile. The elderly woman stood up with a long grunt urging me to follow. Tea here is never something as simple as simply sipping a cup – one must see, touch, and smell the source. Here tea is a great tangible.

Winding up a baked brown path we stop under the huge awning of a tea tree and on the underside of the branch I can make out the beautiful chaos of orchids that have literally fused onto their hosts. After generations of these entwining stems have encased their generous hosts, (according to locals) the orchids have left behind some gifts: the gift of a taste. The hugging vines and leaves are part of the tree attached as though they fully belong there.

The taste buds as always, do hold the final say as to whether this vaunted combination would be something special or more of a gimmick. My answer seemed of very little importance some minutes later as a young man prepared a cup of Hu Kai for me…his indifference suggested he already knew for himself the value of the tea he was offering up. What it might mean to a ‘whitie’ wasn’t necessarily of consequence. When the first slurp impacted in my mouth, there were a few moments where I tried not to expect anything. Then slowly there was a light fragrance, which blended with the slight bitter tang before disappearing. Cup after cup revealed more of this and the result was the tea’s slight bitter effect being gently subdued by this gorgeous floral hint again and again.

One of a true tea’s great abilities is to endure faithfully up to a dozen or more infusions of water and still providing enough varying character.

With 11 successive rounds in me, I was convinced enough to purchase a kilo of the tea with my young host finally revealing to me that I in fact did have a ‘reasonably’ good palate.

In the impossibly accurate words of a local tea merchant: “some teas sate the heart, some teas sate the brain, while Hu Kai stirs the soul”.

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Tea’s Ancient Trees

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Jeff Fuchs

The strong hand points to a ragged bag of leaves. Both the hand that points and the leaves that are pointed to are dried, dark and potent looking. The same muscular hands grab some of the leaves in question and force them into my hand urging me to smell, touch and somehow ‘know’ that what I have in before me is something special. The ‘pointer’, a woman, stands behind her table of wares – tea cakes, tea bricks, tea leaves, pickled tea and tea balls. Her face is broad and her eyes intense beneath an orange kerchief. As my nose descends to the green in my palm the woman’s forefinger again shoots to a spot high above and behind me and she utters the words ‘gu shu’, ancient trees. This is what I have come for, these ancient trees, or ancient tea trees to be exact.

In two hours, one of the tea world’s deities would come into focus – a tree that scientists (and perhaps more importantly locals’ tales) put at over a thousand years ‘young’.

Nannuo Mountain, in southern Yunnan’s Menghai County is a magic land of tea, with tea in tree, bush and every other conceivable form spreading its gorgeous taint far and wide. Known and renowned in the tea purist’s handbooks, teas from here constitute one of the ‘classic’ Puer tea homes. Puer can be simplified as the big leafed camellia sinensis assamica varietal, grown and produced in Yunnan, and sun and shade dried. An additional point, though it may seem neurotic to some, is that a real connoisseur will speak of ‘tai yang wei’ in Mandarin or ‘the smell of the sun’ upon the resultant dried leaves.

First, though, before any smells or sightings, I must leave the main Jinghong-Menghai road and climb into the deep forests. The tiny smoking huts of Ban Po village greet me on the way up. Serious tea towns have a kind of understated intensity about them – no doubt because they are fueled and fed on that most green of elixirs. Yellow piles of corn kernels mark out circles in the yards and small domed plastic covered huts (tea drying spaces) remain vacant.

Joining me is Ming Pei, a local, whose family own trees in the vicinity of the thousand-year old ancient green tea tree (or goddess) as I have come to think of it. When one visits these sanctuaries, having a local along is the equivalent of paying due respect to the land.

Winds here are muffled and almost soft with giant leaves sashaying to and fro. The path is well-worn though now few villagers harvest. It is late in the year and it is late in the season and though warm and dry the lush hills around me are blank of figures.

Ming Pei’s soft voice which seems to suit the soft mountains tells of how the village shares the vast forests of tea trees around us, though families also own their own mini-plots from which they and they alone can harvest.

Tea trees are not gracious and subtle beauties; no arching smooth branches, but rather stout, wide and muscular – functional and workman-like rather than aesthetic masterpieces. What is harvested however, is, in many minds (mine being one of them) masterpieces of sharp bitter delights. The older the trees, the more subtle the delights and in the words of locals, “those that can distinguish the soft under the bitter are worthy of drinking ‘gu shu cha’ (tea from old trees)”.

Fifteen-hundred meters and we continue along the path heading up further still. Here warmth has given way to shaded cool drafts that saunter through the deepening forests. The forests themselves are beginning to envelope Ming and I and part of that envelopment is the tea trees themselves.

“No tea trees in this area are less than four hundred years old”. There are moments in life where things convene, things, sensations and feelings that lead one to believe in paradises. This moment is one. The light wind, ancient tea trees that still produce nectars from the earth, the smell of green and a sun that peaks through the foliage in small beams all contribute to this….of course there is a thirst building in the back of my throat which is verging on desperate.

We arrive to the ancient at long last. Powerful and wide there is not one dainty thing on the tree. An aged dilapidated fence lies forlorn around the tree as though put up for a forgotten reason.

Off to the side, a small nimble woman with wide eyes and crisp movements beckons. She carries a kettle half the size of her own body, somehow scurrying, managing the kettle and beckoning to me all at once. My fantasy of tea will come true.
Minutes later a surge of bitter tea is funneled down into me in rapid shots.
Deelee, my new hostess, assures me with a glance to Ming that Puer tea should be served fresh (this seasons ideally – which is autumn’s harvest), green and hot…and as if to push home a point she adds “in huge daily amounts”.
Old tea tree tea is valued for its taste, complexities and soft finish. Here on the top of Nannuo Mountain there is little ceremony, little unnecessary chatter, lesser still adjectives to describe the tea and moment…there is though a huge appreciation for this little time of tea and the time we have taken ‘to take the time’.

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Six Sips in Beijing

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Jeff Fuchs

Beijing and its heaving dense world of sprawling space is losing much of what the previous generation calls the ‘culture of vital fluid’ – the culture of ‘tea’. Fewer and fewer tea shops – once abundant in the alleys and upon the great roads – are to be found which makes uncovering them something for me like discovering a gift. By a sad extension of this, the uncovering of good tea itself also becomes fleeting.

In the smallest recesses one can find the odd ‘cha dien’, tea stores that still cater to locals – less glitz but more substance, as the old saying goes. Barely lit at times, one enters an informal sanctum of tea in all of its desiccated forms. Apart from the huge tea market of Ma Lian Dao in the southwest of the city which is an entire urban landscape dedicated to selling tea, it is the small traditional tea houses that truly represent a passing moment in time.

One such shop in the massive Chaoyang district near the ever-expanding Liang Ma Qiao road in northeastern Beijing, needs luck or a friendly finger pointing the way to find it. Barely three meters wide and perhaps five deep the walls are lined with canisters, cakes, urns, bricks and errant tealeaves – a comfortable anarchy of tea resides here that warms the being with sips to come. There are no hints or aromas here – it is nothing less than being consumed with tea’s wafting fragrances. It is in these tiny temples of tea that one feels close to tea in its primal and very Asian form: it is something that occupies, fascinates and feeds. In its silence it reminds that tea is also treated as an almost honored friend. Unfortunately for most travelers in the unrelenting need for convenience, it is the tourist shops that trumpet teas that are little more than cosmetic masterpieces, with little substance that will get the attention.

The hostess and cha sifu (tea master) of this little shop has broad hands and the simple straightforward manner of someone from a modest background – Fujian province as it ends up (a tea haven and original ‘home’ of tea) – and welcomes me in with the glorious words ‘he yi bei’, “have a cup”, which in reality never stops at one cup. In fact it would be more accurate to call it ‘have an hour?’ because one rarely leaves these establishments in less time once the tea starts flowing. With the world moving with random chaos outside the door, here is a sanctuary, a place not requiring out a single dime where one can sip samples of tea at one’s own pace. It has been this way for time immemorial – a sacred kind of right to sip tea without a purchase. It would be the equivalent of turning away a friend in need. Tea in Asia crosses boundaries of culture, levels of society and even dress codes.

My hostess who introduces herself simply as Lee Fan tells me what I’ve heard so many times in Beijing, that Beijinger’s favorite tea is the provocatively named ‘Tie Guan Ying” or ‘Iron Goddess of Mercy’, from her home province of Fujian on China’s southeastern coast. It is this Tie Guan Ying that is being prepared before me.

Lee Fan, like many true tea masters feels little need for small talk as she prepares this tea which belongs to the Oolong family of semi-fermented teas – sitting nicely in between the ‘Greens’ and ‘Blacks’ on the color spectrum of teas.

Rinsing the leaves first, she dexterously pours this first “undrinkable” round into the cups to heat them. This first ‘cleaning’ serves the dual purposes of waking the leaves while also removing impurities and bitterness. She pushes the serving cup to me to look at the leaves – the first ‘must’ – to see the leaves.

Lee Fan utters an “ahhh” as she pours out the ‘cleaning round’ and pours a ten second newly infused round of the golden yellow fluid into my cup. Before I can get any sip into my waiting lips however, the lid of serving cup is pushed up under my dilated nostrils to heave in some of the sumptuous light fragrances – the second ‘must’ – to smell the tea.

At long last the tea is ready for it’s third and final ‘must’ – to be tasted, a chance to taste this Iron Goddess of Mercy. The ‘mercy’ for me is that I am finally able to sate a raging thirst at the back of my tongue. The tea, volcanically hot, hits the sides of the tongue with a kind of bitter sweet tang and finishes with what every good tea should, a smooth finish. My tea hostess’ eyes bore into mine seeking my reaction, urging in an almost gently forbidding way that I see (and taste) the quality. My nod is met with a feverish nod and her eyes lighting up as she prepares a second infusion – in a ritual that will go on for hours. Reminding me of tea’s inherent economy, “these leaves can be infused ten times – though it is good form to drink a minimum of six sips and then you can leave”, she serves notice that we shall be drinking for hours to come. And so it would be as my requisite ‘six sips’ came and went. While tea itself is perhaps losing out to other more ‘exotic’ western imports, those who share it joys still regard its abilities to bring people together as paramount to its enduring popularity.

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Journey on the Ancient Tea Horse Road

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Jeff Fuchs

This journey that I take along with Templar Foods is to travel, unravel and bring to light some of the geographies and nooks of the Asian tea world, which has also served as my home for the past decade. It is an unprecedented peak into the rituals, the styles of serving, and vitally the sources of ‘the green’, opening up worlds that are seldom seen. Through anecdotal tales, video and photographs we will travel, sip, sip some more and dig into one of the world’s great and underrated commodities that some 13 centuries ago first made its way aboard mule caravans to all points of the compass. Tea trails, tea types and the diverse and wonderfully spontaneous world of what the Chinese refer to as Cha, the Tibetans Jia, the Indians Chai and we in the west simply ‘tea’.

Asia’s great green commodity, tea, long understood in the east as something more than a consumable, has served many roles and represented many things for those who have lived beside it, consumed it and harvested it. It is the journey to these understated roots and vital personalities that is crucial to understanding tea. For as the Hani people of southern Yunnan say, “without understanding the soil and the people, one cannot understand the tea”.

It is in this spirit of tea’s ability to bring together and unite that I, along with Templar Foods, seek to share my expeditions into Asia’s worlds of tea – the worlds where tea is picked, fawned over and ‘created’, and take a look at aspects of tea that sadly remain entirely ignored by even connoisseurs – the precious people of tea.

Join us for a monthly injection of tea, of what many in the Himalayas often called “The fluid that was more lasting than a son”, and for a series of fresh on the spot updates from deep in Asia’s tea realm.

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Templar, the Tea Expert

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Templar Tea

Jeff FuchsTemplar searches the world over to find the most interesting and latest American tea hit….teas that the US market has not heard of yet. Teas that will appear in a bottle on a US shelf soon.

To assist in this effort Templar has partnered with Jeff Fuchs, a Tea Ambassador, explorer, and author of ‘The Ancient Tea Horse Road‘. Fuchs is enroute to remote areas of the world looking for new tea. Check back frequently to read stories and view video diaries from every leg of his journey.

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