The Harney And Sons Guide To Tea Part 1

The Harney & Sons guide to tea.

by Michael Harney.

INTRODUCTION.

Over the last twenty years as a tea buyer, blender, and connoisseur, I've seen the landscape change radically for tea lovers. More teas are available today, of a better quality and in a wider range of flavors, than at any point in history. In this new tea world, it seemed to me that tea drinkers needed a more complete guide to the ancient beverage, a handbook to give them a more nuanced and clearer understanding of the drink. As we embark on this tea-tasting journey-from the light honeysuckle of the finest white teas to the rich smokiness of the darkest blacks-you will cultivate your palate and enhance your ability to discern and enjoy tea.

I first encountered tea in 1970, when I was fifteen. My father, John Harney, then ran the White Hart Inn in Salisbury, Connecticut. He had taken on a side project selling loose tea with a neighbor, Stanley Mason. A diminutive, charming Englishman, Mason had started a small mail-order business, Sarum Teas, in our town after many loyal years of service in New York to the British tea firm Brooke Bond. As a teenager, I helped Mason and my father carry heavy wooden chests of tea down to the White Hart bas.e.m.e.nt, where we would package the tea into small tins. The dry black filaments all looked the same to me. I had no idea how anyone could tell them apart or why anyone would want to. In 1983, my father started his own small tea company. He called it Harney & Sons, but that was a misnomer; my brothers and I were involved in our own projects.

Today, three of us run Harney & Sons together: my father, my brother Paul, and myself. I was the first son to sign on in 1988. I first started to change my mind about tea after working in France with Camus Cognac, a family firm that had been making the spirit for several generations. While working with their distillers and blenders, I came to envy their traditions of family and agriculture, their collective pursuit of liquid perfection. I saw a chance to replicate those traditions in tea. Tea is, after all, an even more ancient drink than wine, and one that merits the same understanding. As I took on the roles of buyer and blender in my family's burgeoning tea company, I grew determined to learn what makes tea great.

I have had some spectacular adventures. In search of the world's best teas, I have explored some beautiful country along the tea belt from China and j.a.pan through India and down to Sri Lanka. I have visited some of the flushest tea fields and taken tours of state-of-the-art tea factories as well as some enchantingly simple operations. I have befriended some remarkable tea farmers, manufacturers, and brokers, men with ties to the drink that stretch back centuries. In my work at our factory, whether examining new s.h.i.+pments or checking on our own teas, I taste around eighty teas a day, at least sixteen thousand teas a year. From dozens of journeys, hundreds of queries, and thousands upon thousands of sips of tea, I have mastered enough to know what makes tea so spectacular. The goal of this book is to allow you to achieve the same level of mastery, with far less time and travel.

Twenty years ago, a tea guide was hardly necessary. It was easy enough to become an expert in Earl Grey, English Breakfast, and the other blends that dominated the market. Today, it's a different story. In only the last decade, globalization and economic development have helped widen access to more flavorful teas from among the best tea-producing countries of China, j.a.pan, and India. Small batches of what were long considered local teas are now air-freighted to the West, providing an unprecedented variety of tastes and styles to choose from. The invention of vacuum packaging has allowed these teas to arrive on our sh.o.r.es more fresh and flavorful than ever before.

Adding to tea's popularity, scientists report ever more good news about the drink's health benefits. As a source of antioxidants, tea contains compounds that may help prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease. Research also continues into theanine, a compound in tea that increases concentration and soothes as it stimulates, making tea a milder, more beneficial pick-me-up than coffee or chocolate. The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal reports that total U.S. tea sales are nearly four times what they were in 1990, and the tea market is rapidly changing-and expanding-to accommodate new tea drinkers. reports that total U.S. tea sales are nearly four times what they were in 1990, and the tea market is rapidly changing-and expanding-to accommodate new tea drinkers.

From our original six teas, Harney & Sons now sells more than three hundred. A visit to any good tea shop will yield sweet, vegetal green teas from China; Senchas, Banchas, and Hojichas from j.a.pan; fragrant high-mountain oolongs from Taiwan; robust low-grown black teas from Sri Lanka; and three different seasons of tea from Darjeeling.

With so many new options available, how do you choose? How can you judge a good a.s.sam from a bad? A properly brewed Sencha from a weak one? A spring Darjeeling from one harvested in fall? The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea will show you how to navigate this more complex tea world. This book is a compendium of the fifty-six best pure teas I think a tea connoisseur ought to know, with guided tasting notes for each. will show you how to navigate this more complex tea world. This book is a compendium of the fifty-six best pure teas I think a tea connoisseur ought to know, with guided tasting notes for each.

Let me clarify what I mean by pure pure teas. Pure teas are harvested from the same variety of tea plant, from the same region, and ideally from the same factory. In the tea world, the opposite of pure teas are teas. Pure teas are harvested from the same variety of tea plant, from the same region, and ideally from the same factory. In the tea world, the opposite of pure teas are blends blends. Blends come in one of two forms. Some are teas mixed with other teas, like English Breakfast, a mix of Indian and Chinese teas. Others are teas blended with different ingredients entirely, such as Earl Grey, a black tea scented with bergamot, a type of citrus. I include both English Breakfast and Earl Grey in this book because I consider them ideal starting points to understanding the pure teas that go into them. Much as I enjoy drinking blends (and concocting them for my tea company), their additives can mask the flavor of pure tea. Today, the finest pure teas have nuance, character, and flavor comparable to those of fine wines.

Like the finest wines, pure teas are fundamentally an agricultural product, subject to all the vagaries of Mother Nature. The best tea makers exploit nature to give their teas delicious flavors, artfully manipulating the ways the leaves grow and how they dry into tea. Tea starts its life as bright green leaves on a branch of the evergreen Camellia sinensis Camellia sinensis. These trees can grow to heights of thirty feet or more; they thrive in dappled shade in moist subtropical climates. The white and pink blossoms yield edible (if bitter) small tea nuts. The soft, s.h.i.+ny leaves have finely jagged edges and slightly pointed tips. Fresh-plucked tea leaves make an incredibly bitter brew; only after they have withered and dried do they take on their extraordinary aromas and flavors.

The best teas available today-and with one Kenyan exception, all the teas in this book-come from Asia: China, j.a.pan, and Taiwan, as well as India and Sri Lanka. These countries make the finest teas for a number of reasons, but simply put, they have grown tea the longest and have the most expertise with the plant. The plant is indigenous to China and has grown in that country's Himalayan foothills for thousands of years. China is responsible for the invention not only of green and black teas, but also of white teas, oolongs, and puerhs. j.a.pan has been cultivating green tea since the ninth century. The British did not start drinking black tea until well into the seventeenth century, after Dutch traders first brought black tea to Europe. By the nineteenth century, the British had developed such a strong habit that they established the first tea plantations in their colonies of India and Sri Lanka. The colonists had such an important influence on the teas of South Asia that I call them British Legacy Teas. I provide a more detailed history of tea in an appendix (page 205), since the history of tea is not as important to our purposes here as the tastes.

Within each chapter and throughout the book itself, I have arranged the teas as I would structure a traditional tasting. To prevent your taste buds from becoming overwhelmed, I always begin with the lightest, subtlest teas and end with the darkest and most intense. Whenever possible, I suggest that you taste the teas in each chapter all at once, in the order presented. That way you can compare them with one another and take in the entire range of flavors possible within each category. If you can dedicate an afternoon to tasting all the Chinese green teas in succession, come dinnertime you will know the full spectrum of flavors and aromas in Chinese green teas. That said, you should also feel free to dip into the book at your whim, learning in greater depth about your favorites, one or two at a time. Contrast is a great teacher; to best cultivate your palate for tea, taste at least two at once whenever possible. For further comparison, I have provided some tasting "menus" in an appendix (page 187).

I also offer a list of reliable tea sources whom I trust (page 211). Since these teas are some of the best in the world, you want to be sure to buy them from suppliers who know what they are doing. Some of the teas are expensive, but these shops often sell them in small packages of just an ounce or two. Just one note of caution: Unlike wine, tea does not come in vintages, though it changes from year to year. The teas I have selected for this book were at their peak when I tasted them, but over time they may not taste exactly the same to you as they did to me. As much as possible, I have chosen teas whose quality I expect to endure. But next year's Singbulli First Flush Darjeeling crop may simply be not as good as this year's, in spite of that garden's best efforts. Since you will be buying your tea at a different time, you may find that my tasting notes differ from yours. Ideally, my notes will still serve as a useful guide. However, another aim of this book is to give you the skills and confidence to disagree with me. After all, I am writing about matters of taste.

I will ask you to try a few odd rituals you may never have considered when making your usual cup. I will insist you set aside teabags and try a teapot and loose leaves. I will urge you to use a thermometer to check the water temperature before you brew. I suggest you use filtered water, not water straight from the tap. Once the tea is poured off, I will insist you jam your nose into the teapot to see how many aromas you can smell.

I have only one hard and fast rule, for myself as well as for you: Have fun. I learned this rule from the renowned German tea broker who first taught me how to taste tea like a professional. Bernd Wulf started working in the tea export business in Hamburg during the years after World War II (as you will read in the chapter on Darjeelings, in the 1960s and 1970s he helped radically transform First Flush Darjeeling black teas). In the late 1980s, Wulf founded his own prestigious tea exporting company, HamburgerTeeHandel (HTH). When his son Marcus joined HTH in the early 1990s, Marcus persuaded his father to sell some of their exquisite teas to our small American company.

On my first trip to Hamburg, Bernd showed me the traditional British way to taste teas, which I will teach you in this book's opening chapter. Bernd's most important lesson was to notice my own mood as I slurped and sipped. "Only buy teas that make you smile," he said. He paid close attention to how a tea made him feel as he tasted it. As he swirled the tea in his mouth, if his mouth fell into a frown, he would let someone else have that tea. If he found himself breaking into a grin, he would buy it. His rule has proven to be a profitable business principle for both our companies. It's that simple: A well-made tea makes you happy.

Tea should always be a pleasure. This master cla.s.s is not being offered as a source of fresh reasons to feel inadequate. The joy of a cultivated tea palate is the ability to savor a beverage we too often take for granted. By no means bring out a water thermometer while rus.h.i.+ng to get down your morning cup-get your day started first. Give yourself a tea lesson at a quieter moment, perhaps when your loved ones are at the zoo, not turning your home into one. And taste with a friend. Even though I've worked in tea for two decades, I always evaluate teas with a colleague.

On the road, I often travel with Marcus to tea farms and factories, where he and I taste together. Today, his family firm supplies us with 80 percent of our teas (you'll read about some of these trips in a few of the tea lessons as well). At my factory in Connecticut, I have a full-time co-taster, Elvira Cardenas, who has worked with me for nearly the last decade. Elvira is proof positive that connoisseurs.h.i.+p is well within reach. She comes from Colombia, a country famous for its coffee. She started at Harney & Sons as a tea sorter just as I did, putting the teas into boxes and labeling them. Despite her initial bias for that harsher caffeine source, Elvira quickly rose through the ranks. Simply by paying close attention, she acquired an astonis.h.i.+ng apt.i.tude for discerning teas. Today, I rely on her judgment. I watch her mood as we taste together. Studies show we can quickly learn to discern flavors. The main focus of this book is to learn the tastes of tea. And that, dear tea lover, is pure joy.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK.

A Guide to Tasting Teas

The best thing you can do to taste these teas is to put yourself at ease. The art of tasting is the art of a.s.sociation. The only trick to identifying flavors and building your palate is to compare the teas with other foods you already know. Does the tea taste like spinach? leeks? roasted nuts? You have eaten a lifetime of foods, so you already have the necessary archive ready for retrieval.

Before you brew your first cup, imagine yourself on a leisurely stroll through the aisles of your favorite market. Get comfortable. Remind yourself of that important kindergarten lesson: There are no wrong answers. Old tea tasters have a favorite saying: "From ten tea tasters will come eleven opinions." Do whatever you need to do to relax, so that you can draw from the fullest spectrum of flavors and aromas you already know. The more at ease you are, the more you can take in about the tea.

To make it even easier, I've broken down tea tasting to five simple steps: (1) examining the dry leaves; (2) brewing the leaves at the proper time and temperature; (3) looking at the tea; (4) smelling the tea; and, only at the very end, (5) tasting the tea. In the chapters that follow, a tasting chart will introduce each new tea variety and guide you through each of the five steps.

1. EXAMINING THE DRY LEAVES.

Tea leaves hold important clues to the quality of the eventual brew. The first step to tasting tea is to ensure you are brewing the right kind. Many of these teas are so rare that they are not always sold as the same grade. In each tasting chart I have provided a description of the appearance of the leaves; if yours look dramatically different, your tea may not be as good.

The leaves should look consistent with one another, as though they came from the same plant. Poorly made tea can have an odd mixture of shapes, from shoddy manufacturing or, worse, fraud, blending leaves from a variety of plants. Cheaply harvested tea will also contain bits of stalk. With the exception of Hojicha (page 66), an all-stalk tea, the best teas contain leaves only.

Next, examine the leaf size. If the chart says the leaves should be about one inch long but your tea leaves average a quarter of an inch or less, you have, unfortunately, bought an inferior tea. Lots of small particles will translate to a brisk, blunt taste. Similarly, some tea makers incorporate longer, older leaves when the finest versions include only the youngest and smallest.

Finally, check the dried leaves' aroma. The dry leaves offer a quick preview of the tea's taste. Breathe on the leaves through your mouth, as though you were clouding up a gla.s.s pane. The moisture will briefly trigger the release of the tea's aromas. Immediately inhale the moist breath through your nose. If the tea is stale, the aromas may seem subdued. Most good teas begin to go stale after six months and should not be drunk after two years.

Once you are confident your tea is good and fresh, measure it out. While water temperature and brewing times vary for each tea, the ratio of tea to water is constant: For 8 ounces of water, measure out 1 rounded teaspoon, or .079 ounces (2.2 grams).

2. BREWING THE LEAVES.

Potware There is a world of potware to choose from, as wide as the world of tea. The selection can be overwhelming but doesn't have to be. Professional tasters brew tea in small lidded ceramic cups modeled on the Chinese gaiwan gaiwan cup. Resembling demita.s.se cups, the vessels are ideal for smelling the drained leaves. Their vertical sides release the steam without condensing it, as a round pot might. The lids also help keep the steam contained. Professional cups are not necessary; any pot is fine. I prefer ceramic pots out of tradition; the Chinese and j.a.panese also favor pots of earthenware and iron; gla.s.s pots are increasingly popular to brew "art teas" whose leaves change shape in the hot water. Since you will smell the leaves in the pot, I suggest you use a ceramic or gla.s.s pot. The aromas of an earthenware or iron pot can interfere with the tea. cup. Resembling demita.s.se cups, the vessels are ideal for smelling the drained leaves. Their vertical sides release the steam without condensing it, as a round pot might. The lids also help keep the steam contained. Professional cups are not necessary; any pot is fine. I prefer ceramic pots out of tradition; the Chinese and j.a.panese also favor pots of earthenware and iron; gla.s.s pots are increasingly popular to brew "art teas" whose leaves change shape in the hot water. Since you will smell the leaves in the pot, I suggest you use a ceramic or gla.s.s pot. The aromas of an earthenware or iron pot can interfere with the tea.

Cup In order to judge the color of the tea, or the "liquor," it is important to use a white-lined ceramic cup. After brewing, professional tasters pour the tea into shallow, wide cups shaped like small cereal or cafe au lait bowls: The shallow spherical design helps expose the liquor to the light. Any white-lined cup will do.

Spoon If you taste with a friend, you may both prefer to use a Chinese-style wide soup spoon to sample the tea instead of sipping directly from the cup. Although this is a common practice in professional settings involving many tasters, in a private tasting a spoon is entirely optional.

Water There's a favorite saying in the tea world: "Water is the mother of tea." Before you start your teakettle, know that the chlorine and other chemicals in ordinary tap water will unfavorably affect the taste of these teas. Always use filtered water when tasting teas, unless you are fortunate enough to live near a spring; spring water is ideal.

Brewing Temperature Different teas require different temperatures to fully release their flavors; generally speaking, the darker the tea, the hotter the water needed. Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, but that heat will scorch white and green teas. Their more delicate flavors best emerge between 160 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Most of the finest black teas taste best brewed at only 205 degrees Fahrenheit or so. You can buy electric water-dispensing pots, machines that heat water to precise temperatures. These machines are not necessary; just insert an instant-read thermometer into the spout of your kettle to gauge your water temperature before pouring the water over the leaves. Sometimes I give a range rather than a precise temperature; as with brewing time (see below), the exact temperature can vary with each batch of tea. Experiment to see what works best.

Brewing Time Different teas brew best for different lengths of time; the darker the tea, the longer the brewing time. My brewing times are offered as guidelines only, as every tea is different: My box of Lung Ching may need three minutes, while yours may need only two. Observing both the tea liquor and body will help you gauge whether you have brewed your tea for the correct amount of time.

3. LOOKING AT THE TEA.

The technical term for brewed tea is "liquor." Knowing the ideal color of the liquor can also help you a.s.sess whether you've brewed the tea correctly. If you pour off something that looks darker or lighter than the color described in the tasting charts, you may have over- or underbrewed it. No matter-teas are so variable, even professional tasters often brew them imperfectly at first. Just start over, noting your adjustments for future tastings.

4. SMELLING THE TEA.

Your nose is far more sensitive than your mouth when it comes to detecting flavor. Roughly speaking, your mouth can detect only four tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. Some say there are five, if you count the mouth-filling quality the j.a.panese call "umami." Everything else-floral, fruity, piney, briny-we register through our noses. Wine tasters smell the wine itself before drinking, swirling the liquid in the gla.s.s to release the volatile aromatic compounds. Tea tasters don't smell the tea, they smell the brewed tea leaves.

After draining the leaves, give them a minute to cool off. The very first smells will be only water, as the vaporizing rate of water is faster than that of the aromatic compounds in the leaves. After any danger of steam burns has pa.s.sed, bury your nose in the pot. Don't hold back-the first sign of a good tea taster is a few wet tea leaves stuck to the nose.

Breathe in through the nose and inhale deeply. Take several breaths if you need to in order to isolate and identify the scents. The aromas will begin to dissipate, but if you close the pot again, they will regather beneath the lid as they rise. Wait a few minutes, then smell again. This is where envisioning your favorite market or garden can really help. Do you smell gardenias in that oolong? honeysuckle in the white? papaya or some other tropical fruit in the Darjeeling? The aromas I provide in the tasting charts are ones I detected, but you may well find others. Make a note of them and see whether they come out in the flavors when you sip the tea later. Sometimes the aromas will match the tastes, but this is a quality prized in single-malt Scotches, not much in teas. Sometimes the aromas simply add another, complementary dimension to what is already a great-tasting tea.

5. TASTING THE TEA.

Finally, take a sip. Professional tea tasters don't just drink the tea, they slurp it the way one might slurp hot soup. The point is not to cool the tea, but to aerate it, to allow more of the aromas to drift up to the olfactory region-the nose-to smell the tea as well as to taste it. If you find the tea is too hot, wait a few minutes more. The tea should be warm but not scalding.

Pull sharply on the tea, inhaling quickly through your mouth to run it between your lips and teeth. Don't be afraid to slurp really loudly; on tea-buying trips in Asia, I've impressed tea brokers there that I slurp as noisily as they do, if not more so. It's not a compet.i.tion; they just don't expect Westerners to know how to do this. Once you have the aerated tea in your mouth, swish it around with your tongue and cheeks to give every last taste bud a chance to try it out.

Body Now a.s.sess the weight of the tea: Does it feel thin like water or thick like cream? "Body" refers to a tea's heft or weight, how much substance or texture it has. White teas and Chinese green teas are very light, feeling almost like water. Thicker j.a.panese green teas often feel brothy, a little like chicken soup with their greater heft. Some oolongs are actually called "creamy" for the way they coat your mouth like heavy cream. Black teas have a different kind of heft: Their body is often described as brisk or astringent, for the way they dry up the mouth.

A tea's body is also among the best indicators of brew strength. While a poorly brewed tea will still release plenty of aromas, its body will suffer. Does the tea feel thin or wan? Even the lightest teas should have a little texture; a thin tea probably needs more time to brew and may also need a pinch more dry leaves. Alternatively, does it taste bitter and make your mouth pucker? Then the tea may be overbrewed. With many British Legacy Teas, this strength is normal, but the bulk of the teas in this book should taste mellow, rounded, and balanced.

Flavors Once you have established the tea's aromas and body, at long last you can begin to tease out its flavors. Using the chart as a point of departure, ask yourself what else the tea tastes like: spinach? mangoes? Keep tasting: Like great wines, the teas will change their flavors the longer you hold them in your mouth. The flavors will also evolve as the tea cools and, in some instances, as with puerhs and oolongs, as you rebrew the leaves. You may find more flavors than the ones I have included in the tea charts; note them down. After you've swallowed the tea, see how long you can continue to taste it. The final mark of a great tea is how long its flavor endures in the mouth after you've swallowed. This endurance is called a tea's "finish," or "aftertaste," and for some teas it can last as long as ten to fifteen minutes.

That's all there is to it. In many entries, I have augmented these charts with background information to deepen your knowledge of the teas. For more on the chemistry and history, I strongly encourage you to consult the appendixes. All you really need to do to become a tea connoisseur is to taste a lot of tea. Now you know how. Let's go taste the finest teas the world has to offer.

WHITE TEAS..

1. Yin Zhen Yin Zhen 2. 2. Bai Mei Bai Mei3. Ceylon Silver Tips Ceylon Silver Tips4. Bai Mu Dan Bai Mu Dan Something of a tabula rasa of the tea world, white teas offer an ideal starting point for an aspiring tea connoisseur. Barely processed, light, and refined, they present one of the purest expressions of the tea plant. They are not exactly white-the tea buds grow to a bright green color, fade to silver, and brew to a pale yellow. The liquor yields not only the lightest color, but also the leanest body of all teas, a delicate juxtaposition to the creaminess of oolongs and the brisk pucker of British Legacy Teas. Their aromas and flavors are wonderfully subtle, requiring careful attention. Look for gentle sweet notes ranging from honeysuckle to light maple sap, citrus fruit flavors like orange and lemon, and wisps of floral aromas, evoking jasmine and rose.

What gives white tea these ethereal qualities? The bud. Where green and black teas draw their more robust qualities from mature leaves, white teas consist of incipient leaves called "buds," or "tips." If left unplucked, within a week to ten days this bud would unfurl into a beautiful leaf. White tea buds are plucked and "withered," or "air-dried." During the drying, they turn from light green to iridescent silver as the immature chlorophyll within them dies off. While the evergreen tea plant sprouts these buds year-round, the tips hold particularly delicious flavors in the springtime, when the plant sends out a flush of nutrients it has stored over the cool winter.To help the buds mature into leaves, the plants furnish them with an extra shot of glucose, a sugar boost that makes the buds much sweeter than a mature leaf. To protect the buds from sun and bugs, the plants also provide them with a downy soft coating of tiny hairs called "tricomes." These tricomes give the buds a soft fuzziness like p.u.s.s.y willows and can sometimes coat dry tea leaves in a fine pale dust. The downy fur helps limit water loss and may also deter hungry bugs from gaining access to the nutrients within. To further deter predators, buds also contain extra caffeine and polyphenols, a natural sunblock and bug repellent. White teas are therefore slightly more caffeinated than green and black teas. Their greater proportion of polyphenols may also make them healthier, since polyphenols act as antioxidants in humans. While we can hope that antioxidants help prevent cancer and heart disease, the science remains inconclusive.

Consisting only of buds, white teas are the simplest yet also among the most complex. Their sizable tips are a product of centuries of selective propagation. Buds play an important role in many green and black teas; harvested along with mature leaves, they give those teas refined sweetness and a softer body. White teas therefore provide a chance to sample an important component of tea, barely adulterated.

White teas have recently become so popular that tea makers have begun making them all over the world, most recently in Kenya. For now, however, the very best come from Fujian province in China and increasingly from Sri Lanka in South Asia. The coastal province of Fujian has played a crucial role in the evolution of tea. Both oolongs and black teas likely first emerged here. The famous smoky black tea Lapsang Souchong comes from the province's Wuyi Mountains. Tea makers here have produced white teas in earnest only within the last two hundred years. When the British stopped buying tea from China in favor of their own gardens in India, the British demand for Fujian teas diminished. Tea makers responded with a concerted effort to develop other specialty teas.

We begin with Fujian's Yin Zhen, or "Silver Needles." Its perfect downy buds, round body, and pale, slightly vegetal sweetness make it arguably the finest white tea in the world. Next we will try Bai Mei, a charming tea from China's more central Hunan province, whose buds are sewn together to resemble plum blossoms. Then we will sample Ceylon Silver Tips, a tea from the emerging white tea source Sri Lanka and a challenger to Yin Zhen's throne. Though one of the newest white teas, Ceylon Silver Tips has a compelling charm to it. We close with Bai Mu Dan, another Chinese white whose mix of buds and leaves nearly qualifies it as a green tea. Bai Mu Dan will lead us elegantly into the ensuing chapter on Chinese green teas.

These teas are all so delicate, they brew best at a low temperature and for a short period: around 175 degrees Fahrenheit and for only two to three minutes. The water changes color so imperceptibly, I suggest you use my flavor guides as well as the liquor colors to judge whether the teas have brewed enough.

YIN ZHEN.

Silver Needles.

Yin Zhen is widely considered the best white tea in the world. Although it is expensive, it merits its price. It comes from a beautiful corner of Fujian province whose hills and valleys are carpeted with gorgeous tea gardens. The best Yin Zhen comes from the coastal counties of Fuding and neighboring Zheng He, whose mountains are steep but not high. Yin Zhen's silver tips grow on the Da Bai Da Bai ("big white") tea tree, whose name aptly describes the plant's large buds. The ("big white") tea tree, whose name aptly describes the plant's large buds. The Da Bai Da Bai plant forms fat buds, thickly coated with down. The plants need time to create these big buds, so the Yin Zhen harvest starts later than in adjacent green tea areas. plant forms fat buds, thickly coated with down. The plants need time to create these big buds, so the Yin Zhen harvest starts later than in adjacent green tea areas.

The buds are painstakingly plucked by hand. In the spring, in the mornings after the dew has dried, the hills are dotted with harvesters. Typical of the variation within many Chinese teas, every Yin Zhen maker makes this tea a little differently. Some tea makers dry the buds on tarps in the sun, others dry them on wooden slats in the shade, and still others lay them out on racks in temperature-controlled rooms. A few Yin Zhen makers lightly fire the teas after drying them, giving their teas the faint heat flavors of lightly toasted white bread.

Yin Zhen is just as charming for the way it brews. It is worth steeping Yin Zhen in a gla.s.s vessel to watch this. Instead of pouring the water over the buds, scatter the buds over the surface of the water. Sometimes the buds will fall right to the bottom, but in the best of times they will float a few moments on the surface, then tip their noses to hang vertically in the water. There they will sway gently, before falling to the bottom of the gla.s.s. As they unleash a pale green liquor, the buds themselves will slowly turn a dark sage green.

BAI MEI White Eyebrow White EyebrowThis charming tea provides an engaging example of the slightly more a.s.sertive, more vegetal flavors of white teas from the center of China. Bai Mei also captures the beauty of Chinese art teas, teas whose leaves are manipulated to form charming shapes. Bai Mei comes from China's central Hunan province, where tea is an ancient art form. White tea has been made there-some would say perfected there-for centuries. The region produced small amounts of white teas during the Qing dynasty, but it was only in the late 1800s that white teas emerged from the area in significant amounts.

Bai Mei means "White Eyebrow," which is a little what the large tips look like when they are loose. Bai Mei is handmade by skilled workers, usually women, who sew six long buds together with string, then gently flatten them out to shape the connected buds into flowers resembling plum blossoms. When submerged in hot water, the flowers plump up to release a delicate sweet brew with the faintly sappy flavors of a cla.s.sic, refined white tea. means "White Eyebrow," which is a little what the large tips look like when they are loose. Bai Mei is handmade by skilled workers, usually women, who sew six long buds together with string, then gently flatten them out to shape the connected buds into flowers resembling plum blossoms. When submerged in hot water, the flowers plump up to release a delicate sweet brew with the faintly sappy flavors of a cla.s.sic, refined white tea.

CEYLON SILVER TIPS.

Ceylon Silver Tips is one of the few exquisite white teas now available outside China. Where Chinese white teas have a faint vegetal undertone, Ceylon Silver Tips is nearly all fruit, flowers, and sweetness. As its name suggests, this tea comes from Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon. An island south of India, Sri Lanka produces many wonderful black teas (see "Ceylon Black Teas," page 153). In the tiny world of white tea production, Sri Lanka has more recently become the second largest white tea producer after China.

Ceylon Silver Tips has appeared only within the last few decades. It comes from an area about halfway up the Central Highlands, the high mountain range that divides the tropical island. Unlike the large operations in Fujian province that produce Bai Mu Dan (page 27), Ceylon white teas come from small gardens with wonderful names like Oodoowerre and Meddecombra. Only some of the plants yield the necessarily large tip. As a result, tea is produced in such small quant.i.ties that buying more than a dozen boxes requires significant haggling. The tea's subtle citrus fruit and spice flavors make the effort worthwhile.

BAI MU DAN White Peony White Peony Among the most popular and easy to find of the white teas, Bai Mu Dan also bridges the gap between white teas and green with its mixture of tips and whole tea leaves and resulting mild vegetal flavors. A relative of Yin Zhen (page 21), Bai Mu Dan comes from the same cultivar. Unlike any other white tea in this chapter, Bai Mu Dan also includes some mature tea leaves. The finest have the highest ratio of buds to leaves. Lower-grade Bai Mu Dan is easy to spot with its large, green-brown leaves, dark and gangly from growing too long on the plant. The best Bai Mu Dan is harvested in late April and the first half of May. Bai Mu Dan is air-dried, making its vegetal flavors milder than green teas', veering to yellow squash rather than the more robust flavors of artichokes or spinach. Sometimes the tea is finished over a coal fire or in an oven, which gives the tea a faint roasted flavor.

Bai Mu Dan was developed in the early twentieth century in northern Fujian province. Over the ensuing decades, the production area migrated to the coastal region around the big Fujian province port city of Fuding. Unlike the previous three teas, which are rarer, Bai Mu Dan is produced in quant.i.ties large enough to fill many s.h.i.+pping containers every spring. The tea's international popularity is understandable. It bridges the best of two worlds, offering the savory, vegetal satisfaction of a green tea along with the sweetness and subtlety of a great white.

CHINESE GREEN TEAS.

1. Pan Long Ying Hao Pan Long Ying Hao2. Jin Shan Jin Shan3. Bi Lo Chun Bi Lo Chun4. Lung Ching Lung Ching5. Huangshan Mao Feng Huangshan Mao Feng6. Taiping HouKui Taiping HouKui7. Dragon Pearl Jasmine Dragon Pearl Jasmine8. Gunpowder Gunpowder You've mastered the flavors of white teas made just with buds; now with Chinese green teas you get your first experience of mature tea leaves that have been not merely air-dried, but cooked to preserve their color and enhance their flavor. While milder than most black teas, green teas are considerably more a.s.sertive than whites, with a fuller, rounder body, a darker liquor, and delicious vegetal flavors.

Although green teas now grow all over the world, the finest come from China and j.a.pan. I begin with China's in small part because they have a much deeper history: China has been producing tea for at least the last five thousand years, while the j.a.panese have made tea in earnest for just the last five hundred. Far more significant for your palate, however, I start with Chinese greens because they are lighter and less intense. Sharing some of the sweetness of white teas, they make for a more natural choice to follow whites in our tasting progression. Compared with the darker, more mouth-filling j.a.panese green teas, Chinese greens have the gentler vegetal flavors of steamed leeks, green beans, or bok choy. And where j.a.panese greens have no sugariness, Chinese greens have charming sweet notes of cooked carrots, jasmine, and sometimes a subtle hint of honey.

Much of this sweetness begins in the fields, stemming from the same component in white tea: the bud. The best Chinese green teas are hand-harvested in the spring from "leafsets," consisting of a bud and its two adjacent leaves. Plucked over a tiny window of just ten to fourteen days in late March or early April, these springtime leafsets hold more sugars and other flavor compounds than leaves at any other time of year. As the temperature rises and the plant emerges from winter dormancy, the roots send out stored glucose and other flavor compounds to the buds to restart growth. Spring teas may also have more antioxidants, as the plant sends out extra polyphenols to protect the leaves from bugs. In China, these springtime teas are sometimes called Qing Ming teas, since their harvest begins around the same time as China's Qing Ming spring festival.

The light flavors of Chinese greens emerge only after the leaves have been plucked and then fixed. When tea makers "fix" green teas, they preserve the chlorophyll by quickly heating the leaves after harvest. The heat destroys the enzyme that would otherwise turn the leaves brown. The same enzyme browns an apple or potato when the flesh is exposed to the air; just as cooking apples or potatoes preserves their white color, fixing tea keeps it green.

While the j.a.panese fix their teas by steaming them, Chinese tea makers use a panoply of methods, each with their own flavors. Legend tells us the first tea was blanched when a fresh leaf fell by chance into a bowl of hot water. Tea makers later steamed teas-it was from the Chinese that the j.a.panese learned the technique in the ninth century-but then began fixing the leaves in hot woks. Today, some tea makers in China also fix teas in bamboo cylinders or ovens with blasts of hot air.

Woks and ovens affect Chinese green teas in two ways: They sweeten the leaves further by searing them, and they fix the leaves more slowly, allowing them to develop a wider range of aromatic compounds. The searing occurs because woks and ovens get much hotter than boiling water. Boiling water peaks at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, but an oven ranges from 300 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and a wok can get as hot as 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. This much higher heat causes what chemists call "the Maillard reaction," the creation within the leaves of compounds called "glucosides." These glucose-derived compounds give the leaves pleasant toasted, sometimes nutty, sugared notes much as a skillet gives a pancake. The sweetness is very subtle; those who like their tea with two teaspoonfuls of table sugar may still want to add something extra. But compared with the decidedly unsugared, darker, and more vegetal j.a.panese green teas, Chinese green teas have a distinctly honeyed edge.

Wok and oven fixing also makes Chinese greens slightly more aromatic, with slightly sweeter scents than j.a.panese greens. All teas begin to develop their aromas as soon as they are plucked. Cut off from their nutrient source, the stressed leaves send warnings in the form of aromatic compounds to alert the rest of the plant of an attack. Among the first aromas to emerge are scents of lemon and fresh-cut gra.s.s. In the case of oolongs, these warnings change to jasmine and gardenia as tea makers "wither" the leaves, letting them desiccate slowly over a period of hours. Chinese and j.a.panese green tea leaves wither over just the short trip from the field to the factory. Chinese green teas wither a little longer than j.a.panese green teas because they are fixed more gradually-since wok fixing takes much more time than steaming. If you've ever stir-fried broccoli as opposed to blanching it, you know the difference: Stirring the raw vegetable over even a very hot pan cooks it more slowly than boiling-hot water will. That added time means the plant can continue to send out its scented distress signals. A comparison of the aromas in a j.a.panese Sencha and a Chinese wok-fired green tea shows that the Sencha has more lemony "linalools," while the wok-fired tea has more carroty "beta ionones" and "neriols," floral aromas more common to oolongs, which wither for a much longer period. (It's important to note, however, that neither j.a.panese nor Chinese green teas have anywhere near the concentration of aromas in oolongs or even black teas.) Moving in order of lightest and sweetest to darkest and most intense, we'll start with Pan Long Ying Hao, the green tea with the largest bud, most closely resembling a white tea in its sweetness and pale hue. We'll taste progressively more vegetal greens, including China's famous Lung Ching, considered a standard for its flavors of honey, toasted nuts, and steamed green vegetables. Then we'll try Dragon Pearl, a green tea perfumed with jasmine blossoms. We'll end with Gunpowder, perhaps the darkest green tea available in China or j.a.pan, wok-fired to give it a rich, roasted, smoky flavor.

Pay close attention to the leaves in this chapter: From Lung Ching's slender gra.s.shopper wings, to Bi Lo Chun's coiled snail sh.e.l.ls, to Taiping HouKui's spindly, chartreuse filaments resembling shards of spinach linguine, you won't find this variety of shapes anywhere else. Chinese tea makers sometimes also manipulate the buds to draw out their fuzzy down, so much so that some teas like Bi Lo Chun are coated in fuzzy golden dust. No matter their ultimate shape, the leaves often remain in their original harvested trio: tidy leafsets of two leaves and a bud, joined at the stem. It's well worth drawing out the leafsets after brewing these teas to see for yourself.

Up until even five years ago, few of these teas made it to the West. Most are made for local markets and in tiny quant.i.ties. The more Westerners have learned about fine teas and gained a willingness to pay for them, the more these teas have made their way across the oceans. The health benefits of green tea in particular have helped boost their popularity; like white teas, green teas have plenty of antioxidants (polyphenols), which have been shown to help fight chronic illness. In black teas, some of these polyphenols degrade into other compounds-indeed, into the very chemicals that turn black tea brown. Hence green teas have more antioxidants than black teas.

Chinese green teas can be brewed fairly consistently. The filtered water or spring water should be around 175 degrees Fahrenheit, so as not to scorch the delicate tea. It is best not to rinse the teapot with hot water, as this would raise the brewing temperature too high. Brewing time is from two to three minutes; these teas yield their flavors much more quickly than black teas do.

PAN LONG YING HAO Dragon Silver Hair Dragon Silver HairWe start with Pan Long Ying Hao because it is the "whitest" of the green teas in this chapter. It most resembles a white tea with its large buds, fuzzy tips that give the tea light, sweet flavors of steamed spring leeks.

The coastal Chinese province of Zhejiang is famous for its green teas, particularly Gunpowder and Lung Ching. As many as fifty other teas are made in the province's hinterlands. An amazing bounty, but nearly impossible to obtain, as most are grown for such a confined local market. Pan Long Ying Hao is one exception, a local tea invented for local drinkers perhaps thirty years ago, but now available in the West.

Pan Long Ying Hao is such an obscure tea, it is difficult to learn how it is made. It likely gets its tip from a particular cultivar bred for large, downy sprouts. Given its lightly sweet, roasted flavors, it is probably fixed in a hot wok. The leaves are so loosely shaped, they must be rolled only very delicately. The rolling also teases out the down in the buds, to make the tips soft like p.u.s.s.y willows. The final drying presumably creates the tea's lovely cocoa notes. This is a calming tea, whose flavors evolve in the mouth like a slowly moving stream.