The importance of water temperature

Some teas suffer from being infused in water that is too hot. On this subject, I’d like to tell you that you cannot make a good cup of tea if the water has been boiled, even if it is then left to cool down. In fact, when water boils, the oxygen evaporates, and the tea leaves need this oxygen during infusion to release all their flavours and aromas.

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Cooking and tea

Gradually, tea is coming out of its teapot: more and more chefs are using it as an ingredient in their cooking. First there was baking with matcha; now tea is making itself more at home in the kitchen as a flavouring for savoury dishes.

Tea is also served as an accompaniment to food, like here at Yam’Tcha, in Paris, where a pu erh is paired with a chicken dish, poularde de Bresse.

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The best way to make a cup of first flush Darjeeling

For those of you who are getting your first taste of a first flush Darjeeling, I’d like to remind you that these are rare and fragile teas that need to be prepared with care. The infusion time, for example, should not exceed three minutes and 45 seconds. A fine tea is all about harmony. We look for a balance between the textures, flavours and aromas. With first flush Darjeelings, the best way to find this harmony is to keep the infusion time to between 3’30 and 3’45.

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The job of tea researcher

If I had to choose one image to illustrate my work, I’d choose this one. A picture of a bridge. A footbridge. A bridge linking two worlds: the world of tea producers on one side with the world of tea enthusiasts on the other.
A bridge between East and West. A bridge between those who cultivate slow living with those who want to return to it. By drinking tea, for example.

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Tea tastings

At the moment I’m tasting between 50 and 100 different teas a day.
I try them in series of about 10 or 12. When you taste so many teas at the same time, you spit them out, for obvious reasons. Most importantly, you taste each tea twice, and in a different order, so you’re not influenced by the qualities or flaws of the previous tea.
This is because when you taste several batches in a row, you have a tendency to pick out what is different about them rather than their similarities, and if I didn’t taste each one twice, I could miss out on some wonderful teas.

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