From plant to cup – Page 11

While we wait for Darjeeling, here’s Kotagiri Frost

5 March 2021

The teas of Southern India offer an interesting alternative to those in the north when the latter haven’t been able to grow due to lingering low temperatures. In the Nilgiri mountains, tea is produced in the Darjeeling style, and Kotagiri Frost is the best-known of these at the moment. In the cup, it reveals an intense green freshness that announces the arrival of spring. This premium tea will be available around 15 March, following the necessary food safety tests.

Darjeeling kicks off the season

25 February 2021

Every year, Darjeeling kicks off the harvest season. 2021 should be the same, as long as Covid doesn’t force the Himalayan foothills into lockdown. The harvest should start, as usual, around the time of the Holi festival. After a dry winter (the last major rainfall was back in September), the tea plants are struggling. They need rain so that the buds, which are just waiting to grow, can turn into leaves.

Something for every taste

12 February 2021

Attitudes are changing and this makes me happy. In the early days of Palais des Thés, Chinese teas really divided our customers. Some loved them, others hated them based on the premise that all Chinese teas were smoked to a greater or lesser extent. There was a lot of misunderstanding surrounding them. Thirty years later, it’s such a pleasure to see how things have changed. Not only do many people now realise that not all Chinese teas are smoked, but we have also seen the rise in popularity of green, white, blue-green, yellow, dark and black teas from this country, the birthplace of tea.

Singbulli is changing hands

5 February 2021

Tea plantations sometimes change hands, and this is important knowledge for tea researchers. The Singbulli garden (photo) in Darjeeling has just been sold. Who will be the next planter? What knowledge of tea will they have, and what production methods will they use? These questions show that you cannot rely on a garden’s name alone. The life of a tea estate evolves, and with it the quality of the teas it produces. Let’s hope that Singbulli continues to make the delicious teas to which we have become accustomed, such as those fine teas produced using cultivar AV2 and on the best plot: Tingling.

Around the mountainside

29 January 2021

It will be another few months before we start returning to normal life, meeting up with friends and family, getting together for a cup of tea, a meal, a glass of wine. Meanwhile, this is the image that comes to mind when I think about the difficult times we’re going

Do the right thing

22 January 2021

Our compatriots sometimes use the services of an American company to obtain a book they could easily buy from their local bookshop; they pay someone in San Francisco for goods instead of independent retailers and artisans. The same goes for food: our local shops, cafes and restaurants are so desperate for our support.

When it comes to tea, don’t expect me to bypass the people who count. Palais des Thés sources its teas from producers it knows. It pays them directly, whether the farmer is in a remote Nepalese village, on a high plateau in Malawi, or on a Japanese island. It gives us great pleasure to support the wellbeing of the people involved in producing such delicious treasures. Let’s support good tea and do the right thing.

Beneficial pain

15 January 2021

With so much focus on the benefits of the vaccination needle, despite its brief sting, I wanted to look at a comparable phenomenon that affects the tea plant, in which momentary “pain” is beneficial. In some parts of the world, such as Taiwan and Darjeeling, a particular insect – a type of leafhopper called Jacobiasca formosana – likes to munch on the leaves of Camellia sinensis. The plant’s chemical response to this attack results in a rare, highly sought-after aroma in the cup. You will find this bouquet in an Oriental Beauty, for example, or a Darjeeling Muscatel. In these regions, farmers actively protect the insect to make sure they visit the plants and eat their leaves.

Papayas and tea

25 December 2020

People are always experimenting, and when you’re lucky enough to be a tea researcher, you’re well placed to see all sorts of things. Here, on a coffee plantation in Tanzania that has branched out into growing tea, there is no lack of innovation. The latest initiative is to remove the flesh of papayas and fill the skins with a semi-oxidised tea that has been withered and rolled. After a short oxidation, the wet leaves are stuffed into the hollowed-out ripe fruit and become impregnated with its delicious scent.

Travels with tea

11 December 2020

I met Sidonie when she invited me to be on her RTL radio show. That was a few years ago. We stayed in touch and, after chatting over a cup of tea one day, we thought, why not? Why not combine our passions and take our listeners, tea enthusiasts, on a journey to their favourite tea-producing country? This idea led us to launch a new podcast, or balado, as our Quebecois friends would say.

Join us at https://www.palaisdesthes.com/fr/podcast/ and on your usual podcast platform. These tales of travels and tea are for you. (In French only.)

Around Maskeliya Lake

4 December 2020

Would you like to come for a walk with me around Maskeliya Lake in Sri Lanka? Here, we’re halfway between the high-grown and low-grown teas; between those from the mountains of the Nuwara Eliya region and the often-remarkable teas produced in the jungle around Sinharaja forest further south. This is the view from the front of the bungalow on the Moray Tea Estate. The artificial Maskeliya Lake is surrounded by tea plants and the magnificent flora particular to this region, including flamboyant cassia and poinsettia. The yellow and red brighten up the eternal green of our camellias.