Blog – Page 22 – Discovering Tea

While we’re waiting for Northern India, discover the South

6 March 2020

Every year, many of you eagerly await the first spring harvests from Darjeeling. But as you perhaps know, the first Darjeelings of the year aren’t the best, and it’s a good idea to hold back.
As it happens, I’ve just selected a rather exceptional Kotagiri Frost from Tamil Nadu. Although Southern India produces vast quantities of tea, the quality is rarely up to scratch. However, if you look carefully, you can find small plantations that produce remarkable teas at certain times of year. This is the case with this Kotagiri Frost, which will be available in a couple of weeks. Enjoy savouring it while the winter mists clear from the Himalayas and give the young shoots freedom to grow.

In focus

28 February 2020

Focusing is important, as any photographer will tell you. You can focus on the foreground, middleground or background, or you can try to capture everything with the same clarity. As for me, even when I have a stunning landscape before me, or a spectacular mountain, I only need an expanse of tea leaves to enter the frame and I switch my focus to them. I want to see them clearly. Their beauty demands to be focused on, and I forget about the rest.

A question of altitude

21 February 2020

The harvests will begin soon in Darjeeling. Happily, the tea is still picked by hand. The low-altitude plots are harvested first, for a simple reason: the tea plants have benefited from higher temperatures, meaning the terminal bud has grown faster. We can see that this photo was taken at the bottom of the valley, due to the gentleness of the slope and the density of the covering that protects the bushes from excess sunlight.

The tea plant reawakens

14 February 2020

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while will know that tea belongs to the camellia family. There are many varieties of camellia; the one that interests tea enthusiasts goes by the name of Camellia sinensis. The shrub is deliberately kept low to make it easier to pick the leaves – a height known as the “plucking table”. In winter, the tea plants enter a dormant period. Come the spring, they wake up again, then you must wait until the bud is a respectable size so that it can be picked, along with the next two leaves. This is known as a “fine plucking”. There is just one more month to go before the first harvests start.

Tea plants in winter

7 February 2020

This is what a Japanese tea garden looks like in winter. Against the backdrop of volcanoes, rows of freshly clipped plants wait for spring to release them from their dormant period. They slumber under the benevolent watch of the fans, ready to chase away any frosty mists.

Choose loose-leaf!

31 January 2020

If you’re someone who thinks about the health of our planet and you want to reduce your use of packaging, you might consider what benefit there is in using a tea bag instead of loose-leaf tea next time you’re brewing a cuppa. It’s true that when we’re on a flight or staying in a hotel it’s nice to have our favourite tea to hand, and it wouldn’t be convenient to carry around a canister.

But at home or at work, it’s so easy to use a teapot or a mug with an infuser. Tea bags are practical, of course. But it’s not difficult to measure out tea leaves: a pinch between three fingers is about right for a 10cl cup. Then pour over the hot water. So simple. And it does away with one, two or even three layers of packaging.

Discovering Tea is ten

24 January 2020

For years, I didn’t take any photos, misguidedly believing it wasn’t possible to look around me and photograph at the same time. Later, I changed my mind. Those landscapes and portraits taken around the world inspired me to share them, and so the blog was born.

Like the Tea School and the books I’ve written with Mathias Minet (The Tea Drinker’s Handbook, Tea Sommelier), the role of this blog is to impart both knowledge and passion.

This month, my blog celebrates its 691^st article, or rather, its ten-year anniversary, so I’m inviting you to help me blow out the candles. I’d like to thank Mathias, Laurent, Philippe, Emilie, Marta, Bénédicte, Kevin and Hélène, who were there at the start or who’ve been part of the journey. And I’d like to thank you, my readers, for following me. Your support is precious, and it touches me.

A hand

17 January 2020

There are artisan teas, and there are industrial teas. The same is true for many of the products we consume. If we had to pick something that symbolises the work of the artisan, we could talk about their craftsmanship, or we could talk quite simply of their hands. Artisanal work involves the hands. To produce a fine tea, to pick the best leaves or to take cuttings, hands play an essential role.

What about consuming better quality but less? It would mean that every time we bought an object or item of food, we would ask ourselves if hands played a part in making it.

The work of a tea researcher

10 January 2020

In less than three months, the spring cycle will begin, and with it will come a deluge of new pluckings. As in every year, in addition to our regular selection, I will set off with my assistant tea researcher in search of rare teas. The work of a tea researcher involves constantly reviewing the teas we choose and tasting new teas from farmers we work with already (there’s no guarantee that someone who produced an exceptional tea the previous year will produce anything as good the year after). The work also consists of seeking out new farmers, both in well-established production regions as well as new areas where pioneers are starting to gain the necessary expertise. This photo was taken in Malawi, a country that just a few years ago, nobody would have suspected of being capable of producing good tea.

A moment of pure happiness

3 January 2020

I wish all of you an excellent year. I hope you find time to be good to yourself, to be good to others, to meditate, be happy, enjoy nature, walk through beautiful landscapes, reflect, smile, rest, shut your eyes, breathe deeply, consume less and better, think of generations to come, of the planet, and to make every moment, every mouthful of tea, a moment of pure happiness.