Blog – Page 3 – Discovering Tea

Thinking of our friends

4 October 2024

In Nepal, the torrential rains have caused significant damage. Our thoughts are with all those affected. It is often the poorest who lose the most.

Fortunately, our friends the tea farmers are rarely at risk from overflowing rivers. Tea grows on higher ground and does better on mountain slopes than down in the valleys where the soil is too wet for Camellia sinensis. But after a particularly heavy monsoon, landslides can sweep away roads, homes and lives. Entire mountainsides can collapse in a mudslide, causing many casualties.

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. Not only is it subject to severe flooding, it also suffers some of the worst earthquakes. All the more reason to remember our friends in this ancient Himalayan kingdom, home to many remarkable small tea producers. They depend on us for their livelihood. So let’s brew a cup of one of their delicious teas and think of them, each in our own way.

Feeling grateful

12 July 2024

Being a Frenchman, I admit I probably complain more than I should. And yet, as someone who spends much of the year travelling around regions of the world as diverse as a Himalayan kingdom, the Andes and the Great Rift Valley, in countries that are much less fortunate in terms of standard of living, I am well aware that France is the stuff of dreams, a kind of paradise in the eyes of so many of the planet’s inhabitants. It’s true that it shouldn’t take much for France to become a paradise if we united and sought compromise instead of adding fuel to the fire, preferring to fight rather than agree, thinking that violence will solve every problem. Why are we still so comfortable protesting instead of trying to build bridges? It’s a mystery to me.

Tea has opened my mind to harmony, to finding the right balance, to paying attention to others. What if we looked at the world differently? Let’s have a cup of tea and look around us. As we sip the delicate nectar, we can contemplate this beauty and feel grateful.

Smoked tea

21 June 2024

Smoked tea aficionados – who have been known to panic when their supply runs out – know that nothing else can match the powerful aromas of this blend from China, even if the Chinese themselves wouldn’t dream of drinking it. When you smell it, you could swear you were in the fireplace itself, it’s so intense. The most famous of these smoked teas is Lapsang Souchong. For some obscure reason, a molecule called anthraquinone has got up the European Union’s nose. So, from time to time, we have to approach new producers from various countries to ask them to test smoking processes using different types of wood, in this case pine needles.

Soothing, just like tea!

7 June 2024

The purpose of this blog is to tell you all about Camellia sinensis, not about the monuments, however impressive, that a tea researcher might encounter on their travels. And yet, as I stood in front of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, in the silence and stillness, entranced by the lights, the gold and the shimmering evening light, I felt a deep sense of fulfillment. I was completely at peace, despite the crowds. Serenity. Time stood still. I felt transported. Opportunity, happiness – a gift. These were my thoughts as I felt compelled to stop and take in my surroundings. I sat down and contemplated the reflections on the water. It seemed to me that this liquid element, this precious material, this gold, corresponded to what I feel when I drink a cup of tea. Something rare, unique and delicate. A call to peace, tranquility and harmony. When I drink tea, I close my eyes, and what I see is beautiful, radiant and soothing, just like the Golden Temple.

A special moment

24 May 2024

When I visit a tea producer, I try to take a few samples for them to try. Most farmers don’t travel. They spend the whole year on their plantation and have very few opportunities to taste teas other than their own. I think it’s important to give them a chance to try other teas, not in order to imitate them, but to inspire them and connect them with other tea producers who are proud of what they make. These tea tastings, like here in Satemwa in South Africa, are very special to me.

A quality harvest

10 May 2024

Tea doesn’t harvest itself. It’s important to me to highlight the work of the people who pick the buds and the next two leaves from each shoot that make up a quality plucking. This delicate work, still done by hand in many countries, is particularly important because it is impossible to produce a good tea if the leaves are not picked carefully enough in the first place.

Trees that speak to us

26 April 2024

At a time when we don’t have a clear view of what’s going on in Darjeeling, where the plantations have been suffering for many years from a crisis that we would like to see end, I am travelling through other tea-growing areas of northern India. “Nature is a temple where living pillars let sometimes emerge confused words,” wrote Charles Baudelaire. And here, in the Kangra Valley, who wouldn’t feel its presence? Look how these trees watch us with a familiar gaze! I don’t know if you can hear them. They speak to me.

A photo reveals

12 April 2024

Sometimes a photo poses a question. When the shutter is released, the photographer – on the other side of the lens, camera in hand – may not be aware of anything. They are absorbed in their subject, waiting for the right light, adjusting the framing, shutter speed and depth of field. It’s only when they see the photo on a computer screen that things are revealed. Here, for example, I can see the absence of trees. I didn’t notice at the time. How is that possible? And how is it possible to deforest in this way, to farm so intensively on such low hills?

But what I’m really struck by here is the mystery of photography, which sometimes works in two stages. First, it’s a response to appealing shapes and colours. Then there’s something deeper, which reveals itself afterwards.

Wild and tamed nature

29 March 2024

This photo is a beautiful sight, in my humble opinion. Tea bushes grow amid dense vegetation. A rugged, sloping landscape, numerous trees of different species… There’s a harmony between the cultivated plants and wild nature. It’s easy to imagine the wealth of flora and fauna to be found in such a diverse environment. For the amateur photographer in me, there’s pretty much only one colour – at first glance. On closer inspection, what a multitude, what variety! What better way to celebrate spring than with this abundance of greens?

The cuttings nursery

15 March 2024

To make good tea, you need to know your tea bushes well. It’s a lot easier if you’ve tended them yourself from a young age. Many plantations – like this one in Satemwa, Malawi – take their own cuttings and then grow them in a nursery for eighteen months. Shaded to protect them from too much sun and too little humidity, the cuttings develop their root systems. Later, the young tea plants are planted out in the ground and begin their adult lives. Then it’s time to harvest the shoots, which are few and far between in the early seasons, but become more abundant as the bushes develop and branch out.