Tea 101

While the Wernickes ran a much larger tea enterprise, it was the Stoelkes who were the first to venture into the fledgling industry. Joachim Stoelke, a first generation settler, set up Steinthal Tea Estate in his homestead of 45 acres, located just below Darjeeling town in the early 1850s. It was one of the first tea estates to be set up in the hills.
Joachim Stoelke was around 41 when he started Steinthal, and although had fallen out of the Baptist mission that originally brought them to the place he must have continued to preach independently. The tea estate even today is often called "Padri Kaman", or the priest's tea garden, by the locals.

A quick rinse of the tea leaf once before making a cup can reduce the caffeine content of the tea. True or false?

If you are a caffeine-sensitive person who loves tea, you might often have been offered this work-around -  rinse the leaves for a quick 30 seconds, and only then use the leaf to make your cup.

Lured by adventure and the prospect of fortune, the Darjeeling tea industry attracted some interesting characters. One such was Louis Hildebrand Mandelli Castelnuovo. Descendant of Count Castel-Nuovo, a Maltese aristocrat, Mandelli is reputed to have fought alongside the Italian hero Garibaldi, and fled to South America before making his way up to Darjeeling.

By 1871 Mandelli had become part-owner of a tea garden. He and WR Martin jointly bought Bycemaree, a tea garden near Siliguri in the plains. This would be part of what is now called the Terai tea growing region that borders Darjeeling tea district to its north. The expanding tea plantations were part of a tea juggernaut that the British Empire was to roll out soon through parts of India and Sri Lanka, eventually decimating the Chinese tea market for a century and more.

Darjeeling tea, like all other teas, possess beneficial catechins and flavonoids that make up the antioxidants in tea.  Black, oolong, green and white teas all possess powerful antioxidants which offer protective and curative properties.

A new category of oolong in our "A Tea Master's Oolong" series is called Hung Shui (also written Hong Shui). This category belongs to the fascinating - and for newcomers often times, bewildering - world of Taiwanese oolongs. (Read here about the background to A Tea Master's Oolong.)

Hung Shui is used to describe a certain style of making oolong. Unlike many classical teas, Hung Shui is not particular to a provenance. But in some ways Hung Shui's raison d'etre has to do with the protection of another famous Taiwanese oolong that is tied to its provenance, the Dong Ding oolong.

Sometimes it's fun to mix up traditional tea a bit.

For this summer one of the recipes we concocted was iced Dragon Well (Lung Ching - Jade Mountain) infused with peach. You are welcome to help us name it.

The names of our Darjeeling teas actually include the tea garden from where they were grown and manufactured.  This is the historic way of identifying and authenticating these magnificent teas.  Arya, Puttabong, Phoobsering, Singbulli, Sungma, Turzum, etc, exotic and hard to pronounce tea gardens have worked diligently to build their reputations of producing some of the world's best teas.  When the garden is identified you are buying into their long standing reputation for excellence and high tea manufacturing standards.  Because it takes many years to build a good reputation, tea gardens work extremely hard to maintain the highest standards and protect their brand.

I've put this video together mainly for our customers who have seen me serve tea using our Yixing tea pots and bought the pots to try at home. I have tried to keep it simple - just showing you the basic steps for multiple steeping of tea, a style known as Gong Fu cha in China and Taiwan. The term "Gong Fu" - same as Kung Fu, which many of us are familiar with - means anything that is coducted with great effort or skill. "Cha" is tea in Chinese.
Oolongs and puerh teas are best brewed in this method. However, we have also tried Darjeeling with fairly pleasing results. Actually,  if you have the patience you might be able to brew any kind of tea using this method! Remember this is a matter of "great effort".