Are the origins of tea the slopes of China's Yunnan Province? I guess I will leave that to the anthropologists (though, anthropologists study mankind, right, not plant derivations) who say such.
I just read an interesting article in the International Herald Tribune about how tea has boosted the Yunnan economy. If you have walked the streets of Yunnan's provincial capital, Kunming, you could easily verify this fact. I have been many places in South and Southwest China, and few have as many tea shops lining the streets. I guess they have to have something to drink when they play Mahjong, right?
Still, I have to wonder about the "wild tea" idea.
Tea is usually something picked off a tea "bush", just above waist high. This article talks a lot about ancient tea trees which grow wild on Yunnan's slopes. I was highly skeptical that the masses of tea coming out of Yunnan Province could be any more than one or two percent "wild", then saw near the end of the article that it is difficult to ascertain which tea was actually picked from wild bushes or was aged.
The vast majority of aged, wild tea absolutly has to be a false claim. If this tea was aged for ten years, how could suppliers have psychically known of today's huge jump in demand ten years ago when they packed it away? I am sure some of it might be aged, but that would have to be some seriously expensive tea.
Another little tid bit in the article that piqued my interest was the farmer who "said he had never met a foreigner before. But he understands the value of outsiders' keen interest in his tea trees". What is the issue? Well, the article later states that the "recent surge in popularity is attributed to affluent, health concious Chinese".
The later is much more accurate. The predominate consumers of Chinese-grown tea are Chinese themselves. Now, I might (just "might) stretch that to ethnic Chinese throughout East and Southeast Asia. Maybe those are the "foreigners" interested in the farmer's tea. (Or maybe the foreigners interested in his trees were the reporters doing the story.)
There is one thing I will not abide, though. Fine tea is nothing like fine wine. Wine and coffee both have an extremely complex variety of tastes. I am not talking one region's wine is different from another region's, but rather that one glass of wine itself is deep and complex...that is, if it is good wine. Tea simply does not have that.
Do not get me wrong, I like tea. I love the many, many flavors of tea, from green to black, Pu'er to Oolong. Still, tea is a very simple taste...nice, but simple. I like Dr. Pepper too, but nobody would argue it has any depth of taste, though it too differs if bottled in glass, plastic, or aluminum, and if it is bottled back in Dublin, Texas or some big city bottler. (My favorite: Dublin, glass.)
The article states: " 'To appreciate Pu'er tea is similar to enjoying wine,' said Peng, who is also the head of the local tea promotion board. 'You need to understand the different areas where tea grows. The fragrance is different from one mountain to the next.' "
See: different areas. Well, of course. Take two of the same seed and plant them in different regions, and the plants will differ. That is not the only aspect of what people enjoy in wines and coffee, though. Yes, there is definitely an aspect of region, but just to hear wine or coffee connoisseurs talk about their wines would prove the complexity of taste over tea.
Good article, but I just want to make sure coffee and wine are not misrepresented. Tea is good stuff, but for those of us who enjoy the wines, coffees, and teas of this world, I just want to clarify the difference in the complexity of taste.
