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I just spent five days at the Xiamen Spring Tea Fair and then a week up in Anxi County, some of the best oolong country in the world.
The Xiamen Tea Fair is gigantic; six buildings like this:
Michael (TeaSource Operations Manager) and I standing in front of Hall A (one of six) of the Xiamen Tea Fair
The Xiamen Tea Fair is a little overwhelming. This was my fourth visit. But it was the first time for Michael and my daughter Maggy, who was our interpreter on this trip.
The fair is about 85% tea vendors with just a few mid-sized companies. It is mostly very small companies. These are my favorite kind of tea companies. They tend to be passionate and proud about their teas. They recognize a kindred spirit in TeaSource. About 15% of the fair is taken up by tea accessories and tea packaging suppliers.
Old friends, new sources, learning and experiencing tea; that’s what these kind of sourcing trips are all about.
Old Friends
Many of our regular customers know Ms. Zhao Yujie of Puer, China; she has sent us some amazing black and puer teas from Yunnan, China. We were looking forward to seeing her on this trip. Instead, we spent some time with her husband Mr. Pan at their booth, sipping tea and catching up (it’s amazing how well tea people can communicate even when they don’t speak the same language). It was just Mr. Pan at the booth - apparently Ms. Zhao is very pregnant and not up to traveling at the moment.
Mr. Pan serving us tea
SHOP THE FUJIAN TEA COLLECTION
On a side note:
As big as the Xiamen Tea Fair is, it’s not big enough to accommodate another fair/convention going on right across the plaza from the Xiamen Tea Fair: the Xiamen Buddhist Fair.
It is entirely reasonable to have a gathering of folks of a particular faith, religion, or tradition; a place and time where like-minded people can share ideas, learn together, network, and explore materials/products that will aid them in professing or practicing their faith.
I am sure there are such things for most Christian denominations. I just never expected to walk through one. We had to walk through the large exhibition hall that hosted Buddhist Fair each day to get to the Xiamen Tea Fair. For the record, the people were gracious, friendly, and very interesting.
Back to tea.
Exploiting your children
A sampling station at a South Korean tea vendor booth, showing a long-standing tea merchant tradition; don’t hesitate to exploit the cuteness of your children to promote your tea business (ask my daughter if you don’t believe this is a long standing tea merchant tradition).
New Tea Accessories
A sample of some of the gorgeous China porcelain we are hoping to bring into TeaSource in the next few months
This is a perfect one or two person tea set; it’s also great for mobile tea making (what this company focuses on). The quality of the porcelain and the finishes is amazing.
New Friends
I met Daniel Hong the last time I was in Fujian, and we have sourced a couple of wonderful teas through him; Golden Buddha and Happy White Plum. This trip was a chance to go into mountains of Anxi County with Daniel and spend a couple of days at their factory, walking their tea fields, and hours tasting their teas.
Me, Mr. Lin (who supervises the cultivation and making of Daniel’s teas), Daniel, and Michael L. standing in the shade in a tea field
Fields and terraces of Ti Kwan Yin
The terraced rows of Ti Kwan Yin tea plants of Daniel and Mr. Lin
Learning about tea
A couple of thing I learned about tea on this trip.
First, I learned from Yan Mei Li (the maker of our fabulous Silver Needles White tea), that aging white is very much a thing in China. White tea, if stored properly, ages beautifully and develops flavor notes completely different yet complimentary to fresh white teas. She is one of my favorite tea makers.
Second, I also learned how Yan Mei and her husband, Eldon (who makes our Big Red Robe), met and fell in love. She had a brick and mortar store on Tea Street in Xiamen, Fujian, China where she only sold her own white tea. One day she noticed a young skinny guy from Guangdong province opened a tea store next door, selling only the dark baked oolongs that he made. A year later, they were married and their tea companies joined into one company; Share & Taste the Tea.
This photo illustrates what tea sourcing trips are like; drinking lots of tea, having fun with old and new friends, and learning about tea.
From left to right: Michael, our Operations Manager, me, “Q” who has a wonderful tea store outside London (she is also the daughter of Nigel Melican who is the preeminent tea scientist in the western world and he will be giving a presentation in our Roseville facility June 17, 2018), Yan Mei’s store manager, Yanmei herself (and her husband off to the right is serving us tea).
This is wayyyy too much fun.
There are more reports from our Fujian trip to come.
Bill Waddington, founder
TeaSource
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After a recent trip to Fujian Province, China, Maggy Waddington (daughter of owner Bill Waddington) provides some insight into the world of Chinese tea.
The world of Chinese tea is too vast to ever be covered in a single blog post, but here’s a quick overview with a slight focus on Fujian teas. Not only is tea consumed 24/7 in Fujian, there is an established tea culture with its own specific types and groups.
Shop Fujian Tea Collection
Tea fields in Fujian Province, China
Imagine if Chinese tea was a family...
Shou Mei
As a white tea, this should not come as a surprise, but Shou Mei is the cat. Yep, that’s right. Shou Mei is the quiet shy, cat that you forgot you had. Subtle, it manages to have just enough personality to distinguish itself from water, but not enough to be overpowering.
Silver Needles
Silver needles is the newborn daughter. Young, pricey, and a little too delicate. This white tea is the baby of the family and whenever it’s around all eyes are on this amazingly light, crisp, and intriguing tea.
Dragonwell
This is that snarky teenage brother who thinks he’s too cool for family reunions and would rather “play fort bro”. This tea is more floral than grassy tea and is a staple of Chinese green teas.
Big Red Robe
You know your older cousin who wears sunglasses all the time but drives a mom van? Maybe he even insists you hold the door open for him? Yes, that’s Big Red Robe. Since historically this tea was reserved only for the emperor, it makes sense that this tea attempts to act as exclusive as it can…without being exclusive at all. This toasty, smooth, roasted oolong is truly amazing and thankfully available to everyone, commoner and king.
Ti Guan Yin (aka Iron Goddess of Mercy)
This is your classic, rambunctious younger “tween” sister who insists that “like no one says cool anymore (ugh)”. This oolong, which can be either baked traditionally or left greener, prefers to be known as a staple of Fujian oolong. Smooth, floral, and distinct, this oolong isn’t cool, it’s “dope”.
Jin Jun Mei
This black tea is the mother-head of the household…and she don’t mess around. Lover of expensive taste and eccentric as can be, this black tea is sweet, floral, slightly fruity, but also very complex. Translating to “golden horse eyebrow”, this black tea is definitely a first class tea.
Sheng Pu’er
Sheng: slowly aged pu’er that gets more valuable with age…kind of like grandpa! This old tea truly represents your local old grandpa. Deep, earthy, and with an abundance of…flavor. These teas have the potential to become more valuable and wiser with age.
Shou Pu’er
Meanwhile, our guy Shou Pu’er is grandpa’s younger brother that you still can’t figure out why grandpa agreed to take him in for all these years. Shou Pu’er is younger and has been aged in a less natural process, which gives it some dark notes and smooth subtleties.
Dark Tea
This is your great aunt that you’ve never actually met but you’ve heard stories about. Elusive, she’s the mother figure to grandpa so you know she has at least a bit of decency. Dark tea is rare in the US, but still a truly unique category of tea with a complex history that matches the complexity of its flavor.
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On Monday we left the convention center in Xiamen and departed for tea country with our friend and Fujian tea supplier Daniel Hong. He brought us to Anxi County – home of the famous Ti Kwan Yin oolong tea, and the lesser known Huang Jin Gui. Our destination was an overnight stay with Mr. Lin, who specializes in both these teas. Mr. Lin lives in the rural town of Huqui, about 3.5 hours from Xiamen. It’s the kind of place that has no Wikipedia page.
Anxi wholesale market
On the way we stopped at the Anxi wholesale market, which is open every day in the spring and fall seasons (approx. Apr. 20th – May 20th and Sep. 20th – Oct. 20th respectively). It’s an open hall lined with long benches and a cupping station in the middle. Local farmers gather with large bags of finished (or almost finished) tea leaves aiming to sell. The place is loud, fairly crowded, and has that sweet floral fragrance of green oolong. If you’re interested in purchasing someone’s tea, they give you a small handful to bring to the cupping station. The cupping station is a wet, half-circle table littered with steeped tea leaves, gaiwans, small cups, and a few cigarette butts. There’s a couple that stand behind the “bar” and keep hot water coming in large kettles. For one yuan ($0.16) you simply walk up with your sample, grab a gaiwan, and cup it right there.
Cupping "bar" at wholesale market
Shop the Fujian Tea Collection
We arrived at Mr. Lin’s in the mid-afternoon. It was humid, overcast, and the depth of emptiness from the mountains was striking to someone accustomed to flat land. We immediately sat down to drink some Huang Jin Gui, Daniel’s favorite tea. When I asked him when this tea was made he replies, “Yesterday.”
Bill cupping with Mr. Lin (left) and Daniel Hong (middle)
The evening was spent periodically cupping a batch of Huang Jin Gui they were in the middle of baking. Traditionally in China, baking is the final step of making teas like Ti Kwan Yin and Huang Jin Gui. It is a recent trend driven largely by westerners to skip this step and leave it “green”. But inside China, baking the tea was and still is the tradition. About every 90 minutes Daniel and Mr. Lin would pull a handful of tea from the baking racks, cup it, and make notes and adjustments. Decisions are made using one’s own nose, mouth, and intuition. They were nice enough to include Bill and me in the process and asked for our opinions, but this is when you realize how little you actually know about tea making.
Mr. Lin's tea fields
The next morning was spent visiting Mr. Lin’s tea fields, which are a brief, “rustic” drive up the mountain side from his tea factory. Plucking was already finished for the season so all the bushes were neatly pruned and ready for the summer flush to come. From this perch, the entire panorama was horizontal lines of tea bushes against the more vertical lines of the mountains – as far as the eye could see. Daniel was explaining the physical differences between the Huang Jin Gui and Ti Kwan Yin plants and we spent a large portion of the time just soaking it all in and enjoying the moment. It’s hard to emphasize how much you learn from just being here.
-Michael Lannier, Operations Manager
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Third generation tea farm in the mountains of Anxi Province, China
The tea market in America can feel like a small, niche industry. Not so in China. The Xiamen Tea Fair is big - six exhibition halls big - like being inside a kaleidoscope of Puer big. If you are an American who has the context to imagine a kaleidoscope of Puer, then you are definitely part of that small niche industry.
Tea booths at the Xiamen Tea Fair
The Xiamen Tea Fair has over six hundred exhibitors selling tea, teapots, gaiwans, tea packaging, and even clothes to make you look like you drink tea. For a company like TeaSource, this is a great place to find potential new suppliers. Vendors are more than happy to have you sit in their booth and make you tea, gongfu style, for 30+ minutes at a time. It’s a slow pace, especially if you don’t speak Mandarin. On the first day after almost three hours, we had only made it three rows in. I could still see the entrance.
Bill & Michael drinking tea
With all these choices, it may seem easy to simply go there and buy tea, but that is not the case. Many companies who can export to America are too big to work with a small company like ours. And many companies who produce the quantity/quality we like to work with are small, family operations who don’t have the means to sell outside of China. Facilitating payments and shipments to another country is a major headache. In addition to being a hassle, some refused to sell to us because we are westerners and they don’t believe we’ll appreciate the fine quality of the tea they produce. There was a gentleman from Yunnan who bluntly told us exactly that. It wasn’t said out of any anger or smugness, he just takes a lot of pride in what he does. We had to work through a lot of “no’s” or reluctant “maybe’s” (and drink a lot of really great tea) to find those who are excited by the idea of selling tea outside of China.
Gongfu style tea
After sorting through all the vendors at the show, it would be easy to think you’ve seen everything the Xiamen tea trade has to offer. Not even close. On the first day of our trip we stopped in to see our friends at Share and Taste (they have a new baby) at their store front office. It’s located in a shopping center that is 5 floors and 3 of them are dedicated to tea only! In China, it is not uncommon for those in the same industry to cluster their commerce together like this. As an American tea enthusiast, the variety of choice is near paralyzing, but endlessly exciting. Each one of these store fronts is only a glimpse into the family, the history, and the geography of the Chinese tea business.
Eldon,Yanmei, and their baby of Share & Taste Tea
Shopping center with 3 full floors of tea shops
And in case that wasn’t enough, here’s another tea market in Xiamen. Unlike the contained and orderly shopping center where we visited Share and Taste, this one was several city blocks that contained all the messiness and grit of everyday life. Kids playing, family members sorting and packaging tea, men gathered round the tea table smoking and playing cards, meals being cooked. Nothing is too tidy, but everything is in its place.
If you wanted some tea, they would be happy to have you sit down and join them. They often invited you in if you made eye contact. A new acquaintance we met brought us here because he knew we loved Chinese tea culture. He was right.
Outdoor tea market in Xiamen
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Winner of the 2018 John Harney Lifetime Achievement Award
Join us for an insighful talk with internationally renowned tea scientist Nigel Melican, founder of Teacraft, the preeminent tea consultancy based in London. Nigel will take us through a science-based look on the state of the tea industry in his presentation, "Will there be tea in 2050?" The Tea Masters event will provide a unique opportunity to listen to, ask questions of, and share tea with a man who has helped shape the specialty tea industry as it exists today. We will be tasting 6 teas at this event.
You don’t want to miss this special limited seating event—it will sell out quickly!
When: June 17, 2018, 1-3 pm
Where: TeaSource Warehouse
2616 Cleveland Ave N
Roseville, MN 55113
Cost: $20/person
Registration required. To register, call the TeaSource warehouse at 651-788-9971 or sign up at one of the retail stores.
For more information, please email us at office@teasource.com.
Can't make it in person? We will be streaming the event on Facebook Live!
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The Royal Wedding is coming up on May 19.
Tea time with the queen.
Stick your little pinky out.
How did the tradition of British tea develop?
It began with a princess from Portugal…
Catharine of Braganza (Image source)
Catharine loved tea, possibly more than she loved her betrothed, King Charles II of England. Charles II, after taking the throne back from Oliver Cromwell, ran up huge debts. So he went looking for a young, beautiful, well-connected bride with a very rich father. Enter Catharine of Braganza, whose father King John of Portugal was very, very rich - think the gold and silver mines in the America’s and Portuguese trade routes within its colonial empire.
When Catharine arrived in Britain for her wedding she brought her love of everything tea with her. Before long tea drinking was the all rage among royalty and the upper classes.
I like to think a love of tea brought Catharine comfort on those cold foreign shores.
As the British say; a cup of tea will get you through times of no love, better than love will get you through times of no tea.
The first attempt to get the British public interested in tea came with an advertisement pushing the health claims for tea. Some of these claims were; tea was capable of curing “dropsie,” restoring one’s “lustiness” (we all need our lustiness restored occasionally), overcoming “crudites” and more.
This printed advertisement appeared for a tobacconist named Thomas Garway.
Thomas Garway’s broadside extolling the virtues of tea, 1668.
Some of the more wonderful claims for this strange “herb” from the east include:
“It maketh the Body clean and lusty.
It helpeth the Head-ach, giddiness and heaviness thereof.
It vanquisheth heavy Dreams, easeth the Brain, and strengtheneth the Memory.
It overcometh superfluous Sleep, and prevents Sleepiness in general, a draught of the Infusion being taken, so that, without trouble, whole nights may be spent in Study without hurt to the Body, in that it moderately heateth and bindeth the mouth of the Stomach."
Despite such ads it was a long time before tea drinking was commonplace among all classes.
For a long time most of the tea drunk in Britain was green tea, not ‘British Breakfast blends’ of black tea. It wasn’t until around 1700 that Britain started drinking black tea. And most of it was drunk by only the rich and royal. (Side note; the tea that was thrown into Boston Harbor in 1773 was green tea).
Throughout the 18th century, black tea grew in popularity and came down in price. By 1800 black tea was the most consumed drink (after beer) in Great Britain. Almost all of this black tea which was known as Bohea or Singlo tea came from the Fujian province of China.
British tea as we think of it today, evolved between the 1830’s and 1900, during the long reign of Queen Victoria.
Tea parties, either of the peerage, or in imitation of the peerage became commonplace by the late 1800’s.
Royal tea parties, the use of fine British bone china teaware, and the inculcation of tea into the everyday life of practically all Englishman was complete by 1900.
This love of tea grew even more through 2 world wars. Protection of Britain’s tea gardens in Assam, India, was considered so crucial to the British war effort (and British moral) that many tea planters were not allowed to enter the armed forces. Their work growing and supplying tea to the British Empire was considered more vital to the war effort.
This love of tea became part of the British character as indicated by this short film from 1941 on how to make proper British tea. This film was made in the midst of the Battle of Britain.
from "Tea Making Tips" short film, 1941
What teas do the British drink?
English Breakfast: A strong no-nonsense blend, usually made with some combination of black teas from India, Sri Lanka, or Africa. Although the first tea sold as English Breakfast, was the same tea as our TeaSource Empire Keemun. A strong tea made to stand up to milk and sugar
Irish Breakfast: Another strong tea, usually with a lot of tea from Assam, India, which gives it a distinctive malty character (think Guinness).
Lapsang Souchong: A strong black tea from Fujian, China, that has been smoked over pine fires. It is said to be the favorite tea of Sherlock Holmes and Winston Churchill (as long as there was a shot of whiskey in it).
Earl Grey White Tip: A tea with oil of bergamot, which gives it a floral citrus sweetness. Beloved by Jean Luc Picard and Queen Elizabeth II.
And this brings us up to present day and Queen Elizabeth II, who starts every morning with a pot of Earl Grey tea (no milk or sugar).
Great Britain’s longest reigning monarch serving 63 years.
Tea continues to be the national drink of Britain, as evidenced by this recent ad (which somehow bears a striking similarity to Thomas Garway’s first tea ad) extolling the extreme virtues of tea; from mending a broken heart to fighting zombies.
So when May 19th comes, even if you’re glued to the telly for the wedding, have a nice cuppa British style tea and give thanks that Great Britain embraced tea three and half centuries ago.
Bill Waddington, founder
TeaSource
