Hey teaheads!
This is Don from Mei Leaf.
In this video : Essential Information For Buying Tea.
In this video I'm going to be giving you the lowdown on the bare minimum information that
you need to find the "good stuff" when selecting your loose leaf tea.
This video is going to go under the "Basic Tea Education" playlist.
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Mei Leaf has been in business for nearly 15 years, [and] our tea house in Camden for over
10 years, and it's been amazing to me - [and] a source of frustration - that there is not
enough transparent information given by tea sellers about their tea.
This is fundamentally important for you as tea buyers, because, number one, without the
information you can't make an informed choice about what you are buying.
Number two, it doesn't encourage your education in tea, because the more you know about the
teas, and the more you know about the intricacies of the tea that you're buying, the more you
can make connections when you are tasting to figure out [if] ' this cultivar is a cultivar
that you like, versus another cultivar?'
or if a certain year was a better vintage than another.
So if you are stripped of that information you are robbed of that ability to make those
connections, and therefore it hinders your tea journey.
The third thing is, hey, if they're not giving you the information then why is that?
Why are the tea sellers not giving you that information?
Is it because they don't know, or is it because they've got something to hide?
I think it says a lot about the tea sellers when they're not giving enough information.
So Mei Leaf, and other good [reputation] tea sellers, will give you as much information
as possible, and [in] this video I want to talk about the essential information that
you should be requiring from each and every one of your tea sellers when making purchasing
decisions.
Imagine you walked into a wine shop [which] was supposedly a very high quality wine shop
branding itself as experts in wine.
Then they hand you a bottle and they tell you that, "This is a red wine from Italy."
They don't give you any information about the variety, they don't give you any information
about the way it was produced, [and] they don't give you any information about the year
it was produced.
I think that you would be very quick at judging that that tea seller was hiding information,
or not giving you enough information, for you to make a good purchasing choice.
The same applies to tea and yet so many tea sellers don't give enough information.
So let's talk about that, [but] before that I'll tell you what I'm drinking.
I'm drinking a Tien Fu Hei Cha here.
I'll show it to this camera here.
This is a Tien Fu Hei Cha, [which is a] really, really nice tea.
I'll be doing another video about this in the future.
Right.
[For] the bare minimum, of course, you need to know the type.
Most tea sellers will tell you the type of tea.
If they're not even telling you the type of tea then we really have a problem.
They will also, probably, tell you the country, but you need to go into more detail.
At Mei Leaf we have coined the term SCOPE, which is an acronym, and it's a way that we
advise clients to ask the relevant questions when purchasing tea.
So for all of the tea videos that I do I always give a SCOPE analysis, and on our Mei Leaf
web site - Mei Leaf.com - for every single tea there is a SCOPE analysis.
So let's go through why I do a SCOPE analysis, and what [it means].
"S", in SCOPE, means season.
Now we're talking about when a tea was picked and produced.
Obviously, that starts with year.
Year is very important.
Year is important because some teas you want to drink relatively fresh - within a year
or two; specifically green teas - so within a year or two of them being produced.
Some teas you want [to] age, so the age is an important decisive factor in what you are
buying.
Are you buying a 2015 white tea, or are you buying a 2011 white tea?
Well, the 2011 white tea would be an aged white tea, and therefore would have a different
flavor profile, different effect, and a different expected price.
So year is very important, but within tea season is very important too.
Now this is one of the key differences between wine and tea.
In wine you have one harvest a year.
When the grape is at it's perfect optimum they harvest to make the wine, whereas win
tea, once you pick those leaves they will grow again, so you can make tea throughout
the year.
You can - some farmers do, and some plantations do - [pick] tea multiple times in the year.
Therefore, it is essential that you know at least the season that it was picked.
Ideally, you want to know the month, and sometimes tea sellers will even give you the exact dates
that the tea was picked.
As a general rule - and there are lots of exceptions to the rules - but as a general
rule, spring-picked tea is considered to be the highest quality for most teas.
The reason for that is that the plant has just gone through winter, where it's been
going through a dormant phase [and] it hasn't been growing.
All of that time it's been taking nutrients and minerals from the soil, it's been building
up its nutritional content, and that is being put into the first flush of the leaves - the
first leaves that come out in early spring - and therefore they are considered to be
the richest, because they're slow-growing, because it's still cold, and all of the nutrients
that have been built up over the dormant period are pumped into those leaves, and when you
pluck them you have a very rich, flavorful brew.
So, early spring-picked - you may hear the term "first flush tea" - is generally considered
to be very high quality.
That's not to say that second flushes are not high quality too, but it's important that
they give you this information - the tea sellers give you this information - so that you can
make a choice.
There are some teas which are great in summer, for example Bai Hao Oolong ("Eastern Beauty")
is a classic example, that they wait in the summertime to pick it because they want the
insects to come.
I've done videos on this, [and] I'll put a link in the description below.
Then there are some teas which are good in autumn, or winter teas.
Again, once it starts to cool down again and the plant slows down its growth, as the plants
slows down it means that there's more time for it to pump those flavorful compounds into
the tea leaves to make a richer brew.
So season is fundamental, [and so] it's very important that you get this information.
Next in the SCOPE analysis is "C", which stands for "cultivar" or variety.
This is one of the factors that is most ignored in the tea world, to my amazement, because
variety is fundamental to understanding what the tea will taste like.
Imagine, again, that you walked into a wine shop and they provided you with a bottle of
red wine and they didn't tell you which variety it was.
They didn't tell you if it was a Malbec, or a Cabernet Sauvignon, or if it was a Merlot.
That's information that you would want, because you know - if you drink wine - that a Merlot
will taste different to a Malbec, which tastes different to a Cabernet Sauvignon.
So the variety is fundamental.Cing Shin variety tastes very different to Jin Xuan variety
in tea, and that tastes very different to a Jin Ji variety, which tastes very different
to a "Long Jing 43" variety.
There are [hundreds] - if not thousands - of varieties of tea, and if you're not being
given that information you won't know.
You can't make guesses about what it will taste like, and you will not expand your knowledge
about tea.
[This is] very important.
"O" in SCOPE is "origin".
Now we're talking about where the tea was picked, [which] again [is] fundamental.
There are very famous provinces in China, in Japan, [and] in Taiwan, for certain types
of tea.
You want to know if the tea [has] been [grown] and picked in that province.
Ideally, you want even more detail than that.
You want to know at least the province, but I would say that you also would like to know
the county, and maybe even the mountain, [and] even, potentially, the fields that it was
picked from.
Again, more information gives you more ability to make connections and build up your education
about tea; build up a connection between knowledge and your palate when tasting tea.
"P" stands for "picking and processing".
Picking [means] what part of the plant was picked.
Is if just the buds?
Is it the bud and the first leaf?
Is it the bud and the first two leaves?
Have they allowed the buds to open up completely, and now they're picking second and third leaves,
as is the case with Oolong teas?
The flavor of the tea changes as the leaf matures, and so it's important that the tea
seller tells you what picking you will be getting when you brew that tea.
Apart from that, it's good to know more information about the processing.
How was the tea processed?
You know?
This tea, [SIPS TEA] Tien Fu Hei Cha, has good through a very elaborate processing,
including a ripening process where they encourage spores of golden flowers to form within the
tea.
That's information which is not just enriching your experience when drinking the tea, but
also gives you, again, connections that allow you to make predictions about what other teas
will taste like in your future tea journey.
Finally, in the SCOPE analysis, is ["E" for] "elevation".
Elevation is less of a - I would say it's not top priority, but it's good to know.
For example, if you go to buy Dan Cong from the Guang Dong region of China, there are
areas that are very famous, like [the] Phoenix Village area, but there is a very big difference
in altitudes.
So you can get teas which are picked pretty much at road level, right by the roadside
at very, very low latitude, and you can get tea which is picked at over 1000 meters high.
It's fundamental to know the difference.
Just because it says, "This is a Phoenix Dan Cong coming from Phoenix area in Guang Dong..."
doesn't necessarily mean that it's a high quality tea.
The altitude, or elevation, is also fundamental.
Generally - again, there are exceptions - but generally higher elevation means that it's
colder during the night, which slows down the growth, and therefore, again, makes for
richer tea, because the plant has more time to pump those nutrients into the leaf and
produce a richer brew.
Also, higher elevation means that there's less insects, which means that there's less
possibility that the farmers will have to use some pesticides, which is another point
of concern.
So elevation is, again, very important.
That's your SCOPE analysis : Season, Cultivar, Origin, Picking and Processing, and Elevation
- the bare minimum information that you need in order to make good purchasing decisions
and build up your tea knowledge.
At Mei Leaf we put all of that information of the SCOPE analysis on the back of our packages,
and also on our web site.
I know that other responsible tea sellers are giving out similar information.
If your tea seller is not giving you that information then I would request it.
If they can't give you that information then I would question whether or not they know
the providence of their tea.
But keep requesting it, because the more you request it as buyers you will raise the standard
of this industry, and you will raise this transparency which is fundamental for you
to find the "good stuff".
That's it teaheads.
If you made it to the end of this video then please give it the thumbs-up.
Check out our YouTube playlists and let us know if there are any videos that you would
like us to make.
If you're ever in London then come visit us in Camden to say "Hi!" and taste our wares.
If you have any questions or comments then please fire them over.
Other than that, I'm Don Mei from Mei Leaf.
Thank you for being a part of the revelation of true tea.
Stay away from those tea bags, keep drinking the good stuff, and spread the word, because
nobody deserves bad tea.
Bye [WAVING]