Hey teaheads.
This is Don from Mei Leaf.
In this video : What is Purple Tea?
In this video I'm going to be discussing the different TYPES of purple tea, and we're going
to TASTE a couple of them.
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SOME of you may have already heard about purple Tea.
It's a relatively NEW phenomenon on the tea market, but certainly more and more tea sellers
are starting to stock it.
So what exactly IS purple tea?
Well the FIRST thing to say is that purple Tea is NOT a new tea CATEGORY.
In other words, it's NOT going to be added to the other categories, like : white, green,
Oolong, post-fermented tea, etcetera.
Instead, all the purple tea means is that the material that is used is very high in
anthocyanins.
Anthocyanins are PIGMENTS which have a red-purple colour, and they are found THROUGHOUT nature.
They're found in OTHER medicinal herbs, sometimes, in their flowerheads.
They're also found in FRUITS - your superfruits like blackberries, blueberries, ectetera.
They're found in plums.
They're found in the skin of red grapes.
In fact, anythocyanins contribute to the colour of red wine.
They're also found in VEGETABLES, like the skin of eggplants, or aubergines.
Anthocyanins are being researched currently because there's a lot of EXCITEMENT about
the potential HEALTH benefits of anthocyanins.
Some of the purported health benefits include: anti-cancer effects, lowering cholesterol,
anti-inflammatory, good for heart health and cognitive functions.
There are LOTS of tests and clinical studies that are being done on anthocyanins, but as
always we have to be very careful making health claims, because the facts aren't fully in.
But it CERTAINLY seems to be true that drinking and eating foods that are RICH in anthocyanins
is certainly very GOOD for you.
But we're not going to focus on the health benefits today.
Instead we're going to BRIEFLY talk about the different TYPES of purple tea, and we're
going to TASTE a couple of them.
So, purple tea why is it that the plant FLUSHES with this purple pigment and these anthocyanins?
Well, there are a GROUP of varietals that NATURALLY sprout purple, AND they’re what
we call a "reaction" to environmental stresses.
So OTHER plants that NORMALLY sprout green leaves CAN start to flush purple - ESPECIALLY
if they are undergoing a lot of stress from UV radiation; in other words they're getting
a lot of sun.
Now anthocyanins are a kind of SUNSCREEN to plants, so they PROTECT the plant from excessive
DAMAGE due to UV radiation.
So in the tropical forests of Yunnan sometimes the Assamica - the classic, large leaf cultivar
- if it's getting too much sun WILL start to flush purple leaves.
AND the producers WILL PICK those purple leaves, and either mix them with their Puerh tea,
or sometimes - if they get ENOUGH of it - make special purple tea Zi Cha CAKES.
Purple Tea that is picked in this way tends to be slightly milder, slightly sweeter, but
it's very rare, and comprises to maybe about one percent of the tea leaves that are picked
in Yunnan province.
So those are the Zi Chas, the purple teas that are due to the plants flushing because
of environmental conditions.
Then on the OTHER side you have varietals that just NATURALLY sprout purple buds and
leaves.
There are a COUPLE of them in China.
One of them is Zi Juan.
The Zi Juan cultivar is a man-made cultivar.
This was created, I think, around the 1990s, and it comes from crossing a Fujianese tea
plant, that was flushing purple, with the Assamica in Yunnan, and it created this new
cultivar.
So it was created by the Xishuanbanna - the Yunnan tea authorities - and it's on the market
today as "Purple Tea", Zi Juan tea.
Now I've TASTED Zi Juan tea while I was in Yunnan province, and it's pleasant and nice,
in my opinion it TASTES - for some reason - commercial.
It tastes like it's an ARTIFICIALLY created tea.
I don't mean that in any negative way.
There are LOTS of cultivars that have been created artificially - as in they have been
created by authorities, rather than just natural hybridization in nature - and they can be
great.
But for SOME reason this Zi Juan tea has a lovely colour - a very beautiful purple colour
- and the liquor is a kind of pink hue, and it's very pretty.
It tastes flowery and sweet, but there's something that tastes very UNNATURAL about it.
There's something that tastes very LIGHTWEIGHT about it.
It doesn't have the depth that comes, I feel, from natural hybridization.
So that's ONE type of purple tea that you may see on the market.
The OTHER one is from a WILD varietal of purple tea.
Some people call it Ye Sheng, which is just kind of a wild tea plant which flushes purple
buds and purple leaves.
These wild purple tea plants tend to come from NORTHERN Yunnan, around the De Hong area,
so close to Lin Cang area.
NOT really your classic Puerh territory.
I've got some purple buds here.
These buds are from this wilder varietal of purple flushing tea trees in northern Yunnan
province.
We're going to taste that tea in a little bit.
Just make sure I'm in focus here.
Right.
BEFORE we taste this tea - which is the tea that WE stock as 'Purple Bud", or Zi Ya, we're
going to taste this KENYAN Purple tea, which I've never tasted before.
This has been sent to me, very kindly, by some Kenyan producers.
Kenya had been, for the past 20 years, trying to create this purple tea varietal; a tea
varietal that's very RICH in anthocyanins.
You can take a look at it.
It's being processed as a black tea.
You can see it doesn't look very purple, but supposedly when I brew it, after a little
tick or two it BECOMES purple.
Let's give this a taste.
I've never tasted this.
A first one for me.
You can see that the leaf is BROKEN, it's not full leaf, which is not something that
I particularly like to see, because it just means that the brew is probably going to be
a little bit more sensitive to going BITTER.
But we're going to give it a taste.
Because a black tea, and because it's relatively fine, I'm going to be brewing this JUST UNDER
boiling - something around 95, 96 degrees, which is about 200-odd Fahrenheit.
Here we go.
I'm going to do it Gong Fu style, so I'm going to give it a little rinse first.
Let's give it a smell.
It smells slightly MUSTY, a little bit sour and musty.
I don't have TOO MUCH hope for it right now, but let's give it a taste.
We're going to let that brew JUST for a few seconds.
I don't want to over-brew it.
I think that is probably enough.
I put about 8 grams of the broken leaf, and this is a 180 ml glass teapot.
Okay.
My first time trying Kenyan purple tea.
Let's firstly take a look at the colour Okay.
So, a very DIFFERENT colour to your usual black teas, you can see.
It DOES have a kind of green-purplish HUE to it - that kind of combination of green
and purple.
You know when you have asparagus, and starts to develop a little bit of purple hue to it.
Those are anthocyanins as well.
Okay.
Let's give it a taste.
It's a little bit CLOUDY, but that's probably because it's broken leaf.
Let's give it a taste.
Hmm.
It has a quite musty, stewed, bitter taste to it, to be honest with you.
I'm NOT really enamoured by this tea.
It doesn't really have anything BRIGHT and floral, or bright and AROMATIC about it.
It's very DEAD in the glass, feels very flat, not great.
Now SUPPOSEDLY I can increase the purple colouring by adding a few drops of lemon juice, I've
been told.
So let's give this a try.
I'm just going add a COUPLE of drops of lemon juice in.
Oh yeah!
That DOES change the colour.
Wow!
So there's the magic trick.
That makes it go a VERY beautiful pink-purple hue.
I very much doubt it's going to do much for the flavour, but that certainly is a beautiful
magic trick.
Actually is the colour of the Zi Juan.
So if you ever get a hold of some Zi Juan tea from Yunnan province it tends to brew
to colour - beautiful pink-purple hue.
Yeah.
That just tastes like it's got a couple of drops of lemon juice in it.
I'm getting the aromatics of the lemon - the citrus - but in fact, the tea is EVEN MORE
lost, and all I'm getting is a kind of bitter, weak taste.
So, not a big fan of that, I have to say.
Sorry about that.
But that's the way it goes with tastings.
I'm sure there are people will LOVE it dearly.
Instead, now, we're going to be tasting our own Purple Bud.
Purple Bud, as I said, comes from the WILD cultivars that NATURALLY sprout purple leaves.
This is from De Hong, which is in NORTHERN Yunnan province.
I'm going to give it a little rinse Ah!
The smell coming off here is like pine and citrus - so I'm guessing there's a lot of
pinene in this - and the flowery wood flowers, like forest flowers smell.
It's beautiful, and REALLY represents the terroir of where it was picked.
I find that Lin Sang Puerhs tend to have these lovely piney, bright notes with the wet wood
flavours and aromas too.
That seems to be something that is very prevalent in the northern Yunnan teas.
I'm going to brew this for a LITTLE BIT longer than you might expect.
Because it's buds, those buds are like armor-plated, so it takes longer for the water to go in.
I'm brewing at 95 degrees still, so just under boiling, because again, I want to PENETRATE
into those buds and get a good, flavourful and rich brew.
I used 8 grams of purple bud to - I think this is about - 150 to 180 ml Gai Wan.
That should be enough.
I tell you what I'll do.
Instead of pouring this into the teacup you should see the colour of the tea.
So I'm going to quickly rinse out this Kenyan Purple tea down here and we'll pour THIS tea
in here.
A beautiful colour.
Take a look at the colour here.
This is obviously more YELLOW.
It's STILL got a slight purple hue to it though.
You can DEFINITELY pick up those anthocyanins.
Those pigments are definitely TRANSFERRING from the bud material into the tea cup - or
in this case, the glass.
The smell, again, is beautiful.
You're getting SPICY notes, like camphor, and this SOUR fruitiness to it NOT QUITE like
a Muscat.
It's not as SWEET as a muscatel, but it's definitely got the kind of SOURS of citrus
and pine - that freshness of pine.
You're getting wet earth and wet wood, but nothing TOO autumnal; nothing like a COOKED
Puerh tea.
Let's give it a taste, very soft, very clean, lovely SWEET note to it.
If you were taking the LEAVES of this varietal - so this WILD, purple tea varietal - then
they tend to be quite bitter.
But the BUDS have a real sweetness and softness to them, and it REALLY represents terroir.
More than MOST types of tea I think that when you drink this purple bud you REALLY feel
like you're walking through a HOT, humid, tropical Yunnan forest.
When I go to Yunnan and drive around, the smell that you get off this glass is EXACTLY
the same smell you get when you open the window and you're driving through the tea mountains
of Yunnan.
You open the window - or if you're walking through the plantations - the SMELL that you
get is exactly the same smell as you get here.
So it really DOES represent the terroir of Yunnan province.
It really is an UNUSUAL tea.
It's got SO MUCH softness, but very HIGH notes, with the pine and slight citrus spiciness,
then all UNDERPINNED with a foundation of a kind of wet, woody, humid forest flavour.
When you breathe out through your nose afterwards, you're getting an elderberry - that slightly
fermented elderflower taste, or aroma, coming through the nose.
A really, really lovely tea.
So, THOSE are purple teas.
If you know of ANY OTHER purple teas then please put them in the comments below.
But that's it teaheads.
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Bye.