STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 39 Egyptian chamomile is generally rated as the best, by far. It's grown in the Nile Valley in a region marked for its distinctive terroir — the combination of soil, environment, ecosystem, and bio-management — that produces the smoothest and fullest chamomile tea ingredient. The organ- ic, loose-leaf full flower — no stems and broken pieces — is a far superior tea to the standard tea- bag chamomiles. Spices Many teas contain spices. Turmeric, ginger, and cinnamon are increasingly popular instances. Again, many of these are taken for granted with little information on quality and variety. A basic issue is the difference between natural and organic varieties, as well as many of the major commodity producers and packagers. Spices need to be kept safe. The standard mass market method is literally to "nuke 'em." Irradiation beams radiation on the spices, in large chambers. It is highly effective in destroying the DNA of microorganisms that cause food poisoning, and it also extends shelf life. But it reduces many dimensions of flavor and aroma. It is illegal to apply it to items labeled as "organic." It is a base for the ground spices that dominate the market. Again, information and education are largely lacking for the spiced tea segments. Chai is a useful illustration. Here's the ingredients label for a Ma- sala chai: "black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper." It's excellent. Here's another: "natu- ral black tea, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, ginger." It's not so good. A third: "cardamon, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, bay leaves." The customer reviews amount to a collective "meh." They are all in the same price range. There are more than 600 masala chais to choose from on Amazon, with the ingredients listed in the same way. There's not enough information to pick out the special ones. See the chart on this page for de- Cardamon Cinnamon Ginger Cloves Black pepper Bay leaves The best Cracked green pods; highly aromatic, oily Provide pungent sweetness and an aromatic flavor that don't overwhelm the tea. Sri Lanka: scarce, intense aroma China dominant source of good-quality ginger root. Brazil gaining wide plaudits as superior, along with Peru Unopened pink flower buds Stay fresh for around a year Malabar Coast, India. The standout for its bright, fresh and rich, complex aromas Turkish best-suited for teas: mildly menth0l-like Average White: Bleached green, lower quality Black: different plant, not truly cardamom but a botanical relative. Its small seeds add a smoky and peppery flavor. Cassia: same plant, less sweet Dried, ground powder, peeled Many producing nations Asia, Africa, Latin America, with continuing concerns about low yields, mold, poor quality, fragmented supply chains Dried, ground Go stale in six months More intense flavor Commodity crop with Vietnam producing a third of the world's total. Wide quality variations, from poor terroir and management practices. Ground pepper loses flavor rapidly California: potent, harsh, eucalyptus-like scriptions of the "best" of each of the main spices and the "average". Jasmine green Jasmine green captures the extreme of quality coming from the flower. It is a wonderful tea, or quite a good one, or sort of OK. There are two forms: leaf and pearls. Pearls are tightly folded very small pellets. These store the flavors that ex- pand when brewed. A teaspoon of Dragon Pearls unfolds to fill a third of a cup. Both forms illustrate the extent to which the tea itself and how it is processes are not the pri- mary determinants of the beverage. It is largely left unspecified in catalogs. One of the highest-rated online sellers lists nine jasmine greens. Here are the descriptions: carefully selected leaf sets, well- made leaves, base tea, bud sets, quality greens, green tea. A smaller provider of outstanding teas describes its jasmine greens as made from fresh and high-quality spring-plucked green tea. Rose congou similarly lists the tea as just a good/qual- ity/fine China black and not of a specific variety, pedigree, or region. That leaves plenty of space to provide detailed descriptions of the rose and jasmine. Quite literal- ly, for jasmine this could total a short book. Here's a minimalist summary: Jasmine is grown in a number of Asian coun- tries; India has an estimated 40 varieties. The market-leading jasmine for tea comes mainly from China's Fujian and also Guangxi Province. The terroir and mild winter ensure a stronger and richer fragrance than in other regions, including Taiwan, whose sea-island climate produces a less- fresh flavor. Jasmine tea is also grown in Okinawa, Japan and in other farming regions of China, and mostly marketed in dried form. The best jasmine has a brightness of color while lower quality jasmine has brownish spots from casual handling, mixed petal size and slight Evaluating Botanical Quality

• Cover