STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 37 Is Sustainability Attainable? Both China and Vietnam have made extensive legislative efforts to enact conservation measures, but enforcement remains a challenge. At the merchant level, Shafer is taking steps to ensure that tea suppliers act sustainably. "I only sell teas made from the terminal buds and leaves and from areas where they don't hack trees down," he says. "Those auxiliary buds are important for the tree's health, helping it to recover after the winter or following pruning. I'm not an expert in ecology, but there must be a certain percentage of those buds you can harvest without greatly affecting the tree's health." In the meantime, scientific research regarding sustainable harvesting of wild tea species remains limited, and Shafer is just one among many merchants who offer wild tea, not all of whom share his concerns. Consumers face an entirely different wilderness, where the term "wild" is deliberately abused and there are few tools to determine which kind of wild tea is on offer or whether the products are harvested sustainably. Why People Go Wild for "Wild" Tea Peering a few years backward offers a bit more clarity. Wild tea as a market trend appears to be a recent phenomenon, dating back about a decade. In an investigative article published on Chinese news platform Jiemian in 2016, as wild tea was just be- ginning to explode in popularity in China, journalists asserted that "wild tea is largely a marketing gimmick," a tag that could be easily added to "dramatically boost tea prices." The study cited an example of a 380-gram brick of aged white tea selling for RMB 260, whereas a similar product labeled as "wild" would sell for between RMB 1,200 and 1,500. After digging deeper into local tea markets in China, the journalists began to suspect that most wild teas sold online or in tea shops were of questionable origin, noting, "Wild tea is supposedly a rare product, and yet every shop seems to have it." The authors hypothesized that the sudden popularity of wild tea among Chinese consumers was due to "a major material and spiritual shift. People no longer feel satisfied with simple, inex- pensive teas; they are concerned about food safety and increas- ingly look for natural products. … The term 'wild' conveys a Native to the humid forests and mountains of Southeast Asia, C. sinensis var. assamica trees grow wild in northern India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and southern China. Photo credit: Seth Griffin message that a tea is 'natural, healthy, tasty, and rare,' which ticks all the boxes for certain consumers." Ten years later, international consumers face the same am- biguities and perhaps an even more pressing ecological choice. At its best, wild tea offers the promise of a sublimely delicious and healthy beverage. At its worst, wild tea damages fragile eco- systems and is largely a loosely applied term to artificially inflate tea prices. ACTUATE * *SYNONYM: STiR, influence, inspire, propel, rouse, excite... Don't Miss a Single STiRring Issue of the World's Leading Industry Magazine for Coffee and Tea. ACTUATE a paid subscription to STiR (coffee and tea magazine) | Visit stir-tea-coffee.com/subscribe | Email malisa@stir-tea-coffee.com w w w. s t i r - t e a - c o ff e e . c o m w w w. s t i r - t e a - c o ff e e . c o m

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