Even after 5,000 years, it’s still high time for tea
For 5,000 years it has been the most widely consumed beverage on the planet after water and shaped international trade patterns. There is big money in little dried leaves, Stuart Derdeyn writes.
Once upon a time in China (around 3,000 BC or so), someone had the brilliant idea of pouring boiling water over the cured leaves of the Camelia sinensis plant, thus infusing a new beverage. So began our love affair with tea.
Initially seen as a medicinal drink, today, it’s said to be the most widely consumed beverage on the planet, after water.
Tea’s spread from Southwest China to the rest of the world shaped global trade and economics as well as developing entirely unique cultures around the consumption of a fine cuppa. In 2013, NASDAQ reported the global tea market value at $48.58 billion. By 2020, that figure is expected to reach $59.04 billion. So, as it turns out, it’s pretty big business, too.
“Tea is trendy again, just like it has been for the past 5,000 years or so,” jokes Victor Vesely, co-founder and tea maker at Westholme Tea Co. on Vancouver Island. “And the outlook for high end, quality products shows no sign of slowing down as the public continues to develop its taste.”
Westholme became Canada’s first commercial tea farm when it set up shop in 2010, and on July 1, 2016 it began offering its first products. Besides selling Canadian-grown, single-origin and hand-blended products ranging from black, green and other teas, the farm also offers courses and work experience. As to the potential for growing the market for Canadian produced teas, Vesely notes that once nobody believed B.C. would have wineries. And look at it now.
Canadians are following the worldwide tea trend with passion and pocketbooks. Boutique retailers are opening all over the country and even the coffee shops are taking notice and upping their tea game.
Canada’s largest specialty tea boutique is Montreal-based DavidsTea. Founded in 2008, the company has expanded into more than a hundred outlets across Canada and into the U.S. offering 150-plus types of tea, accessories and specialty products. Shout outs from tastemakers such as Oprah Winfrey pushed the brand into the public eye and DavidsTea content specialist Nadia De La Vega says the public taste for tea just keeps extending into more and more flavours.
“Tea is such an amazing drink with an array of tastes and types, so there is tons of room for personalization and we see that people are more aware of their choices, want a healthier option and want to discover new tastes and explore new ways to enjoy them,” said De La Vega. “Our customers love our vast flavour profiles with some of our bestsellers being black tea like Cream of Earl Grey, fun herbal blends like Mother’s Little Helper, or Oolongs like The Skinny.”
A little closer to home, Silk Road Tea has operated two locations in Victoria since 1992 and opened a location on West Fourth Ave. in Vancouver in 2016. Tea master Daniela Cubelic has put her 25 years of expertise into exposing people to exclusively organic teas and tea-based skin care and bath and body products. When it comes to what should be brewing in your pot, she doesn’t mince her words about how to get the most enjoyment from your brew.
“A lot of tea is typically produced from clones designed to increase yields by growing faster, which means you reduce the flavour of the tea and then there are the production methods where you can take really high quality tea leaves and destroy them with low quality production,” said Cubelic. “Just like wine, or high quality spirits, these things really matter in the end and a lot of people are starting to notice. Look for the complexity of the flavour and you’ll usually find a higher quality tea.”
Silk Road offers classes in getting the most health benefit from your teas, including how to maximize the anti-oxidant value. All of the retailers interviewed noted the health benefits of tea and universally recommended getting a programmable kettle with multiple settings to insure that the proper temperature water is being poured over your leaves (or high end tea bag). Pay attention to the recommended brewing times too.
It turns out that the pot filled with a handful of cheap tea bags kept boiling on top of Gran’s range with water being added throughout the day wasn’t the best method. It may have turned off a lot of potential fans.
Treasure Green Tea Company in Vancouver’s Chinatown has been focused on bringing high-end Chinese teas to town for nearly 40 years. The company was at the forefront of the market, specializing in premium brands with over 200 types of teas to choose from. While Asian communities long ago recognized the value of what was going into their teapots, it took a while for the greater population to come around to appreciating paying the price for top-tier tea.
“For sure, besides the leaf and the production methods, it can actually be quite dangerous where it is grown under circumstances like climbing cliffs to get to it and so on,” said Brigitte Leong. “Our bestseller is the exclusive Treasure Green’s Emerald Silver, a delicious all-around green tea, but there is definitely a real tea culture developing into all the society right now as people get into the tastes and the health benefits.”
Some high-end oolong or pu’erh leaf can range in price high enough to rival the finest single malt. For example, Treasure Green Tea Company retails 25 grams of Aged Rui Gui Cliff Oolong 1999 for $69. Prices can go a lot higher than that for some of the world’s most prized leaf, much of which is traded to private outlets and collectors.
There is a lot of wiggle room between those super gourmet brands and a fine tea says Tony Aupers of Tea Desire, which operates stores from B.C. to Saskatchewan. But the key thing is that you do need to step up to steep up into better tea and that means specialty stores. Quality ingredients make all the difference.
“We started our business because I was looking for a good cup of tea when we came from Europe and the grocery stores didn’t carry specialty tea which we were used to,” said Aupers. “Once you have good leaf and good water, you can follow the recommended temperatures and develop your technique to your own preference. Then you truly discover a good cup of tea.”
It’s well worth waiting for.