STEEP BY STEEP
A growing acceptance of luxury Chinese tea and the proliferation of boutique shops and brands herald the arrival of third-wave tea culture, says
in may this y ear, n ews o f t he p rices o f n umerous t eas traded in Shanghai sent shock waves across the industry. The teas — known as Wuyi tea after their origin in Fujian’s Wuyi Mountains, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site — cost anywhere from $6,000-$96,000 per jin (about 500g) in mainland China, putting them on par in terms of pricing with some of the world’s most acclaimed wines.
The news drew mostly negative criticism from industry insiders who accused the prices of being inflated. But that has not stopped others from forking out top dollar for these teas, presumably given as gifts or squirrelled away by wealthy collectors for enjoyment after a period of ageing.
What does all this have to do with the proverbial price of tea in China? Considering that last year Starbucks announced the closure of all 379 Teavana stores, just as boutique tea shops and brands are mushrooming everywhere, this could only mean one thing: The time is ripe for fine speciality tea.
Divine Approbation
According to an old Chinese adage, there are seven indispensable items in everyday life: Firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, and tea. No other drink but tea makes the list, clearly a sign of its importance in one’s daily sustenance.
In its earliest form, tea was likely consumed for its medicinal properties — oral tradition and ancient texts (such as Shennong Ben Cao Jing) often highlighted tea as a herbal plant possessing antidotal benefits that can be used to counteract poisons and physical ailments.
With the arrival of the Tang Dynasty in 600s AD, tea joined other art forms such as calligraphy and painting to take on greater literary symbolism and value. It was a golden age that saw the publication of Lu Yu’s Cha Jing, the world’s first monograph on tea detailing the drink’s history, origin, production, methods of preparation, and so on.
Away from the populace, Chinese ascetics further refined the ceremony of tea preparation and drinking. Visiting Japanese monks during the Tang and subsequently Song Dynasty took the tea plant and the custom of drinking whisked powdered tea back to Japan, where it has been preserved to this day. In the Song court, meanwhile, the nobility often engaged in friendly competitions to see who could make better tea. Song emperor Hui Zong himself was so captivated he penned the Daguanchalun (or Treatiseon
Tea), describing in vivid detail the type of tea and how it was prepared in his day.
Following the fall of Song and the founding of the Ming Dynasty in the 1300s, the custom of drinking whisked powdered tea gave way to drinking whole loose-leaf tea. Especially with the invention of Wuyi oolong tea in the 1700s, the tea ceremony as it is commonly known today began to take shape.
Terroir-ist Tea
Anyone who says that money does not grow on trees has never been to the Wuyi Mountains. Historically, the region held pole position for producing the finest and most expensive oolong in the world. In his book Tai Chuyou Cha, contemporary Taiwanese author and tea authority Gong Yu Yao recounts that in his grandfather’s time during late Qing, Wuyi oolong cost four times as much as that from Anxi, or the equivalent of two months’ wages of a Japanese policeman in Taiwan under Japanese rule.
Extant documents dating from the Qing Dynasty written by historians and members of the literati told of how Wuyi oolong was sought after by the rich and wealthy. The most famous among Wuyi tea aficionados was Qing emperor Qian Long, who wrote a poem called Dong Ye Peng Cha which explicitly stated Wuyi tea was the finest among all teas paid as tribute to the imperial court.
Like fine wine, the quality of Wuyi tea is intricately linked to terroir. Wuyi Mountains is famed for its Danxia landform, characterised by steep cliffs, meandering streams, and crystal-clear waters. Here, amid the region’s 36 peaks, 72 caves, and 99 cliffs, tea is grown in a variety of appellations
each with its own microclimate — some nestled within the valleys and others hanging on the faces of rocky cliffs. With careful picking and processing methods, tea producers here are able to make oolong with no peer in complexity and depth of aroma, flavour, and texture.
But Wuyi isn’t the only region where teas are worth their weight in gold. In Southwest China, in the remote villages of Yunnan, a worthy rival can be found in the form of the oldest tea trees in the world.
According to oral tradition of indigenous tribes and studies by experts, many of these endemic tea trees are estimated to be several hundred years old, with a few specimens supposedly even older. The bulk of these go into producing what is commonly called gushu ( literally “ancient tree”) pu’er. Unlike the nondescript brew with which you wash down your Sunday brunch dim sum, this pu’er offers great intensity, concentration, and persistency both on the nose and palate. In recent decades, it has also been found that well-made pu’er has incredible potential for ageing, not unlike fine wine. Under ideal storage conditions — similar to how one would cellar Bordeaux premier cru or Burgundy grand cru — the tea gains in complexity as it matures. Wellstored vintage pu’er commands thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on the retail market, which explains why it accounts for the lion’s share of prestigious Chinese tea collections in many parts of the world today.
Leafing Through
To the uninitiated, paying so much for tea may seem somewhat daunting and perhaps even bizarre. But like fine wine, a product that is excellently crafted and available in very limited volume often comes with a hefty price tag — more so if the product in question gets better and more valuable with time.
That said, there are plenty of perfectly enjoyable teas that don’t cost an arm or a leg, and those are a good start for one just dipping one’s toe into tea ( figuratively, of course).
In the last couple of years, Singapore has seen the opening of a few tea schools and institutions that provide formal tea education and training. The Australian Tea Masters Singapore offers courses in tea blending and in becoming a certified tea sommelier, while the Parchmen Academy of Coffee and Tea, run by the same folks behind the Sun Ray Café few doors down, provides courses aimed at turning tea novices and enthusiasts into experts.
Tea companies too are sparing no effort to raise the standards of service. To ensure a stellar experience for customers at its salons, tea company TWG has invested over a million dollars in the development of a Tea Institute, which is used exclusively to train its employees. “Here, our employees and partners learn to perform their roles to the level required and provide a high-quality brand experience for our customers,” shares the company’s co-founder and director of business development Maranda Barnes. “With this training, our staff are more confident and motivated, and naturally engage on a deeper level to share interesting tea tales, information, and their appreciation of tea with customers.”
Add to that the proliferation of tea shops and brands, and Singapore could well be witnessing the birth of “third wave” tea, which has our island awash in a delicious elixir as old as it is new.
In its earliest form, tea was likely consumed for its medicinal properties