CHAPTER 18
MEGHALAYA, INDIA
Forests are important to tea; they protect the soil from erosion and flooding, as well as promoting biodiversity, providing essential habitats for flora and fauna. From the forest region of Meghalaya in north-east India comes one of my favourite teas. Meghalaya is Sanskrit for ‘the Abode of Clouds’. I call its tea Cloud Tea.
The area is relatively unknown and I didn’t find my way there through diligent research or arduous travel; instead, I was found, in my office in London, by a couple who have a small farm there called Lakyrsiew, and they led me to their tea. Nayan is from the hilltop town of Shillong, the capital of this small state, which sits between Darjeeling and Assam. Her farm is, among all the truly stunning tea gardens I visit, one of the most beautiful.
Unlike most of the world, the people of Meghalaya have historically followed a matrilineal system, where lineage and inheritance are traced through women; the youngest daughter inherits all the family’s wealth and she also takes care of her parents. The land of Lakyrsiew was passed down to Nayan, and together with her husband Geert, a Dutchman who was once a Reuters journalist, she has created a tea garden of uncompromising quality. The first plantings of one varietal they had been advised to invest in did not yield the truly great flavours they were looking for, so they replanted, waiting many years for maturity. They have a mission beyond their farm: to build a reputation for Meghalaya tea that will profit the wider community and establish the region as one of the world’s great tea-producing areas.
I remember clearly tasting with Bob, Lakyrsiew’s Indian farm manager, one year, and how incredibly proud he was as he laid out the samples from the latest harvest on his small wooden table covered in a pale blue paisley cloth. He grinned gappily when I lavished the tea with praise. This high-grown leaf yields an intensely fragrant floral aroma. Meticulous crafting to keep the leaves whole allows them to retain a delicacy that is very rare in Indian black teas. It took incredible patience over decades, with an iron will to persevere and never to compromise, but Nayan, a quiet-spoken, gentle woman, produces some of the most exquisite black tea in India.
I use this Cloud Tea for its burnt-sugar notes, like the top of a crème caramel, in a blend I make for a man called Dr Jim Beveridge. Truly well named for a drinks man, he’s the head blender for Johnnie Walker whisky. Over the years I’ve got to know Jim as a brilliant, thoughtful and measured man. Where I might blunder in like a fool, he stands back and considers. That in itself is lesson enough. I got to spend one of the best days of my blending career with Jim, in my London tasting room, looking at how we might marry the flavours of tea and whisky. That the Johnnie Walker family, in Kilmarnock, were among the first tea blenders to turn their attention to blending whisky brings the story rather wonderfully full circle. I’ve had the chance to work with some of the world’s great chefs, perfumers, wine makers and cocktail masters, but Jim really helped me understand flavour on a different level. Whisky is far fiercer than tea, and yet he manages to make subtleties sing out above the alcohol roar.
The challenge we had was how to lead into his most elaborate blend after a full dinner. Jim set me the task of moving from pudding to whisky at the end of a beautiful meal, preparing the exhausted palate for a sip of his most lavish whisky, Johnnie Walker Blue. I made a blend of black teas, to be drunk as a warm cup at the end of a feast. The hot tea is designed to be a new sensation after all the wine that will have inevitably been downed. It helps to wash the palate, surprise it a bit, ready it for something new. I can’t tell you exactly what’s in the blend, for fear of undermining my endeavours and forfeiting the financial rewards, but I can tell you that, with Jim’s help, I tried to anticipate in the tea every note in the whisky. I included the very same notes, in a different harmony and delivered in a soft, quiet voice. It takes you gently, leading you by the fingertips, curtsies low and delivers you into the strong arms of that handsome Scotsman.
Without this blend, and with a good bottle of single malt whisky, I would serve a straight cup of Cloud Tea. You want those high floral notes with its sweet, malty base and touch of bitterness to make the whisky really sing. People often reach for a Lapsang Souchong with whisky, and on first consideration they might seem like happy bedfellows, especially with the Islays and their oily, smoked-peat overtones. But sometimes it takes an opposite to enhance and anticipate, as opposite as the bare hills of the highlands and islands of Scotland, purple and grey with heather, and the lush, verdant brilliance of Meghalaya.
High in the hills, Lakyrsiew’s fields are vertiginous and slippery to scale, the paths through the tea thick with grasses and flowers. Walking through the gardens with the women pluckers, they took me by the hand to climb the steeper parts. They made their way up and down in bright saris and flip-flops, while I stumbled in trousers and walking boots. I carried a camera; they had heavy baskets on their backs, supported by a wide band across their foreheads. I tucked my trousers into my boots to protect myself from leeches and snakes. They were made of sterner stuff.
Among the calm industry of the afternoon plucking, the chatter suddenly stopped as a woman shouted. She stood still and pointed with an outstretched arm, holding still until she was sure all the other pickers had taken notice. I asked what it was. A hornets’ nest.
Shaded by broad trees, the bushes glowed dappled greens in the afternoon sun. The only sounds were from birds, and the only movement beyond the steady progress of the pluckers came from the shifting light. It’s easy to imagine, as you walk through a tea garden, that you are entering an enchanted land. But tea is hard, physical work and there are dangers lurking beneath the gorgeous surface. Those women – all the men and women who grow and pick tea – deserve our respect for their skill, labour and strength.
INFUSING CLOUD TEA
I use 2.5g per 150ml cup and heat the water to around 85°C, giving the tea a short, ninety-second steep. If you want to bring out the burnt-sugar and bitter-chocolate notes, try increasing the temperature to 90°C. For the sweetest caramels and soft malt, drop it to 80°C.
CHAPTER 19
THE WUYI SHAN, CHINA
Lanky limbs branched out in all directions, the leaves dark green as winter holly. Weeds grew tall and intertwined with the untended tea bushes, which were dotted patchily across the hills. There were no neat terraces of perfectly plucked bushes, just a straggle of semi-wild trees. It was not what I had been expecting. I’d waited over a decade to find my way to these gardens, hidden deep in the Wuyi Mountains within a protected, inaccessible area of the nature reserve. Now that I was finally there, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
I had come in search of some of the most valuable black tea in the world, a bohea tea my ancestor on Bute would have been impressed by, but this didn’t look like much to write home about.
Bohea means ‘tea of the Wuyi Shan’. I’d been to the region many times before, in northern Fujian, near the border with Jiangxi province in south-east China. Some of the most famous tea in China flourishes in the Wuyi Shan area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the majority of it grown in neat rows of pristine bushes. This is where Da Hong Pao, ‘Big Red Robe’, oolong is crafted. Nourished by mineral-rich soil over volcanic rocks, the tea bushes produce leaf of extraordinary flavour. Subjected to longer oxidisation than its sister from Anxi, the Merciful Iron Goddess (she of the Rome train journey), Big Red Robe is altogether darker. Biscuity and nutty, it rolls smoothly around the tongue, with deliciously fruity chocolate notes.
The best Da Hong Pao are as sublime as they are desired and fetch huge sums. On an earlier visit to a master maker (just outside the protected buffer zone), he and I had sat at a vast polished wooden table cut from the trunk of an enormous tree and still edged in its bark. His wooden chair, large as a throne, was on one side, my low stool was on the other. We tasted tea together while bare-chested men toiled in fierce heat. They filled tightly woven baskets with tea wrapped in linen. These baskets were buried in concrete pits of grey ash, ov
er charcoal fires. While the tea slowly roasted in its soft ash bed, they played cards and smoked endless cigarettes. The tea master explained that much of his tea was inaccessible by road, so the men had to carry it from the gardens in baskets on their backs for many kilometres.
Below the tea, the Jiuqu (Nine-Bend) River wound through a steep gorge where tourists like to go rafting. Guides punted bamboo rafts with long poles. They wore wide-brimmed hats, gloves and scarves to protect their skin from the intense sun reflected off the blue-green water. Drifting along the river through towering pillars of rock was like a tranquil version of a yellow-cab ride through midtown Manhattan. On the ancient waterway it was odd to see bright pink washing-up gloves on the hands of the lady punters. The T-shirts of the Chinese tourists were emblazoned with English words that weren’t quite right. ‘I’m Not Perfoct’ was my favourite.
In the years I have been visiting, bland state hotels frequented mostly by party officials have made way for resorts catering to the burgeoning Chinese tourist industry. For a new middle class as eager to see its own country as visit the shopping malls of the West, great Vegas-style palace hotels have sprung up in marble and gold. But there is little danger of the region being trampled. Beyond the prescribed tourist zone known as the Wuyi Shan Scenic Resort and the surrounding pristine tea gardens lie 565 square kilometres of protected nature reserve that is almost inaccessible.
Some of the largest remaining areas of humid subtropical forests in the world nestle there, protected by the mountains in a unique ecosystem that has survived since the Ice Age. The forests range from coniferous pines to broad-leafed trees and bamboo. Over four hundred species of birds make their home there. It is a region of great biodiversity, much of it unexplored by the West since Chairman Mao threw foreign scientists out. The military still controls access and it’s no easy undertaking to visit.
I was in the buffer zone on the edges of the reserve, where very limited human activity is allowed. A few small villages remain where old families, steeped for generations in their craft, are still allowed to grow and make tea. To cross the checkpoint you have to have been invited in by one of these families. My credentials are by now fairly well established and over the years I have made wonderful friends. Finally, in 2017, with their help, I got the chance to visit. It was a long drive over several hours along a snaking river, through dense forest on all sides, winding on and on, deeper and deeper, until we finally arrived at a tiny village set amongst ancient tea fields.
I was shocked to see how close the gardens were to returning to wild forest. But it began to make sense. No tea pluckers are allowed in. No new bushes can be planted. Only a very few families are permitted to engage in tea production, in order to honour the ancient traditions and craft some of the most highly prized tea in the world.
The best Lapsang Souchong is made here with bohea tea that’s smoked with pinewood. It is the tea crafted deep within the secret forests that produces the most ethereal flavour imaginable. It’s not a heavy smoke like in a strong peated whisky. Think more Springbank Eighteen-Year-Old than Laphroaig. The leaf itself is kept whole rather than broken; gentle handling brings out a subtle sweetness and the most profound delicacy. There are flavours you hunt for as you roll the honey-coloured liquid over your tongue, and smoke is just one of many.
The smoking is done in ancient two-storey wooden houses blackened by age and centuries of smoke. Wrapped around the ground floors are wide, shaded verandas stacked with neat piles of golden-blond wood, the bark removed. A lot of the resinous oils are taken away with the bark, which makes for subtler scenting. Not just any wood is used for the smoking, but a few precious pines permitted to be cut from the protected forests. They impart their unique scent. The wood is burnt on the lower floor, while the tea, crafted as a black tea, is laid out on frames that make up the upper floor.
To make what is known as Tarry Lapsang, the stronger relation, the bark is left on for a more resinous taste. It’s finished with a longer smoking, to add more heft. This type of Lapsang is more favoured outside than inside China. We are used to bolder flavours in our black tea and the addition of milk calls for stronger flavours still. For the Tarry Lapsang a more broken grade of tea is used, not the very best hand-crafted leaf. That’s not to say it’s not delicious, but it’s certainly punchier, like a beloved cousin you know will start a fight at a wedding.
Using different woods for the smoking produces different flavours. If the Lapsang smells of church incense, that usually suggests a range of trees have been used. Some modern approximations use oils and flavourings. The Wuyi pinewood is rare, as is its tea.
In the village a hunched old lady was sitting on a stool in the doorway of her house, sorting little leaf buds on a tray. The old master, Mr Wen, spoke softly to her, then nodded to me happily. After lunch with the Wen family – a dozen vegetable dishes, finished off with a bowl of steaming rice – we returned to the old woman and collected her tea. Mr Wen’s son set up a large woven bowl on a wooden trestle in the street outside the Wens’ house. Into this he gently tipped the tea. Mr Wen began to softly massage the tiny green buds. He was crafting, there in front of me, one of the most precious and rare teas in the world: a black tea made exclusively from tiny spring buds.
The buds were not much longer than my little fingernail, neither large nor plump like the varietal used to make White Silver Tip. He needed over ten thousand buds to craft just one kilogram of finished tea. The tiny tea gardens allowed within the nature reserve can produce no more than a few precious kilograms a year. Mr Wen is one of only three masters who roll tea of this grade. This was Jin Jun Mei. The leaf, turned golden after careful firing, translates as ‘Beautiful Golden Eyebrow’.
After he’d demonstrated his rolling skills, we went into his house, which was more modern than the rest and far more opulent, reflecting his status. He made tea. Never have I drunk a deeper, richer, more fascinating black tea. It had the sweetness of the spring buds, full of the natural sugars stored over the winter, but also a malty depth with subtle tannins and the tart tang of kiwi and physalis. Dark caramels lay behind bright fragrance, a strong character hidden behind an elegant facade. Layer after layer of flavour was revealed through many infusions.
After this we drank Lapsang Souchong – every bit as delicious; rather less expensive. The Jin Jun Mei I took home in my suitcase cost me many thousands of pounds. I was extremely lucky to have got the chance to buy it.
MAKING JIN JUN MEI AND LAPSANG SOUCHONG
For both teas Mr Wen used water at 95°C and very quick infusions. He put 3g of tea in just 60ml of water in a gaiwan and infused for about ten seconds. We drank ten infusions of the Golden Eyebrow; infusions three to seven were the most delectable.
For Tarry Lapsang Souchong, you can use boiling water and a long steep if you want to add milk. But I enjoy it black, using 2.5g of tea for a 150ml cup of water heated to 85°C, infused for about sixty seconds.
CHAPTER 20
PARIS, FRANCE
While we are on the subject of extravagantly expensive things, I have had the pleasure of indulging rather heavily in caviar. I thoroughly discombobulated a roomful of celebrated French chefs the first time I presented them with a tea-and-caviar pairing in Paris.
I met the caviar man, David, at an event in the Dorchester Hotel in London to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Alain Ducasse’s eponymous restaurant there. The great and the good of the food world converged, along with me, the tea supplier, very grateful to have been invited and nervously guzzling champagne. The gathering flocked like starlings across the room to the various stations where food was being served. Oysters over there, caviar over here. I had sampled a few precious eggs adorning the occasional delicious dish on a tasting menu, but I had never had the chance to taste the good stuff on its own. The eggs were being carefully spooned, from enormous tins, onto little pieces of scallop. Emboldened by the champagne, I asked if I might try a tiny spoon of the caviar on its own.
We got talking, David
and I, about his caviar house in Paris, Kaviari, and about Rare Tea. As someone committed to sustainable farming, I told him I was concerned about caviar, while swallowing another large spoonful of the stuff. It is true, David replied, that there are few wild sturgeons left, and it is forbidden to fish them. But he explained that caviar is now farmed, the best of it produced in conditions and areas closest to the sturgeon’s natural habitats. The fish are killed, as with all fish we eat, but it is the whole fish that is eaten, not just the eggs.
I mentioned that I had done some work pairing oysters and sea urchins. As I tasted, I thought I could do even better with caviar and promised to show him the next morning, before he returned to France. I had to leg it back to the office, half drunk, and carefully weigh and measure some cold extractions to infuse overnight.
He turned up early the next morning, with no caviar, my breakfast fantasy blown. But he loved the tea and invited me to try a pairing in Paris. A few weeks later I arrived with my little yellow suitcase full of tea. We sat around a huge dish of ice, holding ten opened tins from five different fish of five distinct sturgeon species from five parts of the world, each of the five giving two tins, at a short and long maturation. It was utterly fascinating how the flavours ranged, not just between the species but according to the length of time the eggs had been maturing in salt. I delved deep into my case.
Great daubs of caviar were spooned onto the back of my hand, from where I sucked the eggs into my mouth. Taken from their icy beds, the eggs are slightly warmed by the skin, deepening the flavour. Once a tin has been opened, it must be finished. It was no hardship. I couldn’t stop, the back of my hand slick with my salty kisses. I kept trying different teas. The silkiest textures and the softest sweetness accentuated the briny eggs; the teas’ delicacy and good manners lifted the eggs rather than squashed them. It was a moment of pure delight to detect the note of autumn leaves and wet forest in the caviar of the Transmontanus sturgeon and pair it with a warm infusion of Yunnan pu’er. With the caviar from Siberia’s Baeri sturgeon we paired a second-flush Sikkim tea from the high Indian Himalayas, in cold extraction for the unaged eggs and served hot for the longer maturation.
Infused Page 14
