I was visiting with a friend today, and sharing with her how I had distilled years of work and learning into this website. I am a tea enthusiast; my friend is not. My friend is a typical American tea drinker. She likes lots of kinds of tea, and regularly buys tea at the shops, but she isn't particularly educated about tea. I was trying to explain a bit about why I made this website without launching into a long, technical discussion about tea. You can't really talk about tea without discussing the processes that tea undergoes to become a beverage. I was briefly describing camellia sinensis and how it's processed into green, oolong, and black teas. She interrupted and said, "So it comes from black tea." No, it comes from camellia sinensis and from camellia sinensis come green, black, and oolong teas. She said, "Yeah, so black tea." No. Black tea is camellia sinensis but it's been processed... "So, black tea." Sigh... I put my face in my hands and said, "You're hurting me."
We had a discussion about language. We discussed tea as opposed to tisane, and the colloquial meaning of "tea." It is foolish to insist the expression "tea" means only an infusion of camellia sinensis. To do so is not only ridiculous, but insulting to people who are using the word "tea" in its perfectly acceptable connotation to mean everything from sweet tea to a cup of rooibos to a cup of herbal tisane. Yet in that moment, in that discussion of something about which I care deeply, it was absolutely maddening for her to insist on calling a raspberry leaf blend "tea." I put my face in my hands again and said, "This hurts me." My friend in perfect fairness asked, "Why does this matter so much to you?"
It's a good question. In everyday conversations about tea, I don't care about precise terminology. Many times I've said, "chamomile tea," or "mint tea." But if I am speaking to the technical aspects of the beverages derived from camellia sinensis, precision matters. It was very clear that precision matters to me because of how firmly I insisted upon communicating the concept when it wasn't at all necessary to the discussion! Why do I care so much?
Portland's tea culture is still a minority island in an ocean of coffee and beer. Coffee and beer culture is quite advanced in Portland, and consumers of coffee and beer are fairly well educated by marketing and vendors. They know the different types of coffee and beer, can speak to their attributes, and consider options based on food or event circumstances. While there are people in Portland doing great work with tea (hat tip to Steven Smith Teamaker and Tao of Tea, as well as TeaZone, among others) most Portlanders remain relatively uneducated about tea. As a tea drinker, I do not have access to quality tea the way coffee and beer drinkers have access to quality product. An establishment may offer only a very low quality tea, for example. They may try hard to choose a line of quality teas, even offering loose teas, but then brew them with water from the coffee machine, which is blazing hot and ruins the tea. They may dispense hot water and then drop the tea in, which does not give the full flavor. The teaware may not facilitate proper use of the leaves, perhaps by not providing a way to remove the leaves between pourings, but having too much water to pour out at once. Finding a general service cafe or restaurant that can provide decent product brewed close to the right temperature and served in appropriate teaware is all too uncommon in this town. It is also not unheard of for a restaurant to offer free coffee, but charge for tea. I have low expectations every time I try ordering tea somewhere other than a tea shop, and more often than not, low expectations are justified.
I suppose the discussion hurts me because it reveals the poor representation of tea in Portland's foodie culture. I have such deep respect for tea, and when one considers not only the nascent tea industry in the United States, but the long and varied tea traditions from around the world, one could spend a lifetime exploring tea and not exhaust the topic. While I am not such a purist that I think flavored teas shouldn't exist, or that supermarket teas are an abomination (I might say that in jest, but I don't really mean it,) the fact that there are so few who have even a modest grasp of tea is sad to me.
I am eager to see the continued development of Portland's tea culture, and there are signs more people are joining to nurture it. TeaFest NW just had its second year. Mizuba Tea Company is bringing high quality matcha to the U.S. Tao of Tea continues to fight the good fight for tea tradition, both in their tea room and shop, and also in restaurants and retail. Steven Smith Teamaker is bringing a sophisticated flashiness to the tea scene that meshes well with the foodies. Tea rooms are opening here and there in the metro area. There are reasons to be optimistic. I look forward to the day when improperly served tea is the exception rather than the rule.
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