Tea Workshop

I ought to be doing this post in French, but that would mean enfeebling my poky English-French alternation.

I have long wanted to attend an "Atelier de Thé" at Camellia Sinensis. "Initiation to Tea" is the prerequisite for the other, more exciting and thematic ones. This was the one I took, partly as key to the door of more advanced workshops.

The small, discreetly paneled back room had been reconfigured. The small tables had been consolidated into one big one, surrounded with those comfy blue armless chairs, and centerpieced with a gaiwan, kyusu, and Yixing. There were nine people there; a varied lot, tending towards the young, hip, and new on the tea scene. Two French-French women who had come together, a curious Quebecois guy, three Anglophones with varying degrees of French who seemed to know each other, a curious (although I think a tad skeptical) couple, and me. The tea professional there was a typical handsome twenty- or thirty-something tea-sherpa, who I recognized vaguely from the teashop. (He, however, recognized me: when he was going round the table, asking whether people came to the shop often, said, "Vous, c'est pas la première fois." I was extremely flattered.)

A place had been set for all of us, with a glass of water and a black folder containing a print version of the information that was to be told us.(A free folder! That's bang for your buck.) We were welcomed with a small cup of Bai Mu Dan, a delicious traditional Fujian white tea, not mind-numbingly subtle like some. Fruity with the lightest touch of acidity, like donut peaches.

The atmosphere was friendly if very quiet. We listened, mainly, although Jonathan did solicit our questions and opinions every now and then. He started by introducing himself and asking us all how we'd come to tea, then describing the teashop, its proprietors, and its origins. Part one as a whole was a well-delivered lecture (lecture in the positive sense) on the history, manufacture, and terroir of tea. After a short break, we moved on to part two: tasting and brewing.

Before he joined in Cam Sin team, Jonathan, it seems, had worked in restauration for years, coming to Camellia Sinensis to get away from his stressful life. At the time, it was a humble, hippie, shisha-and-tea place, with cushions on the floor and indian music wafting psychedelically overhead. Slowly, the tea gained importance, the boutique opened next door, and the demand for shisha trickled out. The owners began to source their teas, first from top Parisian and Dutch purveyors, then (partly in the name of thrift) straight from the fields. He described the tea team as motivated and cool and his tea education as ongoing. My dream job.

During part one, I discovered, among other things, that the milk-and-sugar habits of the Brits probably stem from a time when green tea fermented and spoiled in the humid depths of cargoes that hauled them to England from distant ports. The flavourings masked the taste of the rather "off" tea. (Ah-hah, you false tea-loving UKers.) Through the beautiful slides of far-off tea field, he showed us how to differentiate between Japanese, Chinese and Indian plantations. In Japan and only Japan, bushes are trimmed to a convex surface, to increase plucking area. Look for flat "tea tables" and spaces between bush rows to identify China. In India, there are no spaces between rows of bushes, in order to maximize yield. While discussing Kenyan and CTC teas, he also suggested an experiment to make use of old tea bags. Brew one teabag in its bag, and open another to brew it loose. Compare the two. Apparently (I haven't tried yet) the loose one will actually be worse. Teabag tea is chosen to go with the bag and its constituents (glue, staples, string, paper). It masks these flavours by orchestrating with them, weaving them into a thick black cloak of acrid tea. (My words, not his.) As a result, without the bag, the tea has lost its intended accompaniment, and is oxymoronically even more repulsive than a plain Tazo teabag.

Although I was a little surprised to hear teabags even mentioned, it was relaxing, to be among people whose brewing habits were still quite largely Western. I admitted without fear of repudiation that I had started off with an English approach to tea, brewing Lapsang and Earl Grey in great big mugs. He described, without a trace of scorn, how to optimize this kind of brewing, adding that the reason he drank in small cups was simply that it allowed him to devote his whole mind to the tea.

Notwithstanding the tolerance of Brit brewing, in which careful meditation on flavours does not play a part, the tasting section was fascinating. He emphasized the importance of retronasal olfaction, that is, smell captured from the mouth. Few scents are forthcoming when plainly sniffed, but more appear when they wander into the nasal passages from the throat. To ensure proper tasting, he also advocated a silly-looking but effective sipping method. Noisily slurp your tea, as if you were eating soba noodles, in order to cool and oxygenate it. Swoosh it around in your mouth conspicuously, swallow, then breathe out noisily, to coax lingering smells into your nose. To describe the tastes you experience, start by check-listing the five flavour; bitter (all tea, he said, will be slightly bitter, so start there), sour, sweet, salty, and finally the painfully foodie-hip umami or savoury. Expand on these impressions to more specific gustative signifiers. If you can link the smells of the tea to a memory, go with it, and go further. (They do say that smell is a powerful memory trigger.) Narrate the tea: differentiate between its beginning and end. And so on.

I enjoyed the experience immensely, but it really was an initiation. As such, I was familiar with most of the basic content. The material I knew was well-presented, though (besides, a review never hurts) and interspersed with anecdotes and things that hadn't shown up in The Story of Tea. In any case, it affirmed my confidence that Camellia Sinensis is sincere in its desire to spread tea to all and sundry, for their maximum enjoyment.

If I had heard some things before, here and there, picked them up from the discerning blog posts of the tea masters, it was simply much more effective, and enchanting, to have them told to me in person, shown, shared. That was the advantage of coming to the shop on a Saturday morning to learn what could be read in a book. It was well worth the effort. The experience was zen, informative, and fun, and, any and all of my personal prejudices aside, I recommend it. We shall see what future workshops have to offer.