Tea – history terroirs varieties. Gascoyne et al, 2011

Gascoyne, Marchand, Desharnais

AmericiFirefly Books, 2011 (English translation; French original 2009)

ISBN 978-1-55407-937-7270 

Four tea tasters (and if I get it right, the founders) of the Camellia Sinensis tea house in Quebec have collectively written this book.After an introductory chapter with brief general information on tea – history, cultivation, the six main types – follow four chapters with extensive information on tea in China, Japan, Taiwan and India. These country specific chapters cover the main tea growing areas, some of the most important cultivars grown and descriptions of some of the teas. In each of these chapters there are “info boxes” with information on how the teas typical of the country are produced, and interviews with people in the tea business – tea tasters, farmers, plantation managers. Then follows a chapter with brief information on different types of tea ware and guidelines for brewing, a chapter with tips on how to taste tea, a few recipes with tea in cooking composed by Quebecois chefs and finally a chapter on the chemistry of tea where the authors actually have taken the trouble to have quite a wide selection of teas analyzed by a commercial lab.

I think this book is a good introduction to beginners and intermediate level students of tea, it seems considerably more trustworthy than the average tea book written by a westerner. I was a bit surprised at first that Sri Lanka is not treated more extensively – it is shares a chapter with other marginal producers like Nepal, Vietnam and Kenya (another of the world’s major exporters) – but considering the quality of Ceylon tea this is probably correct.This book (together with a few tasting experiences recently) has helped me realise the importance of the cultivar to the taste of the tea, and that there is more to the story than what every tea drinker in the west has learnt to say: “black and green tea come from the same plant”.I also found the tips on tasting and the short lexicon of tastes and aromas therein quite useful. They can be a help in learning how to appreciate tastes, and the lexicon is a help in deciphering descriptions by professional tasters, the authors included, and in expressing one’s own experiences of taste. When it comes to the chapter on chemistry I think it is admirable that they took the effort and the cost (well, maybe they got a discount considering how many times they mention the name of the lab in the text…) to have tens of different teas analyzed for caffeine and the most important antioxidants, but it is too bad that they did not ask for advice on experiment design and statistical analysis. They end up with a lot of data that they do not know what to do with, and maybe it is not even possible to draw any conclusions from this data set.

To sum up, as I mentioned above, a good introduction for beginners and intermediate students of tea, and probably the best book on tea I have read.