A Question I Still Try to Answer

Since I started drinking tea, I have been thinking about what is the flavour of tea. The answer has been changing over the years. The first step into tea is always to start with the color, aroma and taste. It takes a while just to learn to recognize and remember the flavour. And then comes the basic knowledge of the craftsmanship, varieties and origins of the tea. All of those experiences naturally transform into our body cells, become us as the years go by.

What do people drink when they drink tea? I am always so curious.

With the accumulation of knowledge and experiences, I still have a lot of questions in my mind, and even more questions are popping up.

“What is the true flavour of tea?” - this is really an interesting question.

Different Farming Methods

I started drinking tea from the conventional farming methods, and at first I thought it was the natural flavour of tea, a very standard and customary flavour. However, if I drank too much of it, my body would feel uncomfortable, my stomach would ache, my nerves would get tense, and my throat would lock up.

It wasn't until I met Mr. Lai, a tea teacher, that I suddenly switched to wild farming tea. After drinking it for a while, when I got back to the conventional farming tea, a lot of facts emerge clearly. I will try to share the differences in the flavour of tea caused by different farming methods from my personal discovery.

If you can visualize the land of a tea plantation in your mind, then you can easily imagine what flavours are concentrated in a cup of tea.

Flavour of Conventional Farming

A conventional tea plantation is the classic photo of a tourist tea plantation that comes to mind. Each row of tea trees is pruned to the same size and shape, short and easy to pick by machine. The soil keeps the surface clean and free of weeds, and there are no other animals or insects living, only the tea trees, which is quite unnatural in nature.

What you don't see are the herbicides, chemical fertilizers, acidified soil, polluted water. All these elements are absorbed by the roots of the tea tree. And unless you regularly drink tea from different farming methods, you will not feel the taste of chemical molecules in your mouth. The way the aroma phenolics disperse in the cup is thicker, stickier, and more bitter. The tea broth is less gelatinous, resulting in a thin tea broth. The flavour and aroma are combined and tasted like a chemical perfume. It has unusual fragrant, which is full of artificiality, and empties quickly after a few brews.

If you are very used to drinking the tea of conventional farming methods, you will feel that those flavours that actually do not belong to the tea are the flavour of the tea.

Flavour of Organic Farming

Let's take a look at an organic tea garden. In my understanding, the foundation of organic farming is laid on scientific management, which includes human operation, experimental data, and scientific logical thinking, as well as out of a good heart (of course there are always exceptions).

Organic fertilizers and management produce a bit smell and taste, and these traces of man's work remain in the tea broth. And excessive organic fertilizers may cause water contamination, or there may be heavy metal residues in the soil. There are always two sides to a coin, and these are just some examples that are not normally mentioned in organic informations.

Tea trees don't eat chemical nutrients and instead eat organic nutrients. It makes me ask “What is so-called natural?”. I understand everyone has different ideals and understandings of it, and practice varies from place to place. In the end, organic farming is already ecologically oriented, which is an awakening of conscience when compared to the profit-making motivation of conventional farming methods. However, as human beings, we still have to humbly admit that science cannot be God, and that we still have a dead end in our vision. When we change one factor, another factor will be changed in a chain, resulting in unimaginable consequences, and then we will learn and change from our failures. How much should man interfere with nature? How much should be considered balanced? It is difficult to find agreement.

For those who are used to conventional tea flavour, when they drink organic tea they may feel that something is missing because they are accustomed to a certain kind of strong stimulation, just like the feeling of suddenly switching from spraying perfume to spraying natural essential oils. But after some time (depending on the person’s taste), they will start to understand the way of the tea soup's gentle release from a new perspective, with a different purity, a more solid base and a more natural flowing touch.

When compared to natural farming methods, the taste is more homogenous, a bit like the difference between a plant grown in a greenhouse flower and a wild plant.

Flavour of Natural Farming, Wild Farming, Wild Tea

You’re looking at very different point of view when you drink a natural, wild farming, or even wild tea. In such an environment, there are abundant plants and animals coexisting, human intervention is minimized and nature is the only protagonist. Withdrawn from human thoughts, nature will return to its own rules of operation, a wisdom that mankind still cannot fully understand.

The soil is much more alive. It is the fundamental existence of this everlasting cycle - relying on the microorganisms in the soil to break down and transform the rich diversity of trace elements, which are then fed into the diverse plant roots in the vegetation.

The roots of the tea tree go down deeper and absorb more diverse elements. A healthy, independent and energetic tea tree is recognized by its dynamic aroma and rich, gelatinous broth. In addition to the tea tree itself, there are also the multi-layered flavours and textures created by the living beings that coexist with it. What you taste is the whole spirit of the mountains and forests and the richness of the species as they are. Life is what the tea actually tastes like, and perhaps you start to look at your own life with different eyes by taking in the true flavour of soil and land.

What is Nature?

I remember when I visited Kyoto a few years ago, when I sat in a temple and looked at the minimalist Zen garden, everything in front of me was breathtakingly beautiful. The plants were trimmed into minimalist lines, and different types of plants were arranged in a way that was almost inaccessible to any thoughts coming out of my mind. Seeing the beauty of the silence that people create by reflecting on their lives, for whatever reason, I felt itchy but I can not tell why.

For a long time, this tickling made me feel that the so-called nature should go back to the original mountains and the sea, and should not involve any man-made artifacts.

As my state of mind changed, I realized one day that true nature actually involves all human activities. The destruction and devastation of human beings, the rise and disappearance of civilizations, the transmission and death of languages, the evil of human nature, all the products of human thought and activity are all included in the entire universe. With this understanding, we human beings have created different farming methods in order to survive, which is also a part of nature. If one can think outside of the binary and simply use it to understand the cause and consequence of the world's creation to think about why we live in a reality where most of us practice conventional agriculture, and why some people choose organic farming and others move towards natural farming or wild farming, then one can clarify the path one wants to take and what one wants to consciously choose to support.

The concept of kindness can create an endless cycle of life, but it can also have the opposite effect due to ignorance. In the end, it all comes back to oneself, whether or not one is aware of each of one's own actions, and what kind of consequences they are creating in that moment.

No matter what kind of farming, there are sincere people and there are businessmen who purely want to make money. So in addition to understanding the differences in the forms of farming, the pros and cons, and what are the reasons for the compromises, the most important thing is to look at the mentality and motivation of the people doing the work.

So back to the question. What is the true flavour of tea? The truth is what I want to taste.   

How about you? Are you drinking the flavour, the price, the humanity, the land, or the state of mind?

What is your true flavour?