Last time, I wrote about how skill can play a huge part in the role of tea making. I actually have some more thoughts to add to the matter. I have continued to think about the topic, talk to people and read things related to it, so allow me this addendum to the topic of skill and tea production.
First, in case any of my dear readers became alarmed about the status of the world’s tea (“All good tea will disappear because no one is around to make it?!”)—you can relax. My topic of discussion is a relatively small corner of the world’s tea production. I am primarily talking about oolong tea. As I mentioned, oolong tea requires extra complicated procedures due to the partial oxidation and it is just this part that requires truly artful touches. However, of the world’s tea production, oolongs represent approximately 2% (the rest being 78% black and 20% green). And for these other teas, there is no reason to worry about a decrease in production quality. In fact, the future may bring continuous increases in quality. Allow me to elaborate:
Tea research is actually no small business – the major tea-producing countries (China, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka…) all have government departments tasked with research and experimentation related to tea. While their activities may actually include the broader tea industry (TRES in Taiwan handles everything from how to pack and sell tea to research on pesticides to running classes for tea farmers), one obvious goal is to raise tea quality.
Step one for changing anything (especially if you work for the government in a highly bureaucratic country), is to measure the variable you aim to change. If we understand these flavor producing chemicals of tea, then we can analytically and quantifiably determine the difference between “good” and “bad”. Thus, research on the chemistry of tea, its relationship to tea flavor, potential health benefits, et cetera, fills a search for “camellia sinensis” in an academic database with plenty of hits. Doubt not: the general chemical breakdowns of teas are well established.
Similarly, how to produce a tea that lands in the defined category of “good quality” via chemical breakdown is also well-known. Especially for black teas and green teas, production of consistently high quality tea can be attained through a refined process. There are fewer chemical reactions that dependent on variable conditions, so the ideal chemical profile can be obtained through a standard operating procedure (SOP). A well-tested SOP, efficient machinery, and good quality tea leaves should produce good tea, no question about it. Actually, this applies to oolongs as well. With enough trial runs, an SOP that creates tea that lands within the desired chemical profile every time is possible, although likely with a larger margin of variability than greens and blacks.
However, my friend at the TRES phrased it something like this: “A good SOP can get you within the chemical flavor profile, which is about 80% of the way.” What? Landing within the flavor profile of “good tea” only gets a B-? The truth is, great tea is “great” due to the complexity of flavors. There are hundreds of compounds in tea, some of which only need to be present in extremely small amounts for a human to detect them. The presence, quantity and variety of these trace flavors distinguishes really good tea (95%) from good tea (90%). Furthermore, perception of the flavors may depend on delicate ratios and balances of the chemicals. So when it comes to controlling these trace flavors in production, there are two important things to consider:
First, human sensors are still a better fit for the job of distinguishing these flavor profiles than most technology. While extraction and gas chromatography can put numbers on these chemical components in a beverage, handing the same cup of tea to a human tester is likely faster, cheaper and will give immediately meaningful output such as “This tastes too bitter”. The chemical analysis won’t tell you how the beverage actually tastes. Which leads to the second point about chemical analysis of tea and its limitations: tea is meant for humans to drink. It doesn’t matter what the exact quantities of the flavor components are as long as humans think that it tastes good.
So in the end, it’s only the final tier of quality that is difficult to scale up industrially, which is not really all that different from any other gourmet food item. Consistently good products can be created…but the difference between oolong tea that is tasty and stuff that knocks your socks off depends on whether a tea master made the tea. Just a few whiffs of those mid-fermentation leaves can tell a skilled human what to do to create flavors that other humans will enjoy, which is testing analysis and decision-making on a scale that no machinery will ever be able capable of.
