Sunday, December 18, 2011

Flights of tea, so you don't have to fly all over the world

Feel like you want to compare and contrast black teas or oolong teas, etc...?  The nice thing about flights of tea is that it allows you to taste, smell and see the differences within a type of tea.  Just think of the differences of an Assam black tea and a Darjeeling black tea.  Those teas are grown not too far away from each other, though they are grown at different elevations and use different botanical varietals (Assam the large leaf Assam varietal, Camellia sinensis assamica and Darjeeling the small leaf Chinese varietal, Camellia sinensis sinensis) and have very different tastes.  Add to that Chinese red (black) teas and other growing regions across the world and you will notice some subtle and pronounce differences.  


You could also included the same tea, but different methods of production (orthodox method versus the cut, tear and curl method).  Heck you could even have the same tea and between it being processed as a white tea, green, oolong, black, pu-erh, etc... though that may be harder to do, since that rarely happens or if it does it would usually would be a green and a black. Also rarely is the same tea produced in the CTC and the orthodox method.


This tasting of a type of tea can help someone who wants to gain more knowledge about tea in general, better knowledge of a variety of tea you already like or even to help you find the tea(s) that will become your favorite.  


So if you cannot afford or have the time to travel all over the world and enjoy tea, why not try a flight of tea.  Usually the teas come from various parts of the world and while you are sipping them you can pretend you are in the exotic lands they come from.