Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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THE WHOLE LEAF continued from page 57 PROPAGATING: Some tea growers reproduce cultivars through vegetative propagation, where a leaf cutting from a mother bush is planted to yield tea with known attributes. to have a strong resistance to disease and unusually high antioxidant levels. Developed in 1993, the cultivar is hardy and can be grown with only a minimal amount of chemicals. Benifuuki is being marketed specifically as an anti-allergen. Both Benifuuki and TRFK 306/1 have unique flavor profiles and can taste very bitter if steeping is not adjusted to complement their chemical makeup. The desire for a unique and flavorful cup continues to drive cultivar development as well. Kenya's S 15/10 is one example—it is tippy and slow to oxidize, and it brews as a full-bodied white tea with a taste like freshly baked butter cake. In Nepal, the tea masters at Jun Chiyabari are taking established cultivars from Japan and Taiwan that are renowned for flavor and quality and planting them in Nepal's pure, rich soils. The results are extraordinary. Like a Sauvignon blanc that is known to produce a crisp and elegant wine at home in Bordeaux but can produce an equally impressive yet significantly different wine in New Zealand, a Yabukita tea cultivar will make an impressive yet different cup in its native Japan than in Nepal. Along these lines, innovative tea masters in China are producing black teas with cultivars typically used for green tea production. 58 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com HONORING TRADITION Though the benefits of modern tea cultivation are vast, there is a reaction against large-scale reproduction and planting only the most popular clones, as well as a movement toward growing heirloom, or heritage, teas in addition to wild ones. Heirloom and heritage teas are old cultivars that are not used in large-scale agriculture. Teas marketed as "wild" are likely from very old heritage cultivars and originate from wild plants in China that have been left untouched for many years; they are typically harvested in small lots. The value of heirlooms lies in their having evolved over long periods of time to become perfectly suited to their environments. The slight variations from one cultivar to another, then, result in a wealth of genetic diversity. Because the future of tea depends on its ability to survive and adapt to our changing environment, this diversity is of the utmost importance. In ancient times, tea drinkers sought serenity and spirituality from their tea. They were content to reproduce tea like Mother Nature does—by putting a seed in the ground. Modern tea drinkers are searching for much more, and cultivars and connoisseurs are rising to meet their demands.