More monkey-picked tea

Those would be male monkeys. For proper monkey-picked tea they hire virgin female monkeys, who have the patience to do the job right.

/Lew

I have checked our records and find that virgin female monkeys are really quite *im*patient. This is apparently especially true in the presence of those rambunctious male monkeys thrashing around. Suspect monkeys would be better employed in Pu'erh tea factories producing tea cakes and suchlike. Michael

A friend of mine many years ago bought a monkey from a guy who said that it used to be a tea-picking monkey in China but then hopped a freighter and came to the US. The friend had a big back yard and every morning the monkey would go out the back door and delicately prune the budding tips of the shrubbery and deposit all the buds in a big burlap sack on the guy's back porch. Pretty strange!

Another tea myth to bust - I repeat here an article I wrote for the Nothing But Tea Newsletter a while ago:

"Did monkeys ever get trained to pluck tea leaves in China? Certainly the tea bushes were very much taller in the old times in China: without the constant pruning to maintain an easily accessed plucking table, as tea bushes are now managed, the bushes grew into small trees that could easily be 20 feet tall. Most of the tea garden tending in China was undertaken by Buddhist monks, and in pictures they always look old and venerable, hardly the types to climb up trees themselves. Furthermore there are any number of monkeys to be found in the parts of China where the tea grows. And certainly many China teas have Monkey in their name. Consequently we fall easily into the myth that the Chinese monks trained local monkeys to pluck tea leaves from these tall tea trees. Seeking evidence to the contrary is not easy - but we find that the story is not a new one. A botanist Robert Fortune was sent to China by the London Horticultural Society to seek new plants, and returned there in 1848 on behalf of the British East India Company to visit tea factories and bring back tea seeds. John Fortune spent a considerable time in China and recorded his travels in a book entitled, with a simplicity that disguises the vast depth of tea knowledge he had acquired, "Visit to the Tea Districts of China and India" (publ. 1859). John Fortune even then came across the trained monkey syndrome and commented dryly:

"The tea shrub is cultivated everywhere, and often in the most inaccessible situations, such as on the summits and ledges of precipitous rocks. Mr Ball (another contemporary tea author) states that chains are said to be used in collecting the leaves of shrubs growing in such places; and I have even heard it asserted that monkeys are employed for the same purpose, and in the following manner:- These animals, it seems, do not like work, and would not gather the leaves willingly; but when they are seen up amongst the rocks where the tea bushes are growing, the Chinese throw stones at them; the monkeys get very angry, and commence breaking off the branches of the tea shrubs, which they throw down at their assailants! I should not like to assert that no tea is gathered on these hills by the agency of chains and monkeys but (if it is) I think it may be safely affirmed that the quantity procured in such ways is exceedingly small"

As John Fortune notes, monkeys are not so easily trained to undertake hard work and, with the exception of the long running Brooke Bond chimps have nothing to do with tea. I think, on balance, that the case for monkey plucked tea leaves is definitely unproven and will vote this one as MYTH."

Nigel at Teacraft

I actually have a small spider monkey who lives in my tea cupboard, when I open the door he hands me a container of tea that he has selected and that's what I drink for the day. When I open the door and he flings poo, I have coffee.

aw come on.. monkey-picked tea would be so COOL. Let's all just agree to believe in it ok?

LOL ROFLFOFLFORLFOMAOI !!!!!

Lewis Perin snipped-for-privacy@panix.com replied:

Come on guys, these are all legends. The only beverage truly produced by monkeys is capuchino.

Rick.

That's right, it's on the interweb, so it must be true.

OK, I'm with you. It's right up there with salvation. Thanks, slippy.

...I keep Him in my other cupboard. He's alway up to hijinks like parting my red wine though.

"I went to me bath for a Burma-Shave This monkey going put me into the grave The entire cabinet was laid to waste. I had to shave with some green toothpaste." -- Harry Belafonte

Belafonte? It's actually in the form of a sequence of Burma Shave signs. Strange, but maybe no stranger than monkey-picked tea.

/Lew

I'd take monkey-picked tea over civet cat pooped coffee any day, though.

So, what are the defining characteristics of "monkey-picked" tea? Cultivar and/or locale?

Alan

I've mostly heard it used in conjunction with Anxi Tieguanyin (or other tightly balled oolongs), but the term itself (as used today) just refers either to a vendor's best / signature tea, or to the difficulty of picking the leaves of the bushes the tea comes from. Ultimately, the term can basically be used by anyone for any purpose.

As to whether monkeys were ever actually employed to pick tea leaves, I don't think anyone can say for sure (see a recent RFDT thread on this very topic).