Bai vs Mao Chinese tea terms

I read this was the tea used in the Walmart American Select teabags. I checked the packaging and I think it said packed in Benton, Ark but nothing about the plantation. One of the days I'll have a store manager find out where their tea brand comes from.

Jim

Scott Dorsey wrote:

Tea is like oil, it is cheaper too import than plant or drill. In the

1800's it was blood for tea. Plug camellia sinensis nursery into Google and you'll find everything from the seedlings, to bush, to strapling. It is a common bush used in gardens in the South. Sounds like a Johhny tea seed adventure.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

17: snipped-for-privacy@panix.com ,

history.

varieties

mountain,

You're a whippersnapper. Did the Malaysian shipment have a FDA PNSI confirmation number?

Jim

Mel> ...I'm 34 for god's sake...

I must admit that I find it difficult to imagine Wal-Mart selling a more expensive American product in place of an inexpensive Chinese import, but I suppose it could happen.

Incidentally, whenever I see the subject of this thread, I hear Bruce Springsteen singing "TEA... IN THE USA" in my head. This is bad.

--scott

i'm glad you've decided to stick around thru all the flaming.

also, your posts never provide a clue as to who or what you're responding to. why?.....p*

I think a lot of the tea bag tea is automatically harvested anywhere it's grown.

Bright leaf tobacco is pulled leaf by leaf and prior to the development of sucker oil, there was a huge amount of hand work involved beyond that (it's a brutal crop to grow).

Tea's probably not even as easy to deal with as tobacco (maybe less messy sap, but I dunno), so it would be *very* hard to pay for people to pick it commercially. I wonder if people would pick their own which is one of the marketing tricks that's saved a lot of small scale fruit growers (every strawberry you eat was hand picked, too). How much fuss would it be to grow enough for home use? Someone in Africa, I think, tried harvesting local tea planted as decorative shrubs, but didn't seem to get anything useful out of it, judging by posts here.

Picking it is certainly a bitch, but tabacco is easy to grow, the most difficult is to hide it from the cops. Tea bushes require several years of care before producing, and has to be maintained by people that know how to do it.

That sort of *amusement* exists in Japan, but only after the real picking season is over. A few farmers may let you try picking in their less good fields. It's when they consider it doesn't matter if the amateurs mess the tea bushes by grossly cutting branches and leaves. What the Sunday-farmers pick and process themselves is not first grade tea and they do only a few grams.

Maintaining a tea garden just for people's fun would be expensive.

Probably the same amount of fuss as growing one tree of vine to get the grapes and make 5 liters of your own wine. For a start, that supposes that your balcony or garden has the good sun exposure and humidity. But maybe some day, the botanists will create some family use tea bushes you keep on your kitchen window, so when you're thisty, you pick 4 or 6 leaves, nuke them, rub them a little, nuke again to dry and brew.

Kuri

Where my uncle lives, bright leaf tobacco is legal, but it's not *that* easy to grow since it's basically a tropical plant grown in the extremes of its range (and grown under shade cloth in the far northern parts. The plant is started in either seed beds or green houses (my uncle came to prefer greenhouse grown transplants) and then set in the field by hand.

Tea's probably harder, but growing apples is way easier than growing tobacco, and in that part of Virginia, no other crop comes a distant third economically.

Doesn't explain wild picked Chinese tea -- I rather wonder if this isn't a matter of trying to grow for maximum production.

The Upton quarterly just arrived and I'd been reading the article about trying to grow Chinese varieties of teas in Indian where the Assam variety was more vigorous and more productive.

Seems like this could be done in Mexico, except that people aren't tea drinkers there.

Someone posted a year or so ago about his grandmother in Japan making her own green tea on a household scale.

I'd been thinking about getting some Camellias, but more the winter hardy ornamental varieties than tea plants.

I think the NC nursery was Camellia Forest -- they had a couple varieties of tea plants, including a big leaf Yunnan that was their most cold hardy plant.

Philadelphia isn't upland enough, though.

Actually, from Michael it's not profanity but a high standard of comparison. A loose translation might be "I respect what you say, but not quite so much as an esteemed mammal's hindquarters." He's notoriously fond of small rodents, and apparently indiscriminate as to body parts.

-DM

That's a very little part of Chinese tea production.

Xishuanbanna is the jungle...so I guess that unless you're also in a similar jungle, your tea bushes don't grow that naturally. Also, I don't remember exactly, but I think they told me they needed 7 to 10 years to get an adult tea bush in Uji. Wild tea bushes are probably picked later. And that's not the same tea. The varieties used to do sencha don't exist as wild, and those for gyokuro have to be cultivated under sorts of tents. There are teas that were cultivated and went back to wilderness, they look different too.

They'd produce for export, but they are not tea farmers and won't learn overnight.

You should ask Crymad. I think his in-laws do it, as they live in a major tea production area in Kyushu. So maybe every household does some because that's there job or that used to be their parents' job. ... That doesn't mean that's little work and little skill. I think they have it in a tea-garden, not in their backyard between the carrots and the tomatoes. When there was not much trade in Japan, in areas away from tea production, they'd grow tea in small quantities. It's uncommon now (people do it for the historic experience) and what I have got -for as expensive as top grade sencha - were bancha or a disappointing green tea (yanagi cha) that nobody wants a second cup of. I'll try others, when I get more money to waste.

....

I guess you could* cultivate many sorts of teabushes over there, if you place them close enough to a building so the earth doesn't freeze in deep. In Korea, they can have winters like Canada, and they grow tea. They protected all sorts of plants with wrappings in winter but I didn't go to dig under the snow to see Christmas tea trees.

*You could if the FDA letted you import and grow what you bring back from trips abroad for your experiments.

Kuri

Camellia Forest has a couple of different varieties of tea plants and there's also a place in Pennsylvania that sells them (don't know if locally grown or not. I've got a high stone wall against a hill in my back garden. There's a pink flowered tea plant. And it certainly gets humid enough in the summer.

Anyone else see a need for a rec.food.drink.tea.best-of?

/Lew

Thats the one. The Sams Choice tea package clearly states its from the only tea plantation in the US, in SC.

For a commercial bulk sold tea bag, its not any worse than the next. Its not gourmet, but its actually not too bad. I think it has a little bit more flavor than some of the other brands on the shelves.

I don't think it did, much as I tried to get them to understand that I wanted them to put one on...I did do a prior import notice on my own but after they shipped, and while I printed it out after I completed it, now when I search under that number there's nothing in there.

I do my best to keep up with what the bureaucracy asks of me, but when the bureaucracy loses or messes up the final item...well, I just can't fix that. I do the best I can and then it's outta my hands.

FWIW, I think all my Teaspring orders have had it...starts with an R I think?

Yes, it was my wife's grandmother who grows her own. She wasn't involved in the tea business, just had some bushes up in the hill near the mikan trees. My wife's not too sure how common this practice is, but then again, we are talking about the heart of Kyushu tea production, in Ureshino.

This homemade tea is by no means exquisite and rare Gyokuro. But it is good, in a earthy, rugged way. It brews up a light yellow brown. Imagine a good, fresh bancha crossed with a very green Oolong, and you'll come close to approximating the flavor.

--crymad

Dog Ma 1T1wje.799689$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net5/20/05

21:20spamdogma snipped-for-privacy@att.net reply w/o spam

Yes, that was indeed exactly what I had intended. I'm so sorry to have offended. I'm just a debater of ill repute. Again, sorry.

Michael

My friend in Oregon said that people were growing tea plants there now and Nichols sold two varieties that had shown promise in the area. One place tried to grow it commercially but failed. She wasn't sure it failed for any specific reason, more like the usual reasons for farms failing.

The information on line says that tea plants can take down to 20 degrees F -- this means they'd be marginal for here without some protection but would probably do well enough in zone 8 regions (we're the colder part of zone 7 here).

I heard bamboo charcoal kicks up the ion charges in the water which makes it tastier, but no, I haven't tried that yet.

Pu'er ages optimally in an area with a humidity of between 60-70%. The charcoal in addition of absorbing excess humidity, also absorbs foregin odour.

Danny

Dude,

I do accept that there are millions out there who know more about China than I do. What I'm saying is that don't believe what you are taught until you can verify for yourself the truth.

He is a post grad teacher, but that doesn't make him any wiser when it comes to areas which he might not be familiar with. He was in the cultural revolution and probably has read the Red Book of Mao, but there are lots of untold facts being unearthed now about Mao, does he know them all then?

It is up to you to find out the truth really. I believe in what I know as facts, can you be certain what you are taught by him as facts too? If you can't be 100% certain, then I'll repeat myself - go and find out. The decision is yours, believe him and be fooled - in my opinion you are - or find out the truth for yourself.

Danny