Interesting article on black tea in Taiwan

I found this interesting. Hope you do too.

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Reply to
TokyoB
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I wonder if my black tea called Assama from a Taiwan company is similar to this? I assumed it was an Indian Assam from a Taiwan company but it is a little different in taste. It comes in 600g nitrogen packs different from any commercial Assam Ive seen.

Jim

TokyoB wrote:

Reply to
Space Cowboy

Jim, I think it probably is the same. When I was in Taiwan near the Tea Research Institute, there were several vendors of Assam that was locally grown. In Mandarin it was pronounced something like "ah sam mu". Someone mentioned Taiwan variety #18. Where did you buy yours? TokyoB

Reply to
TokyoB

The packaging does say a Product of Taiwan. Before I just chalked that up as a redundant export requirement. The pinyin on the packaging says Assama with the Chinese characters for Assam. I found it in a Chinese grocery store which has a good selection of commercial Taiwan teas. It tastes more like an Indian assam than not but a little more smokey and pungent. Im developing a new appreciation for Assam because it is the primal tea stock. I came across a website yesterday that said the Yunnan assam was intentionally planted along the silk road into India via Burma. My books say independent geographical isolated areas.

Jim

TokyoB wrote:

Reply to
Space Cowboy

On Sep 25, 2:13 pm, Space Cowboy snipped-for-privacy@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

Actuallu Yunnan Assam does not exist taxonomically . The large leaf Yunnan is actually a subvariety of Camellia - Camellia sinensis var. sinensis f. macrophylla

The taxonomy of tea has been continually disputed since 1752 when Linnaeus originally named it Thea sinensis (the naming based on a 1712 drawing of a specimen collected from Indonesia). Later Linnaeus abandoned the specific sinensis and substituted T. bohea and T. viridis (effectively black tea and green tea; the great taxonomist being unaware that either type of tea could be manufactured from any tea variety. There followed centuries of dispute between the claims of Camellia and Thea as the correct genus for cultivated tea. The Gordian Knot was effectively dealt with in 1891 by Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze whose pioneering work entirely revised plant taxonomy (but whose efforts were until long after his death reviled, then buried, by the academic elite). Otto recognized tea as a true Camellia and today tea is botanically referred to simply as Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze, in recognition. This cleared the botanical decks of hundreds of tea "species" - C. assamica, C. irrawadiensis, C. hongkongensis, C. taliensis, and C. macropylla amongst them. Post Kuntze all these became varieties of C. sinensis. While dispute still continues about the genetic contribution of a host of geographical varieties, we now have since 1958, a simple formalized classification thanks to Sealy: Camellia sinensis var. sinensis for the China type bush (capable of withstanding cold down to frost conditions) and Camellia sinensis var. assamica for the larger leaved Assam type bush more typical of the tropics, incapable of withstanding frost. Note that Camellia sinensis var. sinensis is further divided into sub varieties: Camellia sinensis var. sinensis f. parviflora - the very small leaved bush type found in Japan (e.g. Yabukita) and Camellia sinensis var. sinensis f. macrophylla - the Yunnan 'Big Leaf' bush which mainly provides pu erh.

You will still find many tea scientists and tea book authors locked in a time warp and using old taxonomic nomenclature (I do myself sometimes) and a further complication is that C. sinensis is an out breeder. A myriad of hybrids exist between the species, varieties and sub varieties - both naturally by cross pollination (though limited by geography) and intentionally by plant breeders where any combination may be tried.

Nigel at Teacraft

Reply to
Nigel

A little DNA work has been done on tea (I covet a Chinese paper published about it this year but haven't been able to justify $32 to acquire a copy). Genetic marker studies tend to throw up as many questions as they answer but certainly the Indian/Burmese assamica type is different to the Chinese sinensis type. I suspect that the large leaf China type really is different 'origin' to the large leaf Assamica type - and that there never was one single definable origin. Tea genetic history is complex. Camellia sinensis is self incompatible - it can only cross breed. This feature, over millenia, resulted in a highly heterogenous and variable gene pool. Geographical separation kept the main groups from too much crossing - then along came man and hybridization went into overdrive.

Nigel at Teacraft

Reply to
Nigel

If one does a Google search for tea +genetic +DNA the results suggest that quite a lot of research has been done on the DNA of tea, and that is only seeing the English, while I rather think that the main bulk of studies will have been published in Japanese, as well as Chinese and Korean. Some interesting stuff there, including the discovery that wild tea in Korea has 2 clearly defined origins, one Chinese (ancient) and one Japanese (recent).

Br Anthony

Reply to
An Sonjae

Certainly some interesting stuff exists as you say but 'a little' and 'quite a lot' are relative terms. I was comparing DNA taxonomy work with the wealth of health work in tea. As a crude tool, Google tea

+genetics+DNA scores 308,000 results but tea+genetics+DNA+damage scores 263,000, netting but 45,000 for botany to some 85% for medicine.

Having established that, and allowing serendipity her head, I came across a paper listing variations in the quality components of tea plants in the China National Germplasm Repository. [The Chinese are wisely collecting a huge tea gene pool as a resource for future breeding - commercial tea culture tends to pick winners and propagate these few, so reducing genetic variation in the field - a short sighted technique that assumes teh fallacy that tomorrow's problems will be the same as today's].

The quality component variations the Chinese show will baffle those who like a simple correlation between tea type and caffeine level, or tea type with antioxidant potential. For instance, in the CNGTR collection, which is mainly China type tea varieties:

Polyphenol varies from 13.6 to 47.8% (highest in Yunnan types) Catechins range from 8.2 to 26.3% (at variance with total polyphenols; Hunan teas are highest) Amino acids range from 1.1 to 6.5% (lowest in southern provinces) Caffeine varies from 1.2 to 5.9% (Yunnan tends to have the highest, China and Japanese types have similar variation) Water extractable solids varies from 24.2 (well below ISO minimum of

32%) to an amazing 57.0% (again Yunnan tending to have the highest).

As you say, Brother Anthony, some interesting stuff !

Nigel at Teacraft

Reply to
Nigel

That would be mostly theanine, right?

/Lew

Reply to
Lewis Perin

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