I just returned from China and came across an anomaly/puzzle about which I'd like expert explanation. I know that in China what we term black tea is "red." At one tea garden I visited, the managers talked about experimenting with black tea and showed me the young bushes and some early harvest of it. It looked to me far more like a darker green and the leaf was very much in the white tea style. At another factory, they also mentioned black tea. In Shanghai, I finally bought some unusual looking China black, wound into long, tight spirals, from a superb upmarket tea store. Back home I brewed it as I would a black -- boiling water, 4 minutes infusion. Ohmigod. It was extraordinarily bitter to the degree of being undrinkable. The taste made the aftertaste of a Gyokuro seem bland. The leaves unwound and expanded like an oolong. Was I just overbrewing a heavy green?
So, please enlighten me. What is a China "black?" Just a blackish green? An exotic specialty? A mistranslation of something? Thanks.
Hello Peter, apart from red tea (which - as you correctly mentioned - is black tea in the west), there is also black tea (sometimes referred to as bitter stalk tea) produced in China. This tea looks more like a dark green tea and produces a yellowish liquid. As you noticed, the flavor of the tea is quite bitter to start with. It should change with subsequent sippings, though. Chinese black tea is renowned to change its flavor over the course of a tasting. Judging from your description of the leaf style, I'm guessing you're drinking Wu Tang. I'd suggest you try playing with infusion times to make it enjoyable.
Do they look like little black sticks? I think you got Kuding Cha, which is..... really bitter.
China Black is actually stuff like Fu Bricks and Liu Bao and that kind of thing... not stuff you'll normally find and usually aren't THAT bitter. Not the way you described anyway.
It is, as MarshalN & Jo mentioned, you bought a kuding cha instead of china black. If after the initial bitterness comes a sweetness that coats the tongue to the back of the throat and slight salivating from under the tongue, it is most likely you got a kuding cha. It isn't bad, just cut down your brewing time to 30 sec and use only a single stick per cup each time...
china black tea comes in several forms - from the fu bricks to liu bao, they taste very different, depending on the region.
Thank you, Marshal, Danny and Jo. You solved my puzzle and I much appreciate your expertise. Yes, it is indeed a kuding. I didn't get to its sweet aftertaste because I'd brewed it far too long as if it were the green I assumed. I gave it four minutes and used a full spoonful !!!!! Overkill.
This little experience is a reminder to me of just how much I don't know about tea and how helpful this Group can be. I am beyond a newbie and in fact quite knowledgeable at the broad level across most types of tea, but there is so much more to know! I have just finished writing a book that aims at getting the tea bag/green tea for health drinker familiar with the wider options and wonderful choices of great teas. I reference the Google group several times as a valuable resource -- it provides the next level of information beyond that of an amateur like myself. One of the blockages to building the tea community for me is the lack of decent literature -- that a picture book like Jane Pettigrew's cosy nostalgia or the 1906 Kokuza (for me, much overrated) Art of Tea constitutes the basic library really gets in the way of moving newbies and amateurs to a fuller knowledge base that you guys have. I have o many friends who love the tea they know about but, for exam[ple, have never once drunk an oolong or even heard about puehrs. There is such a wide set of information voids. At my level, too, there are even more voids; for instance, I drink plenty of Silver Needle/Eyebrow whites and Dragonwells/Gykuro/basic Tuchas but am completely out of my depth in understanding the varieties within them and the grade differences. I had simply never even heard of kuding and realize that I have many other such blindnesses. I think I am representative of a growing community of tea lovers, who needs and wants plenty of information help.
Anyway, thanks so much; I genuinely appreciate your reply and admire your expertise and willingness to share it.
Peter
PS. I'd love to send any of you the short speech I gave in Liyang and get your feedback and insights . On May 7, 10:43 pm, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:
I'm deeply impressed that you survived a pot-full of kudingcha! The most I've seen people use in a brew is a few stalks, simply because of its enormous potency. I can only imagine the agony induced by using the quantity that one would use for normal tea - my sympathies are mixed with admiration!
As is my very limited understanding, kuding"cha" isn't tea at all; I'd welcome confirmation from a regular kuding suffer/drinker. ;)
It was indeed a truly interesting experience -- as in the cliched Confucian curse "May you live in interesting times." I think I broke every record for the 29 foot dash from chair to sink to grab a glass of water record. I only managed three gulps, one of surprise, the second a "surely not" and the third "omigod" -- the rest is probably corroding my water pipes. Still, it could have been worse -- a Constant Cummings fruit flavored lawnmower ejection special perhaps? I gather that kuding is ingested (via tracheotomy?) for medicinal purposes only. In a taste-off competition between my local supermarket's green tea tags with ingredients from somewhere that dare not speak its name, a kuding and a sip of cod liver oil I wonder which would win the Healthy Food Award from the Thunderbird Wine Foundation.
Pickled herring in brine -- ah, yes. I taught in Sweden for four years and managed to avoid ever eating surstromming but out in romantic Sollentuna and Ciste -- small towns outside Stockholm -- you could smell it from a thousand meters. I think you are on to something -- a new international food niche. Perhaps it might be named cusiine affreux -- frightening food -- built on the principle of the fouler it smells the more redolent the delicacy. Add to the surstromming menu kuding plus a Swedish cloudberry wine, that viscous and expensive sugary overdose, and a few British classics (ah, memories of my childhood) such as spotted dick, and then on to stardom on cable TV's Food Channel. The ad slogan might be "Kuding. It's unique! We hope."
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