Tea review: The peasant and the noble

I wake up 05:20 at least five days a week. No matter how early you go to bed you will be tired at that time in the morning. It has something to do with dream cycles: at five I usually wake-up straight from a dream which feels very startling, every time. So I really need something strong to get me going, and after quitting coffee the only choice I´ve found so far is Assam.

   Assam is the name of the world´s largest tea growing region in northeast India. The black teas from this area are probably one of the easiest even for a complete beginner to recognize, the taste is really distinctive. It is because the plants from which the tea is manufactured, Camellia sinensis var. assamica, are altogether a different variety of the tea plant, distinct from the "original" chinese tea bush. Of course, the Assamese tea also has it´s own methods of manufacture.

   I´ve been drinking a very run-of-the-mill Assam bought from the local supermarket. It´s not a bad tea in any way, a reliable and stout drink that packs enough punch to get you awake and out of the door. Still it does have a tendency to go quite astringent, especially if steeped too long. This is the taste that one would very naturally want to soften with milk, which I think is why tea with milk is associated with the English; Assam was the main provider of the British Empire´s tea. As I have a personal preference of not mixing milk into my tea, I´ve just tried to make do with a little shorter steeping times and/or less leaves, although the latter tends to compromise the fullness of taste which I do want to be there.

   Last week I bought a small packet of premium Assamese tea, Budla Beta S.F.F.T.G.F.O.P 1 (that´s a lot of alphabets!). It cost only marginally more than my supermarket- Assam. So I thought I'd do a side-by-side comparison of the two.

   The dry leaves had some differences but not much: in the cheaper one they were darker, almost black, and their consistency was also finer and smaller, the leaves looked almost scorched. Both showed about the same amount of lighter coloured buds among the leaves. I steeped a teaspoonful of the leaves in pre- heated cups, the water was about 97 degrees Celsius and I steeped both of them for 4 minutes.

   In the picture the right hand side cup is the Budla Beta. It is lighter in colour and more clearly reddish. The cheaper one is a quite dull dark brown. But the taste was where these two differed the most. Both of these had the "trademark" Assam- taste of leather, rum, smoke, madeira wine, oak. This is where the cheaper one stopped: it had the basic tastes down allright, but it was quite noticeably astringent, and there was no real depth or aftertaste to speak off. Budla Beta on the other hand continued where the other one stopped. A world of further nuances came through in a buttery sweet roundness. There was no astringency, just a thick and full, really robust fullness of taste. Your brain expects astringency to follow such a strong taste, but it just never comes. Tasting these two like this side-by-side made the cheapos´ astringency really stands out and I couldn´t even finish the cup.

   I also examined the steeped leaves, and the differences were a lot more pronounced now than when they were dry. Whereas the cheap leaves were a uniform leathery brown of pretty small broken leaf pieces, Budla Beta had more variety of brown and dark purples and greens. The leaves were still broken but the pieces were bigger.

   So the result is clear and simple. Once you taste the good stuff there´s no going back. I can't even think of how low quality those bagged Assams have been that I've happily drunk in the past. Now I'm spoiled for life. Luckily, here the difference in price is really insignificant. It seems you get a lot more quality for less money in Assams than in Chinese green teas, for example. I'm sure to be trying out many other high quality Assams in the near future.