IF you believe the trend hunters, tea has been on the cusp of being the hot, fashionable beverage for years.
But in most cafes and restaurants tea remains the indifferent teabag infused in water heated to a random temperature.
In short, you are better dunking a bag in a cup of boiling water at home.
But now specialty teas from single-origin farmers are receiving an unexpected boost from baristas who care about coffee and its origins.
Nathan Wakeford, managing director of Somage Fine Foods, found his affinity with tea in 2005 when he was involved in barista championships. And he knew all the top baristas, having found himself running the Victorian chapter of the Australian Specialty Coffee Association.
But he was a coffee salesman and realised that if he was to go into business he couldn’t compete in the over-crowded coffee market. Instead of going head-on, Wakeford and business partner Ben Kelly devised a plan to sell other beverages instead.
Somage first started selling imported chai tea and drinking chocolate and three years ago introduced its Chamellia range of quality teas.
The company’s latest step is to introduce a Chamellia Reserve range from single-origin tea estates and market the teas to the 600 or so cafes and restaurants through which they distribute. The main focus is on those that understand and buy into the idea of coffee sourced from single-origin estates and the world’s best growers.
“It really resonated with me with me that I needed to find the world’s best producers,” Wakeford says. And with that in mind he started building on the business models built by organic fair-trade single-origin estate tea distributors such as Rishi and Adagio teas in the US (a parallel to Australian coffee roasters that have build on the model of roaster and retailer Stumptown from Portland, Oregon).
Single-origin tea gardens are not a new concept and some gardens have been around for hundreds of years. According to David Thompson, who founded tea company Larsen & Thompson in 1992, the Germans were the prime movers in the marketing of tea by origin, garden name and invoice number (tea batch) in the 1940s and 50s.
But what most consumers see are the commodity teas sold in supermarkets. The big tea companies blend to a price, meaning that often the quality doesn’t shine through, particularly with a recent 25per cent increase in tea prices.
In 2000 Thompson started visiting tea estates in countries including Burma, China and India in his search for the best. Now he visits India and China each year, sourcing tea.
He says there are striking differences between the flavours and characteristics of teas compared with coffee and that consumers still need to be educated. “I feel the coffee guys are trying to steal the limelight,” he says.
Thompson says the cafes that use and support single-origin coffee beans are moving to support single-origin teas because it is part of their ethos. “What I find with the single-origin coffee baristas is that they are saying: `We have to sell single-origin tea.’ ” He says the public started to recognise good tea when they began to be served it. “It’s particularly gratifying for me to see that the market is finally maturing to a point where consumers are beginning to realise that there’s more to tea than teabags and cute-sounding blends of flavoured teas,” he says.
Wakeford is building on Thompson’s work by visiting Sri Lankan estates and plans to extend his travels to tea gardens across India and Asia.
He’s returning with video footage to post on social media sites such as YouTube and to play at a seriesof tea and food matching dinners to educate the local market.
Somage’s first matching dinner was held for an industry crowd at Melbourne coffee roaster and cafe St Ali followed by a matching dinner at L’Etoile in Sydney, the restaurant of television celebrity chef Manu Feildel, with desserts from Australia’s hot pastry chef Adriano Zumbo.
Now Wakeford is introducing cafes to the detail of brewing tea and serving it properly.
A precise measure of tea, sometimes using electronic scales, is infused in a precise measure of water measured out and heated to a precise temperature, which varies depending on the origins of the leaves. Tea drinkers are even given timers to ensure the optimum brew.
But still tea has no formal tea-making training schools as in the larger and more lucrative coffee market. “The case is that people in Australia reallyhave quality but they need to understand it,” Wakeford says.
“Poor old tea drinkers have been sold short.”
READING THE LEAVES
* THE best tea leaves are hand-picked young leaves from the tip of the tea (Camellia sinensis) plant. Only the top 2.5 to 5 cm of the tea plant are plucked.
* JUST as with grapes, tea varies depending on the elevation, soil and microclimate.
* THE best teas grow high, at altitudes of up to 1500m and take longer to infuse.
* There are four main types of tea: black tea (wilted and fermented), oolong tea (wilted, bruised, partially fermented), green tea (unwilted and not fermented), white tea (wilted and not fermented).