In article . com,
Ankit Lochan wrote:

this is not very healthy information that i am disclosing but i think
i should let you know as you have been to tea estates in india while i
have lived all my life in tea estates. all gardens making CTC tea are
very marginal gardens that do not have any marketing setup outside the
country to export their produce - they make CTC only because the
auction system in india helps them sell their produce at a price
sometimes above cost of production - normally the price is at par. CTC
is the reason for so many tea estates closing down because the cost
economics makes them sick and they have to shut down. all ctc tea
producing estates are alway mixing various products with green leaves
to reduce cost of production. somethings are better not told.

ankit lochan

Count me among those who do not automatically reject CTC teas:
everybody knows they are mass produced but they are sold at modest
prices and fill a simple need and do not pretend to be more. Orthodox
tea can produce a superior product but do not always deliver:

I actually think that a bigger problem is that very few tea gardens
deliver consistently superior flavor despite orthodox production. If
you search this newsgroup archives you will find that almost universally
people are usually unimpressed with Darjeeling teas. This is despite
the fact that Darjeeling is world famous. I do not believe that this is
because of fake provenance of the teas. For example, someone on a
recent thread said they were unimpressed with Castelton and Margaret's
Hope from thunderbolt teas,(who writes with passion on his blog and like
you is a Darjeeling native). No amount of marketing can repeatedly sell
an average product at premium prices (and thunderbolts marketing is very
enticing). Marketing can cause a sampling, but if product quality does
not come through you are not going to have repeat customers. In this
particular case, the teas in question were last years stock but
nonetheless if they were truly world class would show some character. I
personally LOVE good Darjeeling teas and they are the main tea I am
interested in. But with every purchase I invariably feel burned - I very
rarely get the quality of tea I am seeking. Out of say 20 teas I buy
maybe one is worthy of any attention with the elusive muscatel character
(both as aroma and flavor), and most have no distinctive character and
frankly not much better than Lipton Green Label but at prices 20-50 X
Green Label. All this is orthodox tea which despite labor and time
intensive operations on what should be superior leaf from one of the
best tea growing regions in the world really does nothing from a
customers point of view.

On Chinese teas the quality comes through very consistently. If I buy
10 teas at premium prices from well known vendors 5 will be outstanding
(multiple infusions with very complex & shifting aroma and taste
profiles), 3 good to excellent and perhaps 2 middling.

I realize that Darjeeling has many unique problems: high production
costs, frequent drought, old tired plantations, restive labor etc. etc.
I am very sympathetic to all these problems and would love them solved
because at its best I believe Darjeeling really is a unique tea. I do
not believe marketing is the answer to Darjeelings problems -
Darjeelings problems will be solved when people can sip its teas and
taste Darjeeling muscatel character with the same consistency that say
any premium Taiwanese oolong will deliver. This is likely to require a
very capital intensive solution. I understand the Tata's and Godrej's
etc. are buying up Darjeeling plantations and perhaps they have the
capital to right the ship (I do not know if they have the desire to
change things).

Roland

please let me have your mailing
adress so i can send you some of the finest assams that india
produces.

Ankit,

Thanks for the offer I will do that.

Joel

On Aug 31, 9:21 am, Joel wrote:
please let me have your mailing adress so i can send you some of the finest assams that india
produces.

Ankit,

Thanks for the offer I will do that.

Joel

thank you joel for the details - i will have the teas shipped to you
on monday.

regards
ankit

On Aug 31, 1:45 pm, Ankit Lochan wrote:
On Aug 31, 9:21 am, Joel wrote:

please let me have your mailing adress so i can send you some of the finest assams that india
produces.

Ankit,

Thanks for the offer I will do that.

Joel

thank you joel for the details - i will have the teas shipped to you
on monday.

regards
ankit

hi

joel/scott - 10 samples - 1 ounce each, have been sent today via
courier mode for priority delivery.

happy tea drinking - i hope you will like the indian assams, i have my
fingers crossed - i have also included some darjeeling muscatels for
you.

keep us posted on the taste so we can improve.

have a nice day!

ankit

wrote:
While a drop of milk or cream helps with both, flavor and aroma, to me
[and old Mr.M.] just a liiittle sugar can bring up nuances of flavor
that would be entirely lost without it...
Any idea why sugar works that way, anyone ?

Sugar is often regarded as a flavor potentiator (like salt and MSG),
enhancing the impact of other flavors even below its own sense
threshold. I read about this as a teenager, and didn't quite believe it.
But once when my wad of Juicy Fruit gum went flat, I tried adding a
pinch of sugar. The "fruit" flavor came back at full original strength,
consistent with the rapid dissolution of sugar and the much slower loss
of oil-soluble esters, terpenes, etc. from the rubber base.

I drink a fair amount of EBT in place of coffee - not for serious
sipping, that is - and have to add milk to keep the stomach happy. Gave
up sugar years ago. But I now use lactose-free milk, and the affect on
tea taste from the enhanced milk sweetness is startling.

-DM

On Aug 30, 4:13 am, wrote:
a liiittle sugar can bring up nuances of flavor
that would be entirely lost without it,

Any idea why sugar works that way, anyone ?

Karsten

speculating:

the sugar molecule (sucrose) meets certain other molecules in the
liquid [lets say the assam flavor molecule ] which it binds to and
then they both end up on the taste bud receptor, sugar facilitating
stimulation of the receptor (opening more ion channels = greater
stimulation)
or
binding the sugar, the other molecule is able to better bind into the
receptor (some 3d conformational spacial arrangements)
or
the sugary solution facilitates coating of the sugar molecule with the
flavor molecule around it , like saponification

but then again, i have no direct info regarding this issue, ...
someone else?

SN wrote:
speculating: ...

Interesting speculations, though anything involving covalent chemistry
(like saponification, though it looks like you meant something else) is
unlikely in these conditions. People have been studying flavor at the
molecular level for a long time, and AFAIK there yet lacks a compelling
case for a mechanism (or group of them) for flavor
potentiation/enhancement, much less basic flavor transduction.
Optimizing subtleties of the tea experience is more art than science,
and perhaps better so - especially where - as with vision - much of the
action is probably cortical, rather than biochemical.

-DM

On Aug 30, 3:16 pm, Lewis Perin wrote:
Ankit Lochan writes:
[...]
if you are speaking of CTC tea - this is the lowest end of tea - cost
1.5 USD per kilo at an average - made from the waste leaves and
produced for the sake of controllling the extra leaves - you can never
drink CTC without milk and sugar because it will leave you with such a
bitter taste that cannot be forgotten for many days. CTC tea is an
industrial tea which damages the tea leaves and produces a liqour that
one cannot drink without additives.

Are you sure you aren't exaggerating here?

As for CTC being made from waste leaves, I've been to a Dooars garden
where the factory only made CTC tea. Beyond that, isn't it true that
the majority of tea manufactured in India is CTC? That's a lot of
waste!

Some 60% of all black tea production in the world is CTC, 91% in North
India is CTC and 86% in South India. As you say Lew, that's a lot of
waste leaves! Truth is that you can use older heavier shoots (four
leaves and a bud) for CTC manufacture which gives higher yield and
more profit with an inferior cup though that can be rescued to a large
extent by shorter oxidation and using milk fpr palatability - the
Orthodox processors just cannot manufacture this older leaf - believe
me they would use it if they could. The Soviets in Georgia devoted
much design effort to achieve it, without success but it spawned some
interesting machinery. Yet a CTC tea made from really tender fine
plucked two leaf and a bud is sublime - but it's rare to get the
opportunity to try that unless you travel with your own CTC machine (I
do occasionally) - the CTC boys know they can make a profit even at
USD 1.50 per kg. Orthodox production needs about USD 2.00 just to
break even.

Nigel at Teacraft

On Sep 3, 5:28 pm, DogMa wrote:
SN wrote:
Optimizing subtleties of the tea experience is more art than science,
and perhaps better so

DogMa and SN, thanks a lot for the inspiration. How scientific it
might sound from one or the other perspective, it actually helps me to
expand my definition of "art", as art in terms of technique or
"style", or even "religion" with the original meaning as a point to
start from. I don´t even [want to] see any contradiction when I fumble
around with digital thermometers, scales and other tech gadgets - to
the point where I had to stop serving Darjeelings to friends of mine,
too often I got totally lost in the process.

especially where - as with vision - much of the
action is probably cortical, rather than biochemical.

-DM

I more or less carefully touched this issue a couple days ago in
another thread. If you include some other regions of the brain, and
all those nasty multi-sensorial influence factors it gets really
interesting.
After all I´m pretty sure that even a multi-million dollar investment
into my tea research kitchen lab wouldn´t result in that perfect cup
of Muscatel I´ve been trying to brew for ? knows how many
years ............ hopefully.

K8 [some blue-white "Spitztüte" Eastfrisian blend in tazza]

i still dont really like drinking indian tea without milk. my body is
just not used to it. I prefer it with milk and sugar..

On Aug 29, 7:42 pm, Joel wrote:
I have gone through 1/2 dozen Assams all with stellar reviews and they
do nothing for me. Flavor is barely detectable, I like strong tea
maybe my taste buds are muted.

Joel,

My experience of the past 8 months largely parallels yours. I have
tried quite a large number of Assams and they have just not done for
me what I think they should do. Many of those Assams were from
Upton. PG Tips has left me even less impressed, the flavor way too
light. (I almost never use milk).

In the last couple weeks I got several Assams from Tfactor (all from
the Satrupa estate, but some very different from each other) and one
from Lochan Teas. Initially I was again mostly disappointed. This
week, however, I've tried using about 20% more leaf and a 4 minute
brew time (a minute longer than my typical Assam time) and several of
these teas seem to have really blossomed. My revised brew parameter
is 3 grams of leaf in 6 oz of boiling water for 4 minutes. I'll
probably try some of these for still longer times, and for at least
one Assam this seemed like a little too much leaf, but the point is
I've upped the ante across the board and the teas are working out
better for me.

I suspect that early on in my experience I was brewing inferior or old
examples with -- predictably -- astringent, brothy, bitter results
when I brewed strong enough for my tone deaf palate. To avoid the
roughness, I probably reduced brew times and leaf till there wasn't
much character left. With these fresh, high quality Assams I have
been drinking lately, I can brew for a strong flavor without
sandblasting my mouth.

It seems to me that the point of the milk in Assams is largely to
protect your mouth from the effects of an inferior grade of tea, most
CTCs falling into this category. I'm also wondering if some of the
most expensive Assams that I have bought in the past may actually be
either old or improperly stored stock or even just inferior tea to
begin with. The ones I am enjoying lately are not expensive at all,
but they do come from more or less directly India-based sources rather
than from US merchants.

I had pretty much stopped drinking Assam. For that range of effects
I had turned to cooked puerh, hei cha, and hong cha. Now I am very
happy to be adding Assams back into my regular mix of Chinese teas,
sencha, and darjeelings.