A cuppa tea in morning or any time has always been a part of life for us keralites ,not to us alone to all parts of our country and to the world itself .
But do we know how much goes behind the humble tea we gulp several times a day between not the cup and the lips but between the leaf and the cup and the lips ?
Most of us have heard of wine tasters and also tea tasters .
We do know they are a highly skilled bunch of professionals who are vital to the market economy of these invigorating beverages used by mankind .
We have amongst our midst a very senior tea taster one who has created records with 50 years of experience in the field who still continues his highly attuned skilled job and has imparted his knowledge to a host of tea tasters in the country .
Ilet me introduce the sauve handsome elegant gentleman with the most pleasant countenance in this side of Cochin W.C.Thomas Sir .
Tea tasting had always made me curious to know more about it and
Thomas Sir was kind enough to give me a glimpse of the very select world of tasting tea .
W.C.Thomas was born in 1941 .
He had his schooling in Kottayam and Mavelikkara and college in MCC Madras and degree in Agriculture from Govt Agriculture college in Vellayani Trivandrum in 1964 July .
In August he joined the oldest tea auctioning firm Forbes ,Ewart ,and Figgis Pvt Ltd in Wellington island Cochin as a tea tasting trainee .
After initial training in Cochin he was off to Conoor ,Calcutta , Colombo,and in 1972 was off to London for advanced training returned in 1972 joined same firm now as a Senior executive ,Trainer,Director, and still carries on as a tea taster and auctioneer !
Tea tasting is not only a skill , its an art and has science and method in it ,though its a highly subjective judgement .
A potential tea taster needs to have excellent taste buds and most importantly an excellent sense of smell .
Taste alone is restricted to recognising Sweetness ,Sourness Bitterness ,Saltiness and Savoury taste ,but not the finer details like bitter sweet or chocolate sweetness or sweet pie but if melded with a keen sense of smell its discretionary powers get multlipied .
Of course canines have 3000 % greater sense of smell than humans .
Tea tasters also need to avoid spicy food ,alcohol ,or smoking they say to safegaurd their sensibilities .
Lets go into the mechanics of Tea Tasting itself as described by Thomas Sir himself .
A fixed weight of dry leaf
(of the tea variety )is weighed ,2.83 gm ( in his office ) is placed in a cup of capacity 0.142 liters and water just reached boiling point is poured into it uptill brim closed with a lid for exactly 5 minutes which is checked using an hour glass .
This is the brewing time .
After 5 minutes the contents of the mug is strained and poured into a tasting cup as a clear liqour while the infused leaf is kept on the lid .
The process is very precise and more than 200 to 300 or more cups are tasted every day .
Its important each cup has contents made by same standard .
There are three steps every taster follows .
First he examines the leaf in detail its colour moisture its flecks ie its physical characteristics .
Secondly he sniffs the liqour in the tasting cup without milk or sugar for its aroma first and then swirls the liquid in his mouth swishes it under his tongue to asess its qualities and then spits it into a spitoon .
What exactly does a taster look for ?
In leaf he looks for colour ,black,brown,mixed,if its curled moist or dry ,its stalk ,fiber ,and flecks gold or silver .
In liqour the charachteristic colour ,brightness ,strength,briskness,body ,quality,aroma,flavour,
At times the tasted sample is slurped using a spoon to get some oxygen along with the tea .
The colour of liqour is not just red or yellow or green it could be shades of the same like mahagony red to reddish amber ,green could be deep green to lighter bluish green the reason is the transparency of tea liqour reflects or refracts with light .
The tea taster is not just a machine trained to asess tea ,he is highly knowledgeable in the intricacies of how tea is grown, collected ,manufactured ,and marketed .
Hes aware of the type of tea and from where it comes from ,the climate in that tea estate ,and has a mental picture out of his experience in the field of these finer details before he attempts to judge on a sample .
Its vital that he does so too ,as his word on the tea values its price in the market , and hes part of its auctioneering too .
The tea so valued based on the market conditions and quality of tea is sent to all buyers of tea before auctioning .
In Cochin it was and is weekly auctioning .
Till 2007 it was manual auctioning and later e auction .
Thomas Sir has been in the field for 56 years and is one of the seniormost tea taster and auctioneer in the country.
In 2006 Thomas Sir got the honour of selling almost all the 945 lots of 4.5 lakh kg of tea recieved on that day for the auction from the estates probably only one such sale in the country in the manual auction times .
The auctioneer not only needs to be quick ,but also to get the maximum price possible , selling the maximum volume too .
Thomas sir has been in the jury of Golden leaf awards and has appeaerd in many prominent TV Channels to elaborate his profession .
The proffesion is hard, but rewarding
these days youngsters dont have the temerity to last the training sessions and hone thier skills .
I would like to end this anthology borrowing Robert Louis Stevenson calling tea as bottled poetry
(though he really meant wine I think )
Like all connouissuers do ,Thomas sir may also describe a tea dreamily ,as one full of earthy aroma perfumed with the pine needles of the foggy hills of Munnar ,Nilgiris or Darjeeling and after he tastes it as a placidly shifting liquid with intense flavouring of the tongue and an austere jolt of comforting warmth alertness and refreshment !
No
Not at all ,
its just my literary adventure and liberty taking off
Tea tasting to professionals like Thomas sir isnt breathless poetry of the teens ,but unsentimental spontaneous clinical judgement of a product and on whose pronouncement the commerce of tea is made .
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