By Peter Keen
Tea buyers look for value for their money. For some, the money – price per purchase unit or cost per cup – is the primary consideration. For others, personal dimensions of value dominate: flavor, contribution to wellness, branding, herbal blend, organic certification, convenience, Fair Trade, pesticide risks, etc. In all instances, they need to know just what it is they are buying. That’s not as easy as it should be.
Buyers of tea bags and supermarket tins of loose-leaf tea mostly have access only to the information on the package. So, what does the label tell them? What do they need to know to be able to make sense of the branding, images, marketing attention-grabbers, and ingredient lists?
Loose tea buyers add a need for contextual information beyond the product: source of origin, distinguishing features in flavor, quality, and production, environmental context, and supply chain integrity. The main vehicles for information here are online sellers’ levels of description, customer and expert reviews and ratings, and newsletters. What do shoppers need to know to make best use of this? For instance, what do “natural” and “organic” specifically mean?
Pedigree tea devotees generally have a solid body of knowledge and experience to draw on, and their information needs are for specialist expertise accessible through blogs, interest groups, and summaries of research on topics and teas that are personal interests. Puehrs, Taiwan high mountain oolongs, medicine and nutrition, Japanese senchas, the molecular biology of tea, and social, political and economic issues are all of importance. What is the reliability and credibility of the information?
Here’s a short review of points worth being aware of in these areas, with a focus on packaged teas:
Packaging
The package is the information base for every tea on the shelf of a supermarket. FTC rules for food packaging, which include tea, vary for prepared versus loose items and those that include nutritional claims versus ones that, like most teas, make no such claims. The format and content of the tea box or tin items are fairly strictly regulated, with the EU and Japan more demanding than the US.
Two aspects of the tea box are essential to understand, The first is that the sole purpose of the front panel is to entice and sell – it’s the main feature a shopper will see and respond to. It has no direct connection to the tea beyond providing a clear identity for it, including the generic variety it is part of. So, for instance, Black Dragon, Honey Orchard, Mountain Copper, and Nspire are all brand names. The package must legally describe them as “oolong tea.”
The box may not display any claims that are not based on proven science or established statistical evidence and approved by FDA. That includes detox teas, teas offering weight loss, and almost every tea or supplement that announces curative or preventive powers.
All this restriction leaves a lot of space for attention-grabbing and identity-building. The picture of a bearded Asian sage and pagoda or willow tree can evoke the image of a green tea’s health value without upsetting FDA, FTC, or medical authorities. Much of the claim will appear in online opinion pieces and sponsored ad support. Generally, this will be packed with sentences containing “may,” such as “green tea may reduce the risk of…,” and “this research study shows that our blend may…”
So, the image dominates, but it says nothing about the tea. It is a signal and attractor, often distinctive. There are many superb package designs; some reinforce the brand (Twining is an obvious example). Some add cachet to an undistinguished tea. Some combine tea and box to make a colorful or classy gift. China is outstanding in this regard with beautiful puehr wrappers, wooden chests, cardboard containers, and ceramic caddies.
The quality of the tea rarely matches the container. But it may add to the tea experience, just as the immense variety of teaware does.
The tea
A major difference between shopping for tea bags and specialty teas is in the nature of the information about the tea itself. With specialty teas, the buyer’s interest is in quality and grade, origin, environmental context, and processing. This is not provided on package labeling. An Earl Grey tea bag is a prepared product, and the ingredients must be fully shown. A black China Keemum is exempt from this, and all you may see on the packet is illustrated by Upton Tea’s excellent and inexpensive “Hubei Province Keemum Ji Hong” (identity), “Black tea”, (generic type), and “Origin: China.” Ironically, the better the tea, the less information is often shown.
Here’s an example of a truly mediocre chai latte, with comments inserted:
“Ingredients: Processed white sugar, nonfat milk, black tea [powdered generic]; spice blend, natural flavor: organic maltodextrin corn, silicon dioxide [silicon is indeed natural, but this compound is just an anti-caking agent]; honey: sucrose, sodium caseinate [used in paint, glue, protein supplements and plastics]; salt; guar gum; vegetable mono and diglycerides; carrageenan gum.”
Ingredients are listed in order of weight, from the largest to least. Black tea is lower than the sugar and milk, in this example. Then there’s one of the two main misleading words in tea marketing: “natural.” The other is “organic.”
Natural tea
Who could be against “natural” ingredients? Does the difference from “artificial” affect your choice? How about a tea flavored with vanilla made from the anal glands of beavers? It’s natural. It is also neither good nor bad. The distinction is chemical, and artificial flavors and extracts may be safer, purer, and more reliable.
“Natural” means found somewhere in nature at the molecular level; sand is a legal natural additive. The bergamot or citrus extracts in Earl Grey tea are natural only because they are not manufactured, but they are inferior to the rare and expensive bergamot fruit. Some processed cheese contains “added natural fiber,” which sounds OK-ish, in the form of powdered wood pulp – which doesn’t quite have the same resonance. But it is “natural.” If you see “natural” pop up in a tea ingredient list, think wood shavings.
“Organic” is another “good thing.” It does not, though, mean “pure.” It indicates a low rate of pesticide use – not necessarily pesticide-free farming. FDA rules require that 70% of the food or drink be truly organic in origin; that leaves 30% for added ingredients. The cost, complexity, administration, and even corruption in international certification make it impractical for many smaller farms to afford the effort. Finally, pesticides are not the only health and environmental risks. Organic certification does not address the causes of heavy metal soil residues, for example.
It’s difficult to offer advice on assessing natural and organic aspects of teas. The best may just be to include them in your assessment but not take them as absolutes. They are most meaningful as part of a broader bio-management approach to tea growing and use of botanicals, herbs, and spices in blends for which these are “natural” in the commonsense meaning of the word. Many of the most highly rated brands have built a strong identity here: Rishi, Bigelow, Republic of Tea, and Numi, to name just a few.
Myths: Earl Grey had nothing to do with that tea
There’s a final and major category of information widely added to give tea an extra cachet, which should be entirely ignored. This is tea mythology and includes the widespread nonsense about the history of Earl Grey tea, references to tea originating when the Emperor of China was resting and a leaf fell into his bowl of hot water, and all the aristocratic anecdotes about English tea, customs, and practices.
Ignore them all. Even where they are not inaccurate, invented, or fake, they are irrelevant to the tea today. Take one obvious example: There is no such entity as English tea. Twinings Earl Grey is produced in Poland. Lipton’s largest selling bagged tea is made in Dubai. The annual report of the producer of one of the other major mass market “English” Earl Greys summarizes its blends: “The company reprocesses instant teas that are brought from India, in its Florida factory, by changing physical parameters such as density, particle size, making formulations with flavors and sweeteners, or blending them with other food ingredients.”
Tea history is interesting in and of itself and may indicate some special practice, tradition, or skill in producing today’s teas. But in general, it is just ad-speak.
Source of origin
The main differences among useful information on tea bags and specialty tea is the source of origin. This is a key regulatory issue in international trade, and an industry one, as the best providers aim at integrating their supply chains and improving authentication, transparency, and accountability. The most useful information is what it not stated in describing the tea but what is absent. Here are the two extremes: “Origin: Black tea” and “Origin: Darjeeling Giddapahar Estate, 2020, Second Flush SFTFGOP.” The black tea example indicates that this is a generic tea that varies in source by season, price, and supply. A blend of black teas, China black tea – these don’t narrow down or sharpen the information because the tea lacks attributes to highlight. Wu Yi and Alishan are both oolongs where the region, terroir, community craft, and processing are distinctive, so add the information. Giddapahar is an outstanding single-source Darjeeling. Darjeeling blend or Darjeeling region don’t necessarily signal an inferior value-for-money deal but, in general, the more detailed the sourcing data, including an indicator of where it is manufactured if it involves additives and processing, the higher the relative quality. Equally, if the information is omitted, it’s the opposite.
To locate and enjoy good tea and pay a fair price doesn’t demand expert knowledge. There are many bloggers who have a breadth and depth of understanding and experience to the extent that they can discriminate individual varieties, flavors and aromas, gardens and farming among, say, Vietnam wild tea or Japanese matcha.
The more relevant issue is how much information you need to make informed choices. There’s a clear customer education gap here. Online interest groups show as much ignorance as awareness. The examples given here are cursory and selective, but they give a range of what to look for, and why, as a starting point.