by John Rice, General Manager<\/p>\n
One area we have been diving into more at The Tea Table is the craft of blends.\u00a0 While we have always offered our own flavored blends, in the last couple years we have ventured further into unflavored ones.\u00a0 Normally, unflavored blends are commercially developed using teas from dozens or even hundreds of farms with the purpose of assuring they have little or no variation from year to year.\u00a0 While this creates a high degree of consistency, it tends to virtually eliminate any distinctiveness a tea could have.<\/p>\n
What we have found while developing more of our own unflavored blends is that we can not only create a better tea, but they always have a more distinctive flavor and are sometimes actually less expensive than the tea they replaced.\u00a0 Two recent examples are East Fresian<\/a> and Five O’Clock<\/a> Tea.\u00a0 Both of these teas were previously made by a large tea blending company, but in the last few months we have introduced our own versions.\u00a0 The new East Fresian<\/a> is a smoother, slightly richer offering with a bit less astringency than the original.\u00a0 By recreating this ourselves using a limited number of single estate teas, the characteristics of each can come through, while still giving a remarkably similar overall impression.\u00a0 Anyone who takes the time to savor the new East Fresian<\/a> will find a complexity that was absent in the original.<\/p>\n New blends typically begin with a carefully thought-out, educated start based on the taste profile we are aiming for.\u00a0 What follows can be an extensive stream of fine tuning and discussion about what our ultimate goal is.\u00a0 In a sense, this is a purely creative process, since there are very few “rights” and “wrongs.”\u00a0 A frequent comment I would hear from Sharon, who managed our tea room for several years, was “some people like<\/em> astringent.”\u00a0 Referring\u00a0 to my slight aversion to that particular sensation.<\/p>\n The process of developing our new Five O’Clock<\/a> Tea was a bit different.\u00a0 We began with the same three basic varieties (Ceylon, Darjeeling and Oolong) as the original, but selecting large leaf, singe estate varieties rather than blends.\u00a0 The major decision was what Oolong to start with.\u00a0 Since Oolong covers a wide<\/em> range of flavor profiles, it would set the tone for the overall taste of the tea.\u00a0 In the case of the new Five O’Clock<\/a> Tea, there ended up being no experimenting.\u00a0 When we tasted our first attempt, it was clear we had knocked the ball out of the park on the first swing.\u00a0 There was still a bit of argument, because it tastes nothing<\/em> like the original version.\u00a0 In the end, the unique complexity and subtle richness of this new blend won out.\u00a0 Quite honestly, this Five O’Clock Tea is the best blend I have ever tasted.\u00a0 Anyone looking for a hearty breakfast tea may be disappointed.\u00a0 While it is, technically, more or less a black tea (the Oolong is a “blacker” formosa variety) it is quite light with a sweet, toasty, caramel character that is remarkably complex and pleasant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by John Rice, General Manager One area we have been diving into more at The Tea Table is the craft of blends.\u00a0 While we have always offered our own flavored blends, in the last couple years we have ventured further into unflavored ones.\u00a0 Normally, unflavored blends are commercially developed using teas from dozens or even… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theteatable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theteatable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theteatable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theteatable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theteatable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theteatable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theteatable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theteatable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theteatable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}