A comparison of teas

Today we're deviating from our European tour for an aside about my favorite tea growing country. Kenya. Why is it my favorite? As readers of my blog know, it is the only tea growing country I have visited. The story I heard as to why my favorite tea house sells so many Kenyan teas is an interesting one. Apparently a couple went to Kenya to work on some sort of project through their church. When they got there, it was found that there were too many people for that project, and this couple was sent to spend their week at a tea plantation sewing school uniforms. This sounded like the perfect trip to me, I like to sew and drink tea. Anyway, at the end of the week, the couple talked to the plantation owner to see if they could get some samples to take home because they had some friends who ran a high end tea shop. While they told the plantation owner that it may not come to anything, they might be able to get his tea sold in the US. According to the story, the plantation owner was in a state of disbelief when he heard this, but decided to send back some samples just in case things worked out. Happily, their tea is being sold in the states now, but I still wonder how those school uniforms turned out. It seems that there aren't many people who know how to sew these days, and I'm imagining the uniforms looked like some novice level 4-H projects I remember (or even worse, something made in home economics class). I won't go into the subject of how people who travel to the African continent on a project to "help" people often don't have the training or skill to do what they set out to do...

I've wanted to do this for a while. I'm comparing my Kenyan teas. Here they are dry.

There are slight color differences if you look closely. Purple tea is at the top, green tea is to the left, and oolong tea is to the right. Since I don't plan on brewing these leaves all at the same time, this post could take a while.
In addition, after I finished these teas from Kenya, I went to my favorite tea shop, and got some artisinal black tea from the Nandi Hills region of Kenya. Here are the dry leaves.

As you can see, these leaves are much more brown than the others shown above.

In the interest of research (or more accurately, curiosity), I spread out some brewed tea leaves to see what they look like. These are leaves of oolong tea. Oolong tea is partially oxidized, and you can tell that from these leaves. The colors in the leaves are a combination of browns and greens that show some oxidation has occurred (brown), but we still have some green of the leaf. This is why tea connoisseurs tend to like oolongs (or at least say that they do) because they have some properties of green teas, and some properties of black teas.  Not all oolong teas look like this. The nice thing about the Kenyan oolong is that it is not smoked, so you can see the true color of the leaf

Here are the green tea leaves spread out for you to see. Yes, the 2 leaves at the bottom of the picture are still attached to each other. They lived together on the plant, and they steeped together in my cup. If you look closely, these leaves are a brighter green, and have some more yellows in them than the oolong.

These are the purple tea leaves after they were brewed. They definitely have a different look now. The black tea leaves are at the end of this post. For some reason, the picture was not inserting correctly in this part of the post.

This is what the liquor of oolong tea looks like. It is a complex mixture of flavors, not quite black tea, but not like a green tea either. It is often said that oolong teas become the favorites of serious tea connoisseurs because of the complexity of the flavor due to the partial oxidization.

As I have observed in previous posts, Kenyan green tea makes a very pale brew. It is still very good flavor, just light in color.

Here we have purple tea. I don't really know how it is finished after plucking from the fields, but I doubt that it is oxidized given the color of the leaves, and the lack of brown edges. The first time I tried this in a tea shop, I thought it made a very light colored brew. I find that when I make it at home, it is darker than I remember. While the brew is not purple, it is easy to tell if you have purple tea if you squeeze some lemon or lime juice into your tea. It is an acid indicator like red cabbage, so the lemon or lime juice will make a bright pink streak in your tea before it dissipates in your cup.



After the first 3 teas were compared, I went back to my favorite tea shop and got an artisinal black tea from Kenya. Oh, it is so good. It tastes like the cut tear curl black tea, but is good for 2 brews if you treat the leaves right. Here are the leaves laid out after brewing.

Here's my glass of black tea. In China, it's actually referred to as red tea because of the color. You can see that it is a definitively darker brew. On the international tea markets, Kenyan tea is prized for its color, and ability to make a dark brew.