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GOURMET NEWS JULY 2016 www.gourmetnews.com SUPPLIER BUSINESS 1 1 The Art and Science of Tasting Tea BY JORGE GONZALEZ-GARCIA Bernd Wulf, a respected international tea broker with decades of experience, gave Michael Harney of Harney & Sons some advice he uses to this day: "He advised me to 'buy teas that make you smile.' And that's what I've done ever since," Harney said. "I look for teas that have a bit of natural sugar, and put you in a good mood." White, green, oolong and black are the main tea categories. They vary in color, taste and caffeine content based on plant genetics, the areas where they're grown, when tips and leaves are harvested, and how they're dried and processed after cutting. "There's also the oxidation that happens naturally when you expose the cut edges to air," Harney says. "Much like when you peel an apple, and the sur- face starts to turn brown after a while." Caffeine is found naturally in tea plants, and acts as a natural repellant against plant eating insects. "It has a higher concentration in young plants be- cause they're the most fragile," Harney explains. "As the plants get older and tougher, they don't need as much, so caf- feine levels peak for white teas, and then go down for darker teas. Tea wouldn't be around today it hadn't developed the ability to resist insects." Teas that arrive that arrive at the Har- ney & Sons facility in Millerton, New York, include traditional teas that are not blended, and other teas that do fall into the blending category. The company es- tablished its reputation early on based on the success of its blended black teas, which were served in fine hotels and restaurants. Harney views the blend- ing process as a combina- tion of both art and science. "We start with an idea that we think is good. That's the creative part. From there it becomes sci- entific in the sense that we want to have consistency. The taste today has to be similar to what someone tasted the first time around. So science, with a little bit of artistic license," he said. Blending is adding flavor to tea by using other plant ingredients or oils. It's done a couple of different ways. One is called inclusion, which means adding herbs, flowers, fruit or spice to the tea. The other way is flavoring. The classic exam- ple of flavoring is adding oil of bergamot to black tea to make Earl Grey blend. It was first made in the mid-1800s, and is still popular more than 150 years later. "My dad starting buying oil of bergamot from this one flavor house. Years later, we still buy from them, and that helps with consistency," Harney said. Like good chefs in a restaurant kitchen, Harney and his staff make the extra effort to maintain consistent qual- ity by tasting all ingredients blended into their teas. "We've learned from experi- ence to always taste the ingredients. Some people might say, 'Why do you have to taste the corn flowers?' And our response is that we think of it as a can- vas, and it all has to fit together. That's what we do." Harney does his blending on a table with lots of drawers custom-made by a German cabinet maker. He works with an assistant, Elvira Cardenas, who hap- pens to be from Colombia. "And we have two other assistants, also from Colom- bia," he says. "Elvira does a lot of tasting, and she kids me that we should insure her tongue with Lloyd's of London." At the same time, Harney is quick to point out how vital smell is in the process. "It turns out that your nose is more important than your taste buds in what we do," he says. It's similar to tast- ing and comparing wines. Your taste buds only pick up five types of tastes, whereas your nose has a wider range. When we're tasting, we always slurp. That sends the smell up to your nose. So we use both taste and smell in combina- tion." Eyes matter too when it comes to eval- uating a tea. "For example, at our tasting table earlier today, we had some teas out, and you could tell that one of the sam- ples was from Fujian province in China, and the other was from Yunnan province. The flavor of teas from Yunnan doesn't work for us," Harney said. "So just by looking at it, you can just tell it's one we want." GN

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