Friday, February 01, 2008
Posted by Miss Neddy at 12:26 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Categories: Tea Related

As my esteemed friend explained in the previous entry, “CTC” teas are leaves that have been crushed, torn and curled by machines. But a look at your packet of English or Indian/Ceylon tea may reveal more acronyms and cryptic terms, such as FOP, perhaps, or “first flush”. What do these terms mean?

For a comprehensive explanation, I have turned to two rather edifying books on tea: Gervas Huxley’s Talking of Tea (mentioned previously), and Beatrice Hohenegger’s Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West. I do recommend both books as simple, entertaining and yet highly instructive books on the history and nature of (mostly) English teas. Talking of Tea was published in 1956 by Thames and Hudson in London; Liquid Jade was published in 2006 by St. Martin’s Press in New York (ISBN: 9780312333287)

To quote first from Huxley: “Before being packed for sale, the dried leaves have to be sorted into various grades on machines consisting of a series of sieves with different-sized meshes. There are two main grades - Broken and Leaf. The former comprises the smaller sizes of leaf and small leaf resulting from cutting; the latter the larger leaf. The Broken grades are in turn divided into Broke Orange Pekoe, Broke Pekoe, Broken Pekoe Souchong, Fannings and Dust; and the leaf grades into Orange Pekoe, Pekoe and Pekoe Souchong…. all these terms only denote a certain size or appearance of leaf and have no reference to quality. Not only does each estate produce its own quality of tea in each grade, but the grades from one estate will vary in quality at different times of the year. Broken grades, do, however, normally give a darker liquor and stronger tea than the leaf grades.“

Indeed, one of the strongest teas one can make is known as “stocking tea” in Hong Kong and Singapore, where tea dust is spooned into a long cotton sieve, shaped much like a lady’s nylon stocking, compacted and hot boiling water is poured through the sieve to percolate through the thick tea dust. The tea produced is thick, usually red-black in colour, and can be terribly bitter without sugar or milk to soften the taste. However, if the tea dust is derived from a good quality leaf, the fragrance from the dust can be quite penetrating; the teahouse I frequent uses high quality tea dust for their bubble teas, and whenever the small storeroom is opened, a strong floral (almost florid) fragrance wafts from the room, even though the tea dust is kept tightly sealed in a large tin. The tea made from the tea dust is the colour of old rust, and highly astringent, but once sweetened, tastes pleasantly of something between a Da Hongpao and rose tea.

Now for those strange acronyms. Let us turn to Hohenegger’s chapter on “The Mystery of Acronyms”: “Tea leaves have their own classification method according to the size and where they are placed on the branch. In tea terminology, the preferred leaf size is not described with a size or placement number but with a name: orange pekoe or OP. Orange, as we known is a historical leftover in homage to the Dutch royal house of Orange-Nassau, and pekoe is a Westernization of the Chinese word pai hao that refers to the hairy down on the young leaves. The smaller and younger leaves and buds growing above the orange pekoe leaves are considered of even finer quality and are variously known as “flowery” (F), which does not refer to the flower but only to the leaf tips or buds; “golden” (G), when the young leaes are still opening up and golden or yellowish in colour; or “tippy” (T), as in just the tips of the leaves.

Thus, a flowery orange pekoe, or FOP, is a good-quality whole-leaf tea that is a mixture of orange pekoe leaves and some of the tips. A higher grade would be GFOP, or golden flowery orange pekoe, which would include some of the younger, more delicate golden tips. Above that is TGFOP, or tippy golden flowery orange pekoe, with a larger ratio of golden tips. The next grade up is FTGFOP, or finest tippy golden flowery orange pekoe, with an even higher ratio of tips. For this grade the inside joke is that “FTGFOP” actually stands for “Far Too Good for Ordinary People”. And, in a world or superlatives, beyond ordinary people and insider elitist jokes, the top grade is defined as special finest tippy golden flowery orange pekoe, or SFTGFOP, mostly composed of buds and golden tips.“

SFTGFOP - that is a mouthful! More from Hohenegger’s book in a later entry, as we speak more on acronyms and flushes.

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