Of tea and spirits

October 26, 2020 / / 2 Comments

After a hiatus, I am back. After reading a (or should I say the since it is at the same time big and focusing on many different lesser known topics) biography about one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, I found out in the quoted references that Sheridan Le Fanu, one of the first writer of vampire fictions, wrote a novel entitled Green Tea. With a name like that and even if it is far away from my usual topics here on this blog, I had to look for it and read it.

I didn’t find it was such a good novel (I found some parts of it were a kind of lower Sherlock Holmes with some fantastic in it) but green tea does play a role in it.

For example, Mr Jennings, the one around whom the story resolves writes a book at night and to drink tea

“I believe, that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his work, as a friend of mine phrased it, on something—tea, or coffee, or tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted, and the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded often enough of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I felt the want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion—at first the ordinary black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a good deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never experienced an uncomfortable symptom from it. I began to take a little green tea. I found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of thought so, I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a habit with me to sip my tea—green tea—every now and then as my work proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp, and made tea two or three times between eleven o’clock and two or three in the morning, my hours of going to bed.”

And tea has something to do with what happens to him (or not, I find the end rather really open).

“By various abuses, among which the habitual use of such agents as green tea is one, this fluid may be affected as to its quality, but it is more frequently disturbed as to equilibrium. This fluid being that which we have in common with spirits, a congestion found upon the masses of brain or nerve, connected with the interior sense, forms a surface unduly exposed, on which disembodied spirits may operate: communication is thus more or less effectually established. “

This might surprise you but the explanations for these two extracts and the whole atmosphere is for me twofold.

On the one hand, tea was not seen as something with only beneficial effects. I found an essay written at the beginning of the 19th century (1808) by a C. L. Cadet, a French pharmacist and even if Le Fanu lived later (1814-1873), I think some of these ideas were still alive later on (even more with the whole focus on nervous disorders that was common in the second half of the 19th century.

Even if Mr Cadet sees some uses for tea as a medicine (but prefers to use non English plants), some quotes are quite interesting (I have no further references to the books he mentions).

Koempfer, who best described this production assures (Amcen. eccot., pag. 606) that fresh tea taken in strong infusion gives dizziness, nervous convulsions.

[…]

Geoffroy reports that the tea, taken in abundance, gave insomnia, dizziness and convulsive movements in all the limbs.

[…]

Simon Pauli regards it as very harmful to asthmatics with pituitary, delicate breasts, and those with sensitive nerves. Cullen attributes the good effects of tea to hot water, but rejects tea taken in isolation as having too much effect on the nervous system, producing “spasms and tremors.

Finally, Buchan says positively that people of letters should refrain from drinking tea, because it is the most abundant source of nervous diseases.

C.L. Cadet, Le thé est-il plus nuisible qu’utile? Ou Histoire analytique de cette plante, Paris 1808

On the other hand the era where Le Fanu lived was filled with beliefs in spiritualism and other similar phenomenons (just look at the biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to see a good example of it).

The mix of both producing the supernatural effect of green tea that opens your perception of something else.

I don’t know for you but I think that after that I might stick to the other colours of tea just in case some of what Le Fanu wrote might be true.

Where Eagles Dare

July 30, 2020 / / 2 Comments

After learning that Japanese beef was graded with a two dimensional system (A, B, C and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), I had thought I could work on the reason behind the different grades in tea (the most known being in the former English colonies and only for black teas).

To do so I began looking in my books on tea for evidences on why this system was in use and how it the other tea producing countries that did not follow it dealt with this topic. Let us just say for now that the other system combines geographical references and ways of preparing tea to produce a certain quality. However, I stopped when I found out a small reference about the tea produced in Tanzania, which had its origin in German colonisation.

I know the context nowadays is complicated to speak about such part of history and without ignoring the consequences of such occupation, I would like to focus on a small part of it: the introduction of tea.

As with most European countries (see there), Germany developed an approach based on an Agricultural Research Station in Anami that was grounded in 1902 and taken over by the British in 1920 when they were awarded that part of the former German East Africa. Although this research centre had a good reputation (for coffee or for its botany garden) as stated by William Nowell, new Director of the East African Agricultural Research Station “As you are all doubtless aware, we occupy the site and buildings of the Biological and Agricultural Institute, founded in 1902, which under the direction of the late Dr. Zimmermann rendered most valuable services to the colony of German East Africa. […] but we inherited a valuable library, a considerable herbarium, and plantations stocked with introduced economic plants.” (Proceedings of the Royal Society of Arts, Dominion and Colonies Sections from 24th October, 1933), the British fired all its personal, probably out of fear that they would not be loyal to the Crown (the kind of things that was important in those years).

It seems that the first tea was planted in 1904 but didn’t leave the realm of experimentations before the second half of the 1920s (a recurring problem in these research stations be they in India or in Indochina is how long it took from experiments to real “commercial” use, perhaps a topic for another time). To increase the spread, a tea officer was appointed (I still need to find out what this is) and free seeds were given between 1930 to 1934 with a tea factory opening in 1930.

In 1934, 1,000 ha had been planted, producing 20 tons of processed tea, of which 9.3 were exported (Carr et al. 1988, Tea in Tanzania, Outlook on Agriculture, 17:18-22). I do wonder what happened to the remaining 10.7 tons. Were they drank in Tanzania? This seems quite unlikely.

The outbreak of World War II brings us another information as because of the presence of many German settlers (which must have returned after World War I or decided to remain), the British government decided to dispose them of their estates, which were acquired by a subsidiary of Brooke Bond, an English tea brand famous for PG Tips). The land must have been good for tea as the company began to plant more tea (the final results being that in 2010 29,000 tons produced of which 28,000 were exported).

However and surprisingly enough, some Germans were still there as I found out that a Mr Voigt, last (probably because of its age but I couldn’t find any other information on that part) German tea grower in the area retired in 1986 after 60 years living in Tanzania. He even wrote a book about his life, 60 Years in East Africa: Life of a Settler 1926 to 1986. I guess it contains some information on these plantations and how they fared through the years and could be compared to similar experience from British settlers in Kenya or Assam around the same time.

The question I didn’t answer was how did I learn about the grading of Japanese beef. Did you see my title? It is from a classical 1968 war movie with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood about a “secret traitor” stuff and I thought it fitted the topic of this post to a T, so I selected it.

What? I didn’t answer the beef question… Let’s save it for another time.

A collection of blossoms

June 29, 2020 / / 2 Comments

A collection of blossoms in Greek is an anthologia which would later give in English florilegium (from the Latin translation) and anthology. Even if what I will write below doesn’t come from existing works, I found the name beautiful enough for small pieces of reflections on tea. So here are some blossoms.

Teas are like people. Some are open, others are secret. Some are generous, others are selfish. Some are easy, others are more complex…

See? Every reaction/thought you might have about people, you can find at least one tea matching it. And like with people, the more you interact with a tea, the more you get out of it (or the more you despair it all depends on you and them).

What is the effect on tea on me? I used to think none. However, someone made me recently reconsider my first answer but after much attention with myself focusing on myself (quite egocentric if you believe me), I didn’t find any peculiar effect. To have a real scientific approach, I should have taken the same tea brewed in the same way (which I didn’t). However, I must say that tea doesn’t seem to have an effect on me. The only explanation is that the people around me or what I am doing at the time of drinking have an effect on how am I and how I react.

What Egyptian god should be associated to tea? A rather strange question but after seeing a picture of the March Hare I found myself asking this. 3 gods truck my imagination for being able to do so. Thot, the scribe of the gods, just because he could and because a god with the head of an ibis would look cool drinking a cup writing hieroglyphs. Then Seshat the divine measurer because tea is all about measuring things (amount of tea, temperature of the water, duration of the brewing). Last but not least, Bes, the protector of households and symbol of the good things of life (and isn’t tea one of them?).

Now that I began with these gods, I should probably see if other divinities strike me as potential tea drinkers but apart from the Nordic ones (probably because of the cold winter times that struck me as the perfect time to drink a good warm tea).

Quite interesting is that the name for tea in most languages can be grouped in 3 families : te, cha and chay. And that they just show where tea was loaded or travelled to the land where they were drunk. This means that only 3 points of contact were available : two port areas in China and through a land trip and Persia (aka the road silk). From an historical point of view, this makes sense as when European powers came in the neighbourhoods from China, this land was following a rather strict isolation policy restricting their contacts with foreigners. As you might know, Chinese at that time were not trading, they were receiving tributes for the Emperor which gave away gifts. It would have probably been undiplomatic to say that this looks just like barter, in other words, trade.

Related to these trade routes, I don’t know if you know a French comic book hero called Asterix but he is the one who brought tea leaves to England and all that thanks to a Phoenician merchant encountered in the Channel that paid him with these leaves in exchange for saving his ship from pirates. Asterix then gave these leaves to the Britons as a sort of super potion to help them defeat the Roman legions.

Speaking of super potion, tea has probably like many other things good effects on health but I don’t think it is a super medicine that can solve anything and everything with people reacting differently to this drink (see my blossom on “what is the effect on tea on me?”)

Are they all doing the same?

May 31, 2020 / / 2 Comments

Innovation is a big word, one that is used all around us. All companies need to innovate to thrive or we all need to use the latest and most innovative concept/app/product…

It is a kind of buzz word and is all over the place.

I made a quick survey and found out for innovation and tea a lot of articles or even white papers presenting more or less the same thing: on the one hand, “innovations” to harvest/produce) tea, which more or less meant mechanising it one way or another or doing it with less human people and on the other hand innovation on the drinking side with new machines, new mixes, more information available for the customer, more small producers available on the market, more focus on health, making each experience unique…

You will probably think that I am mixing a bit of everything but what I only did was putting together some pieces written by several people (sometimes as advertising or because it is how their brand is working) and seeing that some themes keep on repeating themselves.

And don’t worry I do think that most of these companies are working along these lines and believing in the extra little bit they can bring to the customer.

Does this sound familiar to you? If not, I would sum it up as a focus on better products with higher quality and experience that are being sold at a higher price. This is part of a trend that runs through the entire food industry.

One example in another drink market is the famous 3 waves of coffee (I even read about a 4th one going on). It seems that the tea industry (but also other products) is following the same trend and path.

Why is that? Is there another way? What is theory (both marketing, economical…) saying about innovation and how can we relate it to tea? Why is that most focus is given to certain innovations and not others?

This will be the focus of my next articles.

But before I leave you, I would like to give you a hint by Clayton Christensen, an academic and consultant that focused on disruptive innovation (i.e. those that allow a company to create a new market, changing the entire market), “a sustaining innovation makes better products that you can sell for better profits to your best customers.”

Does this ring a bell? Yes, you just need to read what I wrote a little above that everything and everyone follow the same pattern and the same ideas… if they do so it is because it is a good way to sell better products for a better profit at customers and isn’t business all about money?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

April 28, 2020 / / 1 Comment

This post owns much to the work done by Dr Pim de Zwart from the Wageningen University and Research that published in 2016 a paper in The Journal of Economic History on globalization in the early modern era: new evidence from the Dutch-Asiatic trade between 1600-1800.

I couldn’t access his paper (De Zwart, P. (2016). Globalization in the Early Modern Era: New Evidence from the Dutch-Asiatic Trade, c. 1600–1800. The Journal of Economic History, 76(2), 520-558. doi:10.1017/S0022050716000553) but to make it short and according to the Journal of Economic History « This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the origins of globalization. It examines the process of commodity price convergence, an indicator of globalization, between Europe and Asia on the basis of newly obtained price data from the Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives. »

This will probably not speak to a lot of people here but what got my interest were the words “price data” as the Dutch East India Company imported tea from China to Europe and I thought that perhaps some interesting data (from my point of view) were available somewhere and I did manage to find them as Dr Pim de Zwart made them freely available.

He had gathered together the prices of 16 goods imported by the VOC over the years around 1600 to 1800 and their buying price in Asia over the same period and converted them to the same monetary system, which helps comparison (even more when you are dealing with circa two centuries of data and two different geographical areas).

Sometimes, data was non existent (it happens) and sometimes my guess is that there might have been several conflicting information regarding it or for tea (which you probably understood for me explaining the ins and outs was present) as I already found out several names/quality that were shifting through the year.

I don’t know how he really dealt with that but I will present you the results below with two charts. The first will show you the selling/buying price of tea over the years (obviously for and from the company store and not for everyday life) and the second is something I called raw profitability of tea selling as Dr Pim de Zwart calculated that ratio (I don’t know why). Me calling it that is an oversimplification of reality as to know the real profitability ratio, you would have to add other costs that are not there like the transport costs, the fixed costs of the VOC for keeping its business operating (and this was a really huge business, just look there at the list of settlements and trading posts it owned and operated like a State) but it gives us some hints about the evolution of the trade as a whole.

But enough talking, let’s go to the charts (you can click on them to have a little more info).

What can we see?

At first (for circa 40 years), tea was a kind of luxury, a product that was rare with high selling prices (and therefore high potential profits). Then the price in Amsterdam began to decrease probably because of increased supply from Asia, be it from the VOC or from competitors, the other India Companies (this was a global race, see for example there or there).

In such a trade war that was raging for all products, what was the likely answer of the VOC (and obviously of the other companies at first)? I don’t know but from what I see here and from what I read elsewhere, it seems to me that they had (and bear in mind that it is my opinion centuries away from the event and with the capacity to use tools and ideas that were unknown by the people at that time, so there is for now for me no way to know if they ever followed a deliberate strategy) few options available as I don’t think (or I couldn’t find any evidence in my readings) there was a real uniqueness perceived by the customer (in other words a ton of a said quality of tea could be delivered by any of the India Companies) and due to the need to generate a lot of money, the VOC couldn’t focus on a single or a few items, which price was likely to drop in case of increased importations.

Because all these companies were focused on only one thing (to say it in simple words going to Asia and getting back from it with a lot of goods and money), because of the path dependence (“we have invested money years after years on this strategy that worked for the others and we need to take gold away from them or prevent them to do so from us”) and because it was also a question of national pride and prestige, no alternative thought on how to act could be at first formulated (once again there is no way of knowing if any deliberate strategy was really devised).

This shows that they were clearly in the conditions described by Michael Porter for his generic strategies. From the picture below that sums up the generic strategies (for a complete overview, go there) and the analysis provided above, the answer to what the VOC and the other had to do is clear

Michael Porter's Generic Strategies

Porter’s Generic Strategies (by Denis Fadeev)

Focus on the costs and aim for the cost leadership.

Is this supported by the facts? If you look closely at the data, the price for the tea in Asia began decreasing around the 1730s (when the VOC was already declining) until it reached a floor between 0.30 and 0.50 fl. per pound.

How was this achieved? First, the Dutch imported their goods in Europe through Batavia (today Jakarta) reproducing a model from earlier empires. This meant that everything had first to go though to Batavia being stocked there before being sent to Amsterdam. However since the VOC didn’t have enough ships and people to trade on a “personal” basis, they (like the others before them) used the services of middlemen, Chinese, Indian or Muslim traders that brought goods to Batavia.

Not the optimal solution as these people would likely sell their goods at a higher price but as long as competition hadn’t increase, it was not a problem. However because the British, French and the other India Companies had not access to the network of the Dutch East India Company, they went directly to China resulting in a lower price for them and forcing the VOC to do the same in order to stay competitive.

After an initial drop, the level of price reached a new equilibrium as after getting rid of the middlemen and saving money, the competition between the European companies prevented any further decrease before other approaches were used later in the 19th century.

With this ends for today my quest to find knowledge out of raw information and ends my travel on T.S. Eliot’s footsteps (from a philosophic point of view obviously).

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The Rock by T.S. Eliot

Light! More Light!

March 30, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I think that Goethe’s last words are more than suited to this rather obscure topic that I teased last time, tea in French Indochina. But perhaps I should start with some explanations for those unfamiliar with the history/geography of the world at the beginning of the 20th century.

French Indochina was the result of a process beginning in the middle of the 19th century with a series of military expeditions earmarked as punitive expeditions by France and Spain, leading to the occupation of the South of Vietnam and in 1887 to the creation of the Union of French Indochina.

Administrative map of French Indochina in 1937

Administrative map of French Indochina in 1937. Showing protectorates and provinces/districts by XrysD

Because of the distances involved and France not being overpopulated, this colony was seen as an economic one and not as a settlement one, meaning that “few” French went there and that the exploitation of natural resources was the priority (with most of the funding coming from taxes on the local people through monopoly on important products). For example, rice was the biggest exported product of French Indochina (both in volume and value), something that was unheard before (mostly because the former government and local people had no use for this kind of sales of goods but this is another topic, one that would lead us too far away from tea).

During the Roaring Twenties, France intended to diversify the French Indochina economy with the introduction of several new commodities to be produced but the Great Depression hurt it like in most colonies as the decline in prices and in exports meant less resources while the cost remained the same.

Rice Fielf by Halong Bay

Rive Field by Halong Bay by Dinkum

But let’s not get too quickly to the end of the story.

As I said earlier, while looking for information on this topic, I found several old books and among them the Bulletin of the Economic Agency of Indochina, the representatives in France of the Governors-Generals of French Indochina acting also as a centre of information on said region, of promotion or of research on different topics. I accessed the Bulletins from 1928 to 1937 (I don’t know if it was published before (I have some doubts as it displays a 1st year mark followed by “new series”) or after) looking for information on tea as it was quite often filled with articles on politics, on agriculture in the different provinces as well as analysis of the economical situation in the area or in the potential markets around it (like the Dutch East Indies known today as Indonesia) or a little further away (Poland). Obviously, the different Bulletins are written in a style and with ideas that are so 20s-30s but they are quite interesting.

From 1928 to 1933, it was edited every month and from 1934 on, it became quarterly, making it 76 issues of it In 43 of them, I found at least one article on tea, ranging from production statistics to full analysis of the tea sector in French Indochina or to news about foreign markets (including India and Ceylon).

Banknote from the Bank of Indochina

Banknote from the Bank of Indochina

Before I get into more details about the bigger picture, here are some interesting/puzzling facts:

– tea at that time was still painted/flavoured by chemical products, be it in China or in French Indochina. Perhaps it was also done in other places?

– there seems to be some forgery of what is tea with the addition of other plants and herbs (with those guilty being obviously according to the Bulletin the foreign intermediaries) . The solution was to work on a kind of label (“Appellation d’Origine” in French), an idea that is still valid today.

– there were two kinds of producers: the natives (small gardens) and the French ones with bigger gardens with different processing methods.

First thing, if you read For all the tea in China: Espionage, Empire And The Secret Formula For The World’s Favourite Drink by Sarah Rose (I look at a specific aspect of it, here), you might remember that there were experimental stations in most colonies to experiment and help with the spread of new plants and techniques.

French Indochina had some and they experimented with tea plans but for an unknown reason stopped doing so in 1910 before getting back to it from 1922 on. Their work focused on the best species to be used (although this statement written in 1933 is in contradiction with something else written two years ago in the Bulletin, see a little further below) and they had 14 varieties under supervision in 1919, 24 in 1923 and 70 in 1933 but also on the best way to “design” a garden (with shadow, without, with other trees, the use of fertilizers…) or the way to process tea leaves.

For example, the plots shadowed by chine wood oil trees gave 932 kg of fresh leaves per hectare when shadowed and 1,306 when not; with copperpods, the results were respectively of 807 and 1,087. Without any further indication about the differences between the plots, one can’t drawn any further conclusions.

The main areas of production seemed to have been in almost all French Indochina but mostly (and without surprise) in the areas with hills like those of Quang Nam (a name that came back as a good producing area over the whole time period).

However, in spite of what had been written about the experimental stations, two “species” of tea trees were used and seemed according to the authors native to French Indochina (but see above): Thea sinensis Sims and Thea assamica Mast.

The production was split in two with the gardens of the native, with few access to factories to process in an industrial way their leaves (they did it by hand) and a few French gardens, owned either by some settlers or some companies selling teas in France (perhaps a research for another post?), which had full access to one of the three factories I found references to (but there might have been more of them).

What about the productivity? In Annam from a tea tree, you could extract 600 to 800 grams of green leaves, of which 4 kilos were needed to produce 1 kg of saleable tea (made of 60% of the thin quality and 40% of big leaves or waste). At the same time, the production in Java or India was of 600 to 1,000 kg of saleable tea per ha. Since I have no clue about the density of the tea trees in the gardens in Annam, I can’t do the maths. If you have any information, I will edit this part.

In the end, what was the overall production of French Indochina? I am not sure we can say anything but here are some numbers I could find (which might be a bit biased and would need to be checked with other sources).

The crest of Saigon from 1870 to 1975

The crest of Saigon from 1870 to 1975

The tea produced by the natives seems sometimes to have been only for their own consumption but at other times, they are said to be selling it… The truth is probably that they drank some of it but that they also sold it to either the trading firms, the factories or the above mentioned intermediaries. However every year around 2,000 tonnes of tea were imported from China for the use of the native upper class, of the Chinese and of the European. This seems a bit much and my feeling is that part of it might have been just in transit to Europe under the label of Indochina tea (but this is just a gut feeling with no proof to back it).

However, since my sources here were in a way official, I got the numbers of tons exported (at 80% to France) each year over most of the period. I hope you are well seated because the figures are a bit like a roller-coaster with no real explanations for now.

Year Tons exported Year Tons exported
1902 163 1916 918
1903 168 1917 862
1904 327 1918 1,039
1905 224 1919 903
1906 328 1920 357
1907 368 1921 156
1908 306 1922 508
1909 325 1923 878
1910 530 1924 756
1911 559 1925 103
1912 436 1926 1,148
1913 372 1927 776
1914 490 1928 937
1915 963 1929 1,012

Tons of tea exported from French Indochina (in tons per year)

I also got the value in French Francs for the second half of this table but since it wasn’t complete, I didn’t use it here.

After this “short” introduction, I will try to go through other documents I found online to see if I find more information to share with you or to see if I can find more about the names and whereabouts of the tea companies involved in this business and this area. But this will be for a later article.

Teaser…

February 23, 2020 / / 2 Comments

You might remember (Or not, I won’t be offended) that I wrote things about tea in the French colonies. Just in case, here are the links:

https://teaconomics.teatra.de/2015/07/28/for-you-little-gardener-and-lover-of-trees/

https://teaconomics.teatra.de/2012/08/28/france-its-colonies-and-tea/

I had completely forgotten this topic and while looking at online archives on maritime power and colonies, I found out new things on the topic of French Indochina (the former name from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) and tea.

While expanding my research with some references I had found, I came on other older articles and newspapers dealing with this topic or let’s say with the topic of tea in the French colonies or potentially dealing with it and economical/sociological reasoning behind tea or no tea in certain areas.

Unfortunately, there is no way to do a quick search as these old newspapers were scanned but not really indexed. This means I have to go through all of them to see if and what is written and then to make something out of it. I still don’t know what the real scope of my next article (or articles) will be but you know the topic or at least part of it.

As they say on TV, stay tuned.

It tastes like …

January 1, 2020 / / 0 Comments

How does tea taste? Why do two people drinking the same tea experiment two different things? And obviously which one of them is right? The answer is much more complex than we could think at first, which means that perhaps the two drinkers are wrong and right at the same time.

For the sake of my argumentation, I will take as hypothesis that the tasted tea is of good quality and perfectly brewed. This means that the difference in its tastes only come from the tasters themselves.

First thing, we usually lack training in tasting. We didn’t train hard enough to be able to focus on what we drink (or eat) and we lack the proper experience to understand what we taste and to be able to categorize it. Our inner taste library is in most cases not developed enough to cope with everything and to be able to express what we feel.

Just check this rather simple tea wheel to understand what I mean.

Tea Wheel

Tea Wheel from Whiskyrific

Probably because I never trained myself making me for that a newbie, I always thought of such wheel as the famous scene of the Matrix Movie.

“Operator. Tastes, lots of tastes”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oZi-wYarDs

The second thing is the link between tasting and smelling with our sense of smell being richer in our capacity to analyse things than the sense of taste. I don’t know how many receivers we have on our tongue but for smelling we have around 400 different ones, which allows us thanks to their combination to recognise at least 10,000 different smells (I wrote at least as according to recent studies, this number is more likely to be in billions or trillions).

Don’t start overreacting. A lot of these different smells are variants of another. The citrus are the perfect example of that as every member of this family can be recognized by smell but among the different oranges or lemons or…, there are different varieties, smelling almost the same as the others but not totally. And if you add to this the fact that they can cross-bred quite easily, mixing a little more their smells, you understand why we can probably recognise so many smells.

A good illustration of the richness of the taste of smell can be read in a book by Patrick Suskind, Perfume, the Story of a Murderer, in which the author describes with a vivid imagination the olfactory experiences experienced by the hero.

“This scent had a freshness, but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates, not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles, not that of a May rain or a frosty wind or of well water… and at the same time it had warmth, but not as bergamot, cypress, or musk has, or jasmine or daffodils, not as rosewood has or iris… This scent was a blend of both, of evanescence and substance, not a blend, but a unity, although slight and frail as well, and yet solid and sustaining, like a piece of thin, shimmering silk… and yet again not like silk, but like pastry soaked in honey-sweet milk – and try as he would he couldn’t fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable, indescribable, could not be categorized in any way – it really ought not to exist at all. And yet there it was as plain and splendid as day.”

It also seems that among our DNA, we have 800 genes dedicated to smell with up to 30% differences in them between (and we are small players when compared to dogs).

This also explains why some people are sensitive to certain smells (and able to detect them easily) or totally insensitive.

The last explaining factor is a huge psychological one. We are sensitive and social creatures and as such, the taste of tea might change depending on the weather conditions, the people we drink tea with (if you drink with loved ones or other people, the tea will taste differently), our own experience, the price when it is known (obviously a more expensive tea is better than a cheaper one…), the name when it is known (reputation effect), even the colour of the tea…

I lost you with the colour part? An experiment was made with a white wine and people tasted honey, lemon, grapefruit, elderberry… The same wine was given back for tasting but dyed with a odourless and tasteless product.

Guess what? The wine now tasted like red plums, chocolate…

Now that we have seen how much the taste of tea is not depending on us, what can we do about it? The answer is simple: train, train, train. Remember this library of tastes? The more we train, the bigger it will grow and thus the better we will be able to differentiate the taste components of our tea.

It won’t be perfect and another people might still taste something different but it will be a move in the direction of trying to better understand tea and its uniqueness.

The only one stuck is the last one

November 29, 2019 / / 0 Comments

According to the Times of India in its edition of October 17th of 2019, the Tea Board of India wanted to meet the producers of Darjeeling teas to “propose 100% mandatory sales […] via auction” and more importantly via e-auctions.

The reasons are threefold:
1. Traceability of this Geographical Indication product, since according to a Board official “2 million kilograms produced in a neighbouring country is unlawfully imported and mixed to be passed on as Darjeeling tea”. Forcing every grams of Darjeeling tea to be sold through e-auctions would facilitate the process of tracing them back to where they are produced, ensuring only real Darjeeling tea is being sold on the market.
2. Make the business profitable by avoiding undue competition and price undercutting by the different gardens.
3. Transparency, meaning that it is common knowledge how much a tea kilogram is being sold and if the gardens can or cannot pay bonus to the labourers.

Before seeing if these goals are “good” or not or if they are reachable, let us begin with what is an e-auction and what would be the consequences of it.

An auction is the process of selling and buying through bids and to the highest bidder. It is only one of the several ways of buying and selling goods. E-auction is the same but using the potential offered by the information technologies to open the system to more people and more often without any of them needing to move.

Now, what are the advantages of launching such a program?
Many studies exist on the peculiarities of auctions and e-auctions but most of them relate to the use of game theory or to analyse how the bids are done according to the access of the bidders to information. I found a paper by Rajiv Banker and Sabyasachi Mitra in Electronic Commerce Research and Applications Volume 6, Issue 3, Autumn 2007, Pages 309-321, on Procurement models in the agriculture supply chain: a case study of online coffee auctions in India.
After reading it, I found it quite interesting as it is a practical case study on another agricultural commodity (I didn’t know that India produced coffee) in the same country and with the same target/idea.
According to Rajiv Banker and Sabyasachi Mitra, the direct online auctions allow for increased margins for both sides due to direct purchases and to lower costs of participation as the auctions tale place more regularly. Among the drawbacks are the lack of capacity to see the product and its quality as well as the direct contacts between planters and buyers, with a bargaining power that might be unbalanced between the two of them (because of one party having more knowledge or more money or more …).

However, something else caught my attention in this paper since it went directly against the second goal set by those promoting the e-auctions (and remember we are talking about coffee beans).
The price of the beans seemed higher by 4% in the electronic auction with an even higher price difference for the grades with less trading frequency or with higher price volatility. However, the premium coffee grades, those which might need to be seen and touched to check their quality were usually sold at a lower price at the electronic auction.
Why is that important? Because we are talking about Darjeeling teas, the “champagne” of teas, which means that these teas are supposed to be of higher quality as most and sold according to this idea. If the same “problem” is found in tea e-auctions as in coffee ones, this might cause a drop in prices, leading to planters being unwilling to sell their products at these auctions (for fear of prices not being high enough) and therefore buying them back in order to be allowed to sell it to peculiar buyers after direct negotiations (this is allowed in the process).
This can be seen in a positive way as for upper grades teas to be sold through e-auctions would mean to be 100% sure of the quality, leading to a rise in the quality of the production while everyone would try to offer only the best products possible to ensure a long-lasting rise in the price even without the classical checking of the teas being sold; however, it also means that only those with a well-established “name” or with enough money will be able to do so at first. My personal opinion here is that this would go against the will of the promoters of the e-auctions.

Now that we have a clearer idea of what is going on under the name e-auction, will they help reach the three goals I mentioned at the beginning? The answers below are just my answers and nothing else.

1. Traceability: perhaps the e-auctions could help enforce it but if and only if there is a way to track the whole production chain (perhaps through an increased control on the quantity being produced in each garden). Otherwise, smugglers with the help of other partners will find ways around the controls and the situation will remains the same.
2. Profitability: yes as long as quality stays and as long as there is a demand for these type of products at a said price. If some big buyers do not want to go that way and just withdraw, the market will revert to its current practices with a higher risk of undercutting prices at the second negotiations, since the bargaining power between a big buyer and a garden is likely to be unbalanced.
3. Transparency: it will depend on how many kilograms are sold on the open market through these auctions and how many gardens buy back their teas for private negotiations (we can imagine some big buyers even lending money to gardens to do that).

Are e-auctions a good thing for tea? For me there is no definitive answer and it will all depend on what the rules of the game are and how all the players stick to the rules.

One never knows how loyalty is born

October 22, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Why is Earl Grey/Green Tea/… popular and proposed/drank in most places? How do trends begin? Good questions indeed. When I was asked about it, I began doing some research and I found some information on how trends were born in fashion. After looking and thinking about it, I decided that it could translate into the tea industry.

So how are trends born? Humans being social animals, we are “victims” of several documented phenomenons that facilitate the adoption of “successful” behaviours. First, the bandwagon effect increase the probability of an individual adopting a belief, idea, trend with the proportion of people who have already done so. The other effect is named the chameleon one after the animal that is said to blend into its environment. However it is a bit trickier as some works and experiences say that some people try to follow the choices made by others, ie the norm, however some others say that some people try to do the exact opposite trying to do what no one does. This shows that the human mind is quite complex but that we always compare ourselves to others and that we are influenced by others in a way or in another.

These factors explain how trend/fashion spreads among individual people, be it for fashion, food stuff or tea and today, you could add advertising (whatever the way it takes), economical situation (with the need for ones to distinguish themselves from others be it by looking for luxury products or rather upper class ones), technology (making production available at cheaper prices, thus increasing the potential market)… and today also social media, which are in a way mega-advertising things, with several people known as influencers (celebrities, people with an audience and recognised for their expertise in a domain…). However, they don’t really explain how trends are born and what makes them appear.

First and foremost, it is important to understand that like in the spreading part, we are not alone to decide. “We” as people have tastes but sometimes we don’t know about them and companies are eager to “help” us find about them before we knew what we want, creating a market and ensuring they can sell us what we need.

To do so, companies do a lot of research on what their customers might want, either directly through market researches, asking group of people about what they want, what they value the most… or looking at researches made by others. One interesting example I found and that might be reflected in the tea industry too is the brand design agency. These people are paid to feel the air and look at what the next ideas in a certain industry might be and this at different moments in time (tomorrow, the day after tomorrow…). They produce trend books that are sold at a high price to other companies that make the fashion collections we see in the shops.

You might wonder how this is related to us and to the way trends in tea are created. If you are referring to normal brand design agencies, it is only in an indirect way as their books display not only all the things needed to create a fashion collection (colours, designs, key words and concepts) but also a lot of other things that are in the air and that can be translated in concepts for other industries. In a more direct way, some of these agencies are focusing on other industries (food, cars, cosmetics…).

Obviously, some companies are able to do this job all alone, be it because they are big enough to have a department doing the same thing or because they have someone with the talent to perceive the future trends. To quote Steve Jobs (I couldn’t write on this topic without making a reference to him), “It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse’.”

As in most things in life, there is no simple answer to any question and the way how trends begin and spread is a complex one, a non written and non spoken deal between us as consumers and the companies selling tea (or any other thing) with the addition of people trying to find out about what we might need and our unconscious trying either to make us look like all the others or trying to differentiate us. This is why there is no winning combo to ensure ones success and also why there are so many companies following the lead of others: it is easier to find out what works and do it too, rather than try to find out what is going on. However, this only works because customers are loyal to a brand or to a couple of brands and are unwilling most of the time to widen their experience and look around.

This echoes to the title of this blog, which is a quote of Mad Men, a TV show I still have to look at that focuses on the life and business of advertising agencies throughout the 1960s.