Month: October 2011

For one hour, I thought I was Johnny Depp

October 29, 2011 / / 6 Comments

Hamburg is a charming and quite busy city in Northern Germany and according to many sources, one of the biggest tea ports in Europe.

I went there for the weekend and after reading carefully Lahikmajoe’s post, we decided with my friend to go to the Hotel 4 Seasons.

To be honest, I was a bit intimated as I didn’t have trendy clothes on me but only the casual ones I had in the night train and during my morning stay in the city but I thought that it really didn’t matter (I looked at their website while I was writing this post and I saw that the dress code was Smart Casual, which I wasn’t for sure) .

This Hotel is famous in Hamburg and really upper class.

We were early (around 13h30) and as we looked around, we were greeted by a butler that said we were a bit too early for the cakes but that we could have a tea and that the cakes would come in a little while.

They had a decent choice with around 12 different loose leaf teas and they had a really nice card with small samples of each tea and a description in German and English (for those unfortunate enough not to read properly German).

While waiting for the cakes, we looked around and saw that the whole place was really like one of these English gentlemen club where you don’t want to disturb anyone and with the paintings on the walls looking at you with their gloomy eyes.

We didn’t speak about business and politics but about poetry, literature and other topics.

This (after all, poets are known not to care about their clothes, they are artists) together with the “if I was Johnny Depp, my clothes would be trendy” attitude helped me get better in a few minutes about this whole setting and enjoy the place and the tea.

The following day, we went to Blankenese, a charming little town all built around stairs, with a lot of former houses from captains and fishing people (for the old part of town).

Apart from finding a lot of pharmacies there (one every 100m in the new part of town, perhaps the people there are ill all the time), we were also looking after the first name to appear on the Internet when you look for Teestube (a close translation of tea salon in German) in Hamburg.

We found it in the newest part of the town, some 200m from the train station and it was like a piece of England in Germany with some Queen Elisabeth II objects (some were really kitsch like a small statue of the Queen waving the right hand in her royal way) and other posters/maps.

I was surprised by the number of teas available and we decided to go for a Blankense mix (Ceylon and Assam) and a Black Vanilla tea.

Both of them were good and after some inner questions regarding if they were using loose leaf teas or not, we found some proof that they were, which delighted us.

I sent a mail to the owner asking some questions and she told me they had 42 different teas from a German company that has been in the tea business for 120 years.

Checking if this is true could be the reason behind a next trip to this place (apart from the good teas and huge cakes).

A really interesting tea trip mostly thanks to Lahikmajoe and Internet.

Next time, we might also try the Chinese House.

Transformed in Germany, a new paradigm for German tea?

October 28, 2011 / / 6 Comments

I had a few discussions and mail exchanges with @Lahikmajoe about the German tea culture and its importance mostly in Northern Germany.

According to him, one of the reasons behind it is that this area is the hinterland of the port of Hamburg.

This was coherent with other things I had read about the importance of Hamburg for the importations of coffee in the whole Europe.

So I decided to try to find a little more information on this and asked the Port of Hamburg Authority about this.

I must say that their staff was really friendly and sent me quickly some data.

According to the German Tea Association, 76.778 tons of tea were handled in Germany.

This figure includes the 50.838 tonnes imported of which about half (25.940 tonnes) were re-exported (probably after some blending and/or repackaging).

About 75% of these tonnages went through the Port of Hamburg, making of it according to the Port of Hamburg Authority the most important European hub for tea trade.

However what I found most fascinating is the data provided to them by the German Tea Association regarding imports and re exports.

When you look at them, you can see two interesting changes over time:

  • the sudden increase from 1988 on of the imported tonnages,

  • the rise of re-exportation (a little over 50% of the imported tonnes in 2010).

This prompted me to look at the few figures I have one more time and to drop the re-exportations to see what is really consumed in Germany.

 

Now, we have a completely different picture.

The 1988 increase is still there but after that, it seems that the importations are more or less flat (in terms of tonnage, value being another interesting indicator to look at).

Is Germany a country famous for its teas? Perhaps or the reason could be different as I read in my Tea Lover’s Guide that Hamburg is home to a certain number of large tea brokers that supply almost all the European “importers” of a certain standing but the problem is that the figures don’t really support that.

For now, the set of data I have is not huge enough to allow me to go further into that direction but my next task is to gather more data and to see with the German Tea Association if they have any ideas on the reasons behind these figures .

So far, I didn’t receive any answer from them but I won’t let them run away with it.

After all, I have all the time in the world as long as I have my tea cup near me.

Middlemen surround us and for once, we should forget the Alamo

October 5, 2011 / / 11 Comments

I was in holidays and during that time, I saw something I already knew but sometimes you rediscover things you already knew: in hotels, camping places, bars, coffeehouses… you don’t have loose leaf teas but only the “not so good” old tea bags (from several brands, some completely unknown to me).
This puzzled me and I thought about it after coming back from holidays.

Are the people in these places unwilling to give good quality products? Probably not as you could buy/drink/eat other things that you would consider of good/upper quality.
Do they care for their tea customers? Perhaps or perhaps not. Tea is not the most drunk beverage out there and they probably (I didn’t dare to ask them) think that with 3-4 different tea bags (let’s say Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Lemon or Mint and then Assam or Ceylon), they have all it takes to satisfy all their customers. We know this is wrong but do they?

However, after giving it a second thought, blaming the shops (a generic term I use here for all the places where you can buy/drink tea from) is perhaps a bit too easy.
After all, they are only a small part of all the things that are happening between the producer and the final consumer (see the picture below) and most of the time, they don’t have access to all these wonderful products we do have access to but only to the catalogue of wholesalers, which are the middlemen helping them to get all kinds of supplies in an almost efficient way (after all, they don’t sell them good quality teas).


Now that you see the picture, how does it work in real life? Let’s take a simple example: a small baker that makes different small breads.
He might need up to 10 different flours to bake his breads and some in really small quantities.
Does he have the time to visit potential sellers and ask them for price? The answer is obvious: no and this is where middlemen come into the game. Another advantage (remember this is theory) of these people is that they buy more goods, allowing them to get better prices.

So if you want to change things on a big scale, those are the men you should target as they are the one buying and selling to others.
No comes the tricky part, convince them of changing everything. You will probably say, “they should sell better quality teas. People would drink more of these higher quality beverages. This way everyone would be happy.”

Right but wrong.
Nowadays, they have a rather standardised product that can be bought from identified suppliers. Tomorrow, they will have to buy/store/sell a lot of different teas with big questions on constant quality, quantities…
A second argument against the change is price. Who is willing to pay more for this higher quality tea? You will answer me: “I am”. Yes but the “average” people in the street? It is one thing to have a better product, it is another to have people see it that way and it is a third one to make people pay more for what is basically the same thing: drinking a hot beverage.

So is there no solution to this endless tea in bags thing?
I wouldn’t be so grim.
People (and this is a trend in a lot of products) want more quality, traceability and for some a fair attitude/experience.
If you don’t believe me, just look at Lipton (I know this is the example that everyone uses but they are among the most famous and the usual bagged tea reference): not only do they now sell their teas  also in loose leaf boxes but their Yellow Label is fair…
There is also a new product with cube shaped tea bags that gives more space to the tea leaves.

In the end, what people want is simple: they want a better experience and they want more for their money.
Is it possible to achieve this and to replace the usual teas in bags from the different places I mentioned earlier?
I do think so but it will take a lot of work towards the wholesalers or the shops.

For example, several “small” shops could get together and decide to focus on a few higher quality products at a reasonable price and by banding together (which is not easy to achieve), they could achieve this.
Why? Simply because what is needed to get this is critical mass and the willingness to skip several middlemen that can be useful but sometimes add really low added-value or no value at all for a rather high price.
For example, imagine your business is just collecting tea from different small blenders, repackaging them and selling them to hotels. What would be the price of your products? I stop you before you begin answering me in an accounting way, the answer is simple, you take the price of your supplies and you multiply it by 4 (or 3 or 5).
If you don’t believe me, this is a true story I learned from the boss of a small company working in the food industry.
Obviously, for our shops to be able to offer good quality prices, these people have to be skipped (sorry for them but such is the way of the market).

Another way around this could be to lobby the wholesalers to convince them that they should change.
This is probably out of our reach as individuals but companies and professional associations could and should do it.

As usual, all it takes to begin such a revolution is a few good men that are convinced that they are right.
Don’t stop asking for tea in restaurants, hotels… but ask them if they have real tea.
If we all do this, we might change the world, probably sip of tea by sip of tea but it will still be another step in the right direction.