Category: Analysis

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.

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

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.

Whisky in a cup of tea

July 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Did you know that Al Capone drank whisky in a cup of tea? It might be a hoax but I heard it on a rather serious radio and I found it cool enough to mention it here. A more “serious” reason than the “cool” factor was that it provided a good introduction for the topic of this article.

Some time ago, I asked one of our fellow bloggers here what he would like to see in this blog and his answer puzzled me as he had heard that there was a link between the consumption of alcohol in the United States and of tea and that, the first one was decreasing while the second one was increasing. If you had asked it to me, I would not have come up with a link between these two as it seems completely counter intuitive.

However, I decided to pick up this challenge and to investigate this topic, which was also a perfect way to illustrate one of my latest posts in a practical way.

The first thing was to decide the scope of my data analysis. I decided to go for the three main markets for these two products: America, Europe and Asia (the fact that the sources I later found also had this segmentation is pure luck. You don’t believe me, do you?). I could have gone with several countries but after giving it much consideration, I could not find to which countries, I should compare the United States. Moreover, a focus on one single country might not have been representative of what was going on.

Knowing the geographical area, I decided to check for data.

… … …

… … …

… … …

These were my first results, as it seemed complex to find anything in a single database. I decided to split the search into alcohol and tea and since I knew where to look for tea, I thought it made it easier.

After looking on the Internet with several keywords, I found out that the available statistics on alcohol consumption were from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and expressed in terms of consumption per capita in litres of pure alcohol. Let’s put it in other words, they converted all the drinks into pure alcohol (I have no real clue how it works but the basis seemed coherent to me) and they had databases covering each year between 1961 and 2017. The earlier years were not always coherent or complete but I had a base to begin working with.

For teas, I had to answer a rather simple question: how much tea was drunk? I had access to several sets of tea related data but not a single one giving me this information.

My educated guess was that “what a country/area produced each year + what a country/area imported each year – what a country/area exported each year” was a good estimate of how much tea was available for consumption. Obviously, this is only an estimate as not all this tea is drunk each year but if you have a better idea, I am all ears.

However this was not enough as I couldn’t compare tons and litres. I needed a way to convert these available tons in litres of tea. After a lot of thought and look all around, I decided to go for 12 grams of tea per litre, which means that with 1 ton you could get 83,333 litres of tea (again if you have other figures, let me know).

The nice thing was that I had access to the same timeline as the WHO one, which made comparison and statistical analysis easier.

This is all for now but stay tuned as next time I will compare the data and try to see how they evolve over time and if there is any link between them.

A chain that doesn’t block anything

April 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

I heard on radio last week that big names in the food industry were going for something that up to now for me was something more linked to cryptocurrency (yes I know it sounds horrible but I am sure you have heard of bitcoins) than to anything food related: the blockchain.

For those like me that don’t really know what it is, blockchain is a succession of encrypted blocks containing information on something and linked to the previous block in the chain and to the next one by small parts of code, securing the whole chain and most importantly the data within.

What is the use of it for people that have nothing to do with geeks? With a simple QR reader downloaded on your smartphone, you can have access to this whole information by just flashing the QR code.

You will probably ask what kind of information. The example I heard on radio was in the mashed potatoes industry. With this specific blockchain, they wanted the customer to be able to know which factory processed the potatoes and even which operators did it (or checked the machines used).

I am sure that by now you see some processes where the tea industry could use this blockchain. The first and foremost would be to track down where exactly the tea we are drinking comes from. This would help solve some “mysteries” or uncertainties regarding the place of origin of some teas. A second use would be to be able to know what happened to the tea during the fabrication process, just to be sure that everything is as it is supposed to be. A third use would be to be able to follow the tea from the plucking to the store, not only through space but also through time, meaning that there would be no question regarding the way, the means of transport, the freshness of a tea.

For example, people could buy fresh tea from Japan knowing that it was transported by cargo plane. Thanks to this, the consumer could act according to his principle and buy only products that follow his/her own sets of rules.

Obviously this blockchain thing only works if everyone along the chain (from producers to sellers) is playing the game but with enough pressure for the consumers, it should not be a problem as companies are more than willing and eager to be transparent regarding their products.. What is more problematic is the capacity to check the veracity of the information provided by the whole chain. As producers are spread in different countries and sometimes deep inside them, it might be difficult for them to invest time in blockchains or for third parties to check whether or not the provided information is the right one.

One solution could be in the use of trusted and independent middlemen in charge of checking the information related to tea or even bringing them in the blockchains. To ensure their total independence, they should not be funded by the sellers but by the customers. It might be a little bit costly (but I doubt it) but it would enable the move of the tea industry to another level of transparency and cooperation. The idea here is not to create a new “thing” (if I may quote de Gaulle) but a simple yet efficient tool that could be used across the whole tea industry to improve it through the sharing of information.

Don’t get me wrong, in spite of this rational approach focusing, I also do think that mysteries and myths are a part of the charm of tea. Quite an intriguing approach, isn’t it? Or to quote a man who is on our side: “The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.”

You must unlearn what you have learned

December 26, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Everyone knows that in Europe, tea is something English (or British if you prefer), that they invented everything regarding tea rituals and that they are at the core of everything related to tea.

Well, I won’t tell you that everything in this common belief is a lie but let’s say that not everything is true.

As I once wrote, Hamburg is also a major hub for tea in Europe and in spite of the evolutions described in my article is likely to remain its role for some years as it holds a significant advantage in terms of logistics and know-how that will take years for any other interested in the role to reach.

The second point you might know is that tea is said to have become mainstream in the United Kingdom following the marriage of King Charles III with Catherine of Braganza in 1662. This Portuguese princess is said to have introduced tea drinking at least in the English court as this drink was widespread among the Portuguese nobility.

As for early knowledge of tea or mention of it, it has nothing to do with English or Northern Europe people. According to All about Tea by William Ulkers published in 1935, the first mention of tea in Europe was in 1559 in the second tome (but to ease our understanding third to be published) in a compilation of travel books by an Italian Giambattista Ramusio, Navigationi et Viaggi (Navigations and Travels). He translated the works of Haji Mohamed, a Persian traveller, who had spoken of Chai Catai (literaly Chai of Cathay or in modern English, tea of China), a plant that grows in the district of Cathay, which is called Cacian-fsu , ie Sichuan, This was followed by several mentions by Italian, Portuguese and even French mentions of tea, for most of them priests or missionaires; which seems logical since apart from the Church missionaries, only the Portuguese could travel towards East Asia. Afterwards, Dutch and English boats managed to get access to these seas and began bringing back goods among them tea, which was seen as a medicine plant and drink. For a reason I don’t really understand (apart from the obvious “let’s not make our trade too attractive so that people will stay away of it” that doesn’t fit with everything going on at that time), Dutch merchants introduced tea in Europe at the beginning of the 1600s and sold it later on to the English (1652). The first recorded public auction in England for tea happened after that in 1657.

Based on common knowledge and the clichés about tea, I always thought that France wasn’t in the lead for tea. However, at the end of the reign of Louis XIV of France, during the Regency and in the early years of Louis XV of France (in other words between 1707 and 1738), a man called Nicolas Delamare, police commissioner, wrote a Traité de la Police (Treaty on Police) and in it mentioned in the 4th book that (the translation from old French being mine) Tea is the leaves of a shrub that come to us from China, the use of which began to be known in Paris, around the year 1636.

However, like in other countries, things were not going straight ahead for the new medicinal drink and several debates were going on in France like in other countries. For example, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris in 1650-1652, Guy Patin wrote between 1648 and 1659 several letters to different people where he mentioned tea (I found them online in Correspondance française de Guy Patin edited by Loïc Capron, Paris : Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de santé, 2015, http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/patin/).

The first one was on the 10th of March of 1648 to Mr Charles Spon, where he stated that a badly written thesis by Dr Philibert Morisset on “Does Chinese tea increase mentality?” was to be defended and that this thesis was only made to flatter the chancellor, which was at the heart of this plant reputation, a reputation that will immediately disappear with the noise. The idea being that tea was a panacea.

On the 22nd of March of the same year, he wrote to the same correspondent that one of our doctors, who is much more a braggart than a skilful man, named Morisset, wishing to favour the impertinent novelty of the age, and trying thereby to give himself some credit, has spread here a thesis on tea, with a conclusion that is as well done as this president has his head well done. Everyone has disapproved of the thesis. There has been some of our doctors who have burned it and reproaches have been made to the Dean for having approved it.

On the 27th of March of 1648, he wrote that tea was being taken by the Cardinal Mazarin to deal with his gout, which was in line with the belief that this medicinal plant could cure everything.

Some years later, he wrote on the 22nd of June of 1657 to Johannes Antonides Vander Linder, physician and professor in Leiden (in the Netherlands) asking him (among other things) about the properties of this leaf that was quite common in the Netherlands, saying that for some it was Indian while from others it was Chinese or from Europe (and this debate raged on until much later), stating too that it was quite a hype and that the spouse of a magistrate wanted him to prescribe this “new” plant but that being careful and cautious, he wanted before using it to have some proofs of its efficiency.

The last letter on this topic was written on the 7th of March of 1659 to a Dr. Sebastien Scheffer in Frankfurt, where he stated that this hype for this Chinese plant was only a hoax and that most tea was not true one but made of other plants from Europe, the only way for him to have good tea was to go in China, something that only Jesuits could do.

Another more famous letter writer that spoke about tea was Mme de Sévigné, a famous woman letter writer during the reign of Louis XIV. She corresponded with her daughter for over 25 years with 2 to 3 letters each week and mentioned two times tea.

On the 16th of February of 1680, she wrote that another noblewoman, Madame de La Sablière was drinking milk with her tea. Some says that this was done to cool the tea to prevent her bone teacups from cracking. Perhaps it was the origin of the English custom of drinking tea with milk.

Some years later, on the 4th of October of 1684, she wrote to her ill daughter that the Princess of Tarente (Emilie von Hessen-Kassel) had said to her that she drank 12 cups of tea every day and that her father was up to 40 every morning.

The debate regarding the properties of tea kept on and for example in 1671, Philippe Sylvestre Dufoud, an apothecary, banker, collector and author, which dealt with medicines from the Orient (like at that time tea, coffee, chocolate) wrote De l’usage du caphé, du thé et du chocolate (On the use of coffee, tea and chocolate), which was partly a translation from the works from other people. This book was followed by a rework and re-edition in 1685 under the title Traitez nouveaux et curieux du caffé du thé et du chocolate (New and curious treatise on coffee, tea and chocolate), which became a success and was translated and reprinted several times.

As can be seen above tea was quite popular among some parts of the population in France but in spite of that (or is because of it), it never managed to get the same popularity as in England and even if France was for a long time an importer of tea, it was mostly to smuggle it in the United Kingdom where taxes were too high.

Was the French Revolution the killing blow to this trend? Was it a little earlier the several wars under Louis XIV and Louis XV with the loses of territory and ships suffered by the French East India Company? Some other reason? I couldn’t find a definitive answer yet but there is probably a good explanation to this

However these findings made me think about what I thought to be the history of tea in Europe and as said by a small and green one, which was not a cup of green tea but a Jedi Master, sometimes you must unlearn what you have learned.

Look into the eyes…

October 29, 2018 / / 0 Comments

No, don’t look at me but look at him below.

Freud circa 1921

I am sure you are now really scared and ready to tell me everything and anything but don’t worry. I won’t ask too many things.

My topic today is more about clichés, “projections” or things we expect and so on.

So let’s think for one minute at your three favourite Western (by this I mean European or American) tea companies Now go on their websites or on their publications… Don’t you see a pattern or something in common (apart from the obvious teas they might have in common)?

No? Really? Well, my bet is that in 2 from these 3, you will find hints about someone exploring the wild (or not so wild) world to find the best or rarest teas. And if it is not someone exploring, it is the experience of the taster-in-chief.

You don’t need to worry, this isn’t a tropism linked only to tea, it is much worse in coffee but let’s try to stay on tracks.

What does this tell us? The obvious answer is that they really do explore the world. Let’s just assume for the purpose of my analysis that it is true. To be honest, the ideas developed afterwards are still valid even if they don’t sail the 7 seas).

Why is it so important? Because for us, it means this explorer hand-picks only the best leaves and teas for us, leading us to believe that the products of this company are the best.

However, I think it runs a little deeper than that. For me, the explorer bringing tea home is an archetype, i.e. a constantly recurring symbol that makes us think of the same things, even if it is at an unconscious level.

The explorer going in the unknown to bring the best of these countries to Europe is a cliché of colonial times when some people were doing this (or glorifying themselves about it, a bit like Tartarin de Tarason), more were thinking they could do so and even more were imagining things about these lands and the products brought to them.

All this created a mythology, which got into the collective imagination in Europe and America and that shows into this explorer image.

But you might ask ok it is a stereotype but why does it matter to companies?

It is all about trying to differentiate one brand from another but at the same time totally failing to do so because we are all excepting the same thing. But I am getting a little bit too quickly here.

The brand is the identity of a company or of a product but what are its effects? According to Kotler in Principles of marketing,. Pearson Education Australia (2009), a brand identity is built around attributes, benefits, values and personality.

Attributes are the values, things that a company wants to be identified by. Benefits are what the customers get from these attributes (the generated satisfaction), values is quite self-explicatory as is personality.

If one thinks about a company putting in the first row of its advertising or of its corporate message, the explorer getting in the wild world to bring back the best unknown products, the picture is quite obvious. Such company would want to promote exoticism, unicity, high quality and adventure. The customers buying his products from such a company would value the quality of their products but also their uniqueness, allowing them to feel like this only because of unconscious clichés going back to the old times.

If 2 out of 3 companies promote these images, why aren’t they trying to be more innovative in their branding approach? Simply because it works. It is sad but it is so. If you have something that works or that might work, you will not feel the need to go explore new territories. This protective and conservative approach is when you think about it quite opposed to the image the tea companies want to promote.

Before I conclude, you might ask: what is the link between this post and Freud. Some of you might have even thought that I was going to make a psychoanalysis of tea drinkers and you were probably disappointed. Freud came to me when I began gathering different elements before writing. He is not the inventor of the archetypes but the pictures of Carl Gustav Jung that I could find were far less scary than this one and I wanted to frighten you (no Halloween had nothing to do with that).

As long as it is good

May 28, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I often hear or read that tea people are a bit snobbish, asking for loose leaf teas, for specific blends, for specific water quality or temperature.

But what do people mean by that? And is it true?

According to the dictionary, snob is :

1. a maker of shoe,

2. one who blatantly imitates, fawningly admires, or vulgarly seeks association with those regarded as social superiors,

3.

a : one who tends to rebuff, avoid, or ignore those regarded as inferior;

b : one who has an offensive air of superiority in matters of knowledge or taste.

 

The first option is rather interesting and funny (from a tea point of view) but obviously out of place.

What about the other definitions?

The imitation of upper social classes might have been true sooner in certain parts of Europe or in areas under European influence with nice bone China sets and trying to stick with what the aristocracy does like drinking tea only at 5 o’clock

But first, people drank and drink tea outside of this area (otherwise, tea wouldn’t be the second most consumed beverage in the world) and second, this might have been true but when I look around nowadays, I see people drinking at different times, trying different blends or pure leaf teas, having tea to go, sitting with friends, drinking alone…

A Reading of Molière or Reading in a salon by Jean-François de Troy

Tea is still sometimes part of a social ritual like the famous 5 o’clock tea that could be the English answer to the French salons (the gathering of people under the roof of someone more prominent or inspiring to discuss about literature and other cultural things (or let’s face it, gossips)), but I don’t feel drinking tea is only that.

 

Do tea drinkers rebuff, avoid or ignore those regarded as inferior?

I have two problems with this definition. First, it describes something that almost everyone does. Human beings tend to stick together and for doing this, define “us” and “them”. This has been going on since the beginning (just look at a history book to see it).

Second, who would be the inferior ones? People drinking other drinks, people with different drink habits? This seems to me completely ridiculous as I know a lot of people who drink several drinks along the day and I can’t think of them in any way as being superior or inferior to me.

This point goes along the last definition.

I mean we are humans and even if I just wrote that I can’t think of people not drinking tea or not like I do as being superior or inferior to me, we are prone to think of ourselves as right as opposed to the others being wrong. Doesn’t this ring a bell in you?

Yes we do this all the time. Sometimes we are not even aware of judging the others but we do it all the time (just look for those driving, how we all think we are the best drivers around and how other people are just bad drivers).

However, even if we think we are doing it right or are very specific about what kind of tea leaves should be used in our drinks, why should we be offensive to those that think in a different way? Beauty comes of diversity and tea drinking is in no way a religion with a strict dogma.

We might want to have our tea made in a certain way because it is better (for us) this way and we, the so-called “tea experts” might shiver hearing someone saying “tea is always bitter” simply because he or she let it for too long in a water that was too hot but having a sense of superiority will not change anything. We should try to explain things (like not so long and not so hot) and let people make their own choices.

And for those curious about it, the title of this post is a part of a quote by Jerry Greenfield (the Jerry of Ben&Jerry): “I eat many different ice creams. I’m not an ice cream snob, although I do think Ben & Jerry’s is the best. But I’m happy to eat anybody’s ice cream, really. As long as it’s good.”

And guess what? I think it can be applied to teas, so avoid being a snob and let people drink tea how they want, as long as they find their tea a good one.