The New Tea Companion A Guide to teas throughout the World. / Jane Pettigrew & Bruce Richardson. Published by National Trust Enterprises Ltd, London, 2005. ISBN 070780390X. p. 6-176, illustrations, appendix, index.
Tea drinking is a cultural experience! Tea, like coffee, in eastern or western countries, is the ultimate cultural expression of a comfort drink (offering health benefits as well!) for social gatherings and personal pleasure. Tea-making origins in Chinese history are generally accepted as the first, and Jane Pettigrew’s and Bruce Richardson’s The New Tea Companion A Guide to Teas throughout the World pays tribute to tea from China and from other Asian countries. However tea from China has a different taste than tea from Sri Lanka, although both countries grow and manufacture tea. Did you know that tea is grown all over the world, including the United States, Argentina, Brazil, England, the Azores, Italy, and Australia, not to mention Turkey, Iran, and Russia? Do you take your tea plain? … sweetened? … flavored? or with lemon? milk and sugar? or maybe milk, sugar and a little butter and salt? Is your tea not tea at all without sweets or a meal? Do you ingest the tea leaves, too? How do you make your tea? Does tea always begin with boiling water and tea leaves? Are the tea leaves black, or green, or white?
In The New Tea Companion, author Pettigrew relates the fascinating facts of tea processing and the cultural history of tea as “a life-enhancing beverage” (p.6). Forming the first six chapters are introductory explanations on where and how tea grows, and its manufacture, which sometimes involves combining the tea leaf with essential oils, dried fruit or spices, etc. to create special flavors. The chapters begin with “From China to the World” and progress through a description of tea growing to trading and finally “Perfect Brewing”.
Following the introduction to the facts of tea production, “The Directory”, a compendium of teas from nine countries in the Far East and Africa, delineates the most well-known teas from each country. In The Directory, Chinese teas are grouped by varieties of white, yellow, green, oolong, compressed, pu-erh, and flavored teas like Jasmine and Rose-petal; in “India” are featured Assam, Darjeeling, Nilgiri and Sikiim teas; these teas represent the broadest tea palates available. Illustrations in The Directory are the color photographs by co-author Bruce Richardson. The images are clear and encyclopedic in detail, showing each variety of tea leaf, dry and wet, accompanied by a teacup filled with the brewed tea. Look at these pages for a virtual sampling of tea! The text serves specifics on tea character and brewing. Sections in The Directory are punctuated with thematic essays, such as “Tea-Leaf Reading”, “What’s in Tea?” and “Tea and Health”. A tenth section of The Directory lists some 30 countries world-wide that grow and manufacture tea for export or domestic use.
The remaining sections of the book are “Tea Drinking Around the World”, an essay giving more cultural attributes to tea-drinking in specific countries; and “Useful Names and Addresses”, and “Index”. The Index has been prepared to include names of tea varieties, countries of origin, tea-drinking styles, categories, processing terms, personal names, etc.
The New Tea Companion extols the health benefits of tea. Even though tea as we know it is a manufactured product, it can be grown and produced organically and without pesticides. Chinese, Indian, Sri Lankan and African tea plants produce much of the organic tea we drink (p. 45). And the fact remains that teas offer anti-oxidants and substances that assist the body in breaking down molecules that may be destructive to tissue building and repair.
Tea leaves are gathered by picking specific leaves and buds from the new, not the mature, growth of a tea shrub or tree. Of the many statistics like this, Pettigrew offers that it requires 10,000 tea leaf pickings to make one kilo of tea (p.33). Next, withering, rolling, oxidizing, and firing are the four basic alterations of the tea leaf before any tea-making recipe is applied and the tea tasted. The idea being that a fresh tea leaf contains a lot of water which must be reduced to yield only two or three percent water while preserving the tea plant’s flavor in-tact (p. 39): fresh tea leaves may not have any value at all for tea drinking. Tea leaves from different growing areas are combined for known teas like English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast, etc. Teas with added flavorings, like Earl Grey or Russian Caravan for black teas, or Jasmine for green teas are popular and classic, paving the way for new flavorings and cold tea drinks.
The New Tea Companion A Guide to Teas throughout the World by Jane Pettigrew and Bruce Richardson has been updated and revised for the third edition, published in 2015, which you can see here.
Since the time of Shen-Nong (legendary herbalist and “divine husbandman” or farmer who exemplified a life-style oriented towards life-giving plants) who lived around 2730 B.C., the Chinese have been drinking tea as a beverage and mixing herbal medicines with tea; as such there are well-known herbal remedies or formulas with tea as one of the ingredients. To know more, read “Chinese Medicinal Teas” by Zong Xiao-fan and Gary Liscum, previously reviewed here.
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