"Russian Caravan" teas

Oxidized tea
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mbanu
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Sun Feb 28, 2021 1:26 pm

This is a fun category of teas, because like "English Breakfast" teas weren't called that in England, "Russian Caravan" teas weren't called that in Russia. :) I think maybe there is even a good argument that "Russian Caravan" was what "English Breakfast" would have been called in England! Plus now that things have settled down, they have a more standard definition as tea blends that contain a smoked Chinese black tea, either Lapsang Souchong or a copy, that are not blends purely of smoked tea.

Before the Russian Revolution, wealthy European Russia had a reputation as being Europe's tea connoisseurs. So "Russian" tea was often a shorthand way to say good Chinese black tea. The advertising pitch with Russian Caravan tea was that these were teas so fine that the importers did not want to risk exposing them to a sea voyage, so shipped them using an overland route. The completion of the Trans-Siberian railroad and the fleeing of the wealthy tea-loving Czarists from Russia lead to the end of this style of advertisement.

However, the Russian Caravan name was also popular with Russian immigrants to various countries -- during the late 1800s it was a popular tea blend among Russian Jews living in New York, for example. I think it is from these blends that the use of Lapsang Souchong became associated with Russian Caravan.
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mbanu
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Sun Feb 28, 2021 1:41 pm

An 1869 opinion on Russian Caravan blends by the American Bayard Taylor, from his travelogue, "By-ways of Europe". In it, he also suggests another potential addition to Russian Caravan blends -- silver-needle tea. :) Given the geography, my guess would be Junshan Yinzhen tea from Hunan rather than Baihao Yinzhen from Fujian, although I am sure at the time there were a wide variety of silver-needle imperial tribute teas.
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Victoria
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Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:34 pm

Hi @mbanu. Interesting article in that it recommends blending ‘Imperial tea’ with a basic black, novel idea. Can you site reference for the news clippings? Most western black teas I’ve had that reference Russia are very strong, similar to British Yorkshire Gold. Also, Russian boiled black tea, Chifir, is super strong. Curious, where you hope to take all this research you are doing ? - since your focus seems to be primarily the history of company adds, advertising, and branding.
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mbanu
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Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:50 pm

Victoria wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:34 pm
Hi mbanu. Interesting article in that it recommends blending ‘Imperial tea’ with a basic black, novel idea. Can you site reference for the news clippings? Most western black teas I’ve had that reference Russia are very strong, similar to British Yorkshire Gold. Also, Russian boiled black tea, Chifir, is super strong. Curious, where you hope to take all this research you are doing ? - since your focus seems to be primarily the history of company adds, advertising, and branding.
Sure thing. The B. Fischer tea ad was in the back of a fan-album for Ernst von Possart, the German actor. It was published in New York in 1889 by the Leo von Raven publishing company, although B. Fischer put ads for its Russian Caravan tea in several places (and was eventually sued in New York by a competitor who complained that the tea branding was misleading -- B. Fischer won lost, as it was determined that the consumer did not really believe that Russian Caravan tea was grown in Russia. :) ) The travelogue was published as a book by G.P. Putnam in New York in 1869.

*Edit: Make that lost -- they sued to protect their Russian Caravan branding, and it was found that it could not be considered as such.
Last edited by mbanu on Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Victoria
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Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:54 pm

mbanu wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:50 pm
Victoria wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:34 pm
Hi mbanu. Interesting article in that it recommends blending ‘Imperial tea’ with a basic black, novel idea. Can you site reference for the news clippings? Most western black teas I’ve had that reference Russia are very strong, similar to British Yorkshire Gold. Also, Russian boiled black tea, Chifir, is super strong. Curious, where you hope to take all this research you are doing ? - since your focus seems to be primarily the history of company adds, advertising, and branding.
Sure thing. The B. Fischer tea ad was in the back of a fan-album for Ernst von Possart, the German actor. It was published in New York in 1889 by the Leo von Raven publishing company, although B. Fischer put ads for its Russian Caravan tea in several places (and was eventually sued in New York by a competitor who complained that the tea branding was misleading -- B. Fischer won, as it was determined that the consumer did not really believe that Russian Caravan tea was grown in Russia. :) ) The travelogue was published as a book by G.P. Putnam in New York in 1869.
Thanks @mbanucan you update your posts to include this information? And still wondering;
Curious, where you hope to take all this research you are doing ? - since your focus seems to be primarily the history of company adds, advertising, and branding.
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mbanu
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Sun Feb 28, 2021 3:26 pm

Victoria wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:54 pm
Curious, where you hope to take all this research you are doing ? - since your focus seems to be primarily the history of company adds, advertising, and branding.
It is for fun, really. Maybe the hope is that someone visiting a relative's house sees an old Hall China teapot and thinks, "I know what that is!" and digs out their Ceylon tea to brew up a pot of it served with clove-studded lemon slices and some sandwich cremes. :)

Or if they are out shopping at their local Asian market and happen to see a tin of State-style-packaged Chinese tea, they will think, "I've seen that before!" Then when they want to figure out if they were right, they can look at the guibao or shengchan codes on the back and have some sort of idea what it is.

Or even just shopping at an old American grocery store and getting amusement knowing that in the distant past it was a tea store, walking down the teabag aisle and spotting something like Numi's "Emperor's Pu-erh" and knowing that it is probably organic Golden Sail pu'er. :D

Just I guess ways to make day-to-day tea life more interesting for people, and to fill in the gaps.

One reason I focus so much on ads, I think, is that they are sort of the elephant in the room with tea discourse. Online tea-culture is riddled with guerilla marketing for tea vendors, but nobody ever seems to outright just talk about the history and influence of advertising on tea. Sometimes just being aware helps put things into context.

It also helps moderate what I guess is another big trend which is national romanticism in tea. People strongly seem to desire a non-globalized tea past, but tea is the original globalized product, whether Brits and Americans trading Mexican reals for mystery teas in Canton during the 19th century or Japanese corporations developing new Taiwanese oolong styles to take on the Brits in a battle over the American market in the early 20th, or Nestle promoting Nestea in Hong Kong using commercials and the nationalized CNNP producing its own instant "lemon tea" to compete with it in the 1980s, and then lemon tea becoming a thing in Hong Kong sitting right next to the ancient pu'er and the high-fire oolongs. Not to spoil anyone's fun, but rather so that they do not become blindsided by the gaps in their understanding. (This isn't just a Chinese tea thing -- mention a Teasmade to a tea-and-crumpets Anglophile and they likely either will not know about it or be offended that it exists, even though quite a lot of British tea was made using just such devices.)

I used to know someone who participated in a Renaissance Fair group called "The Society for Creative Anachronism". The reason for the odd name was apparently because they wanted to make a distinction between the rather difficult reality the average person faced in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the "knights and ladies court festival" atmosphere of a Renaissance Fair, and that they knew about the one but wanted to pretend in the other. :)

So I don't really see focusing on these things as adversarial to the gongfu-tea-hut or Ye-Olde-British-Tea type experience, but as something that will help people appreciate tea more in their daily lives without detracting from their ceremonial enjoyment during other times.


...for Russian Caravan tea, well, it's a fun tea with an interesting history, and maybe this will encourage people to post their favorite blends, I hope. :)
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mbanu
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Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:44 pm

mbanu wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 1:26 pm
I think maybe there is even a good argument that "Russian Caravan" was what "English Breakfast" would have been called in England!
Part of what makes me think this is that some well-known British versions focused mainly on the Keemun content of the tea, such as Twinings. This seemed to cause a bit of confusion and frustration among American tea-drinkers when they started to become interested in loose-leaf tea during the 1980s revival. Kenneth Anderson described Russian Caravan this way in his 1982 book, The Pocket Guide to Coffee and Teas:
Russian Caravan. A combination of black tea that varies according to the dealer who packages it. One Russian Caravan Tea contains northern China congou and Formosa oolong, reportedly blended for the Russian aristocracy in a period before Formosa produced oolong tea. Another Russian Caravan formula consists of 60 percent Keemun, 30 percent Darjeeling, and the remainder a mixture of oolong and Flowery Pekoe.
...so no Lapsang Souchong. :)
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mbanu
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Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:42 pm

It wasn't just the U.S. that had this issue, though. In a 1978 "Canada Today" promotional review for Murchie's Tea & Coffee in Vancouver, they give a call-out to Murchie's Russian Caravan blend, noting that it is "smoky and rich", even though presumably they were also familiar with British blend Russian Caravan up in Canada...
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mbanu
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Mon Mar 01, 2021 12:55 am

mbanu wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:42 pm
It wasn't just the U.S. that had this issue, though. In a 1978 "Canada Today" promotional review for Murchie's Tea & Coffee in Vancouver, they give a call-out to Murchie's Russian Caravan blend, noting that it is "smoky and rich", even though presumably they were also familiar with British blend Russian Caravan up in Canada...
It looks like this split was already distinct in 1935 when William Ukers wrote the "Russian blends" section of his book, All About Tea.
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LeoFox
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Mon Mar 01, 2021 7:51 am

I want to try to make a Russian blend with the awful owt cheap rougui hahaha:

Am thinking of this:

1g rougui
1g cheap smoky lapsang souchong
2g low mountain ceylon

I also have some nice keemun but dont want to waste it.

Any suggestions, @mbanu?

I can steep this for 5 min in 400 mL pot or I do short gaiwan steep. Either way, probably will add milk hahaha.
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Bok
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Mon Mar 01, 2021 8:04 am

@mbanu another more interesting part of your chronicles of tea :)

Also thanks for clarifying your intent, I think a few of us were wondering where all this is going, but your post made that quite clear and as such it’s another facet of tea that possibly none of us had thought to cover, so thanks for that!
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bentz98125
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Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:05 pm

Thanks! I'm a sucker for the quaint, naive sounding marketing of yesteryear (sans explicit racism- a historical interest of an entirely different sort). Course, makes you wonder how present day tea marketing will appear to the future. Sure enhances a tea drinker's (my) sense of unearned privilege to have access to the present day's transparancy (such as it is), transport, selection and quality. Good work!
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Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:33 pm

mbanu wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 3:26 pm
Victoria wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:54 pm
Curious, where you hope to take all this research you are doing ? - since your focus seems to be primarily the history of company adds, advertising, and branding.
........
One reason I focus so much on ads, I think, is that they are sort of the elephant in the room with tea discourse. Online tea-culture is riddled with guerilla marketing for tea vendors, but nobody ever seems to outright just talk about the history and influence of advertising on tea. Sometimes just being aware helps put things into context.

It also helps moderate what I guess is another big trend which is national romanticism in tea. People strongly seem to desire a non-globalized tea past, but tea is the original globalized product, whether Brits and Americans trading Mexican reals for mystery teas in Canton during the 19th century or Japanese corporations developing new Taiwanese oolong styles to take on the Brits in a battle over the American market in the early 20th, or Nestle promoting Nestea in Hong Kong using commercials and the nationalized CNNP producing its own instant "lemon tea" to compete with it in the 1980s, and then lemon tea becoming a thing in Hong Kong sitting right next to the ancient pu'er and the high-fire oolongs. Not to spoil anyone's fun, but rather so that they do not become blindsided by the gaps in their understanding. (This isn't just a Chinese tea thing -- mention a Teasmade to a tea-and-crumpets Anglophile and they likely either will not know about it or be offended that it exists, even though quite a lot of British tea was made using just such devices.)
......
Thank you for your thoughtful reply @mbanu, it covers a lot of territory and history. A big package to unwrap. A few stream of conscious thoughts in reply;

Some of your previous posts for me reference nicely the coming together of emerging mass production, western commerce, and art in the modern world of product design. As in early 20th c American company’s like Hall China’s collaboration with well regarded ceramicist’s Eva Zeisel, and British 19th c companies collaboration with influential British designers like Christopher Dresser. The coming together of commerce, mechanized mass production, and industrial design during the 19th and early 20th c is a uniquely western manifestation. Revolutionary.

I would be interested to see some examples of what you refer to as “guerrilla marketing for tea vendors”. Guerrilla marketing can be super interesting, like taking art into the streets, as in Malraux’s ‘museum without walls’ concept. Although, I think the term was popularized in the 80’s in the world of advertising.

Your interest to “talk about the history and influence of advertising on tea” could reach back thousands of years, yet I see you are primarily focused on print advertisements, product naming and their cultural references. Wondering if that is a correct observation, that you are primarily interested in modern advertising and it’s influence? Curious, because since the beginning of the exchange of goods and trading some form or another of sales and advertising was employed; early on by word of mouth; then inscriptions on clay and stone in Babylonia; the early use of art and architecture employed as a form of marketing for pharos, emperors, kings, religious entities; 9th c block printing and 13th c paper packaging in China; later with the 15th c invention of the printing press the flood gates where opened into what we now know as modern print advertising. In other words, the focus of historical influences could be very broad, but seems intentionally focused on the 19th-20th c. advertisements, naming, and branding.

Finally, your comment that tea historically is one of the great globalizers, yet we tend to romanticize localized sourcing - “another big trend ... is national romanticism in tea. People strongly seem to desire a non-globalized tea past, but tea is the original globalized product”. This global/local duality I think could be applied to other historically traded commodities that were also romanticized like salt, sugar, spices, down to Turkish cigarettes sold as Camel’s.

Anyway, thank you for your reply.
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LeoFox
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Thu Mar 04, 2021 8:26 am

LeoFox wrote:
Mon Mar 01, 2021 7:51 am
I want to try to make a Russian blend with the awful owt cheap rougui hahaha:

Am thinking of this:

1g rougui
1g cheap smoky lapsang souchong
2g low mountain ceylon
Made it!
Steeped 4g in 85 mL gaiwan.
Wash
Stacked two 20s steeps in thick american mug.

The owt throat shredder rougui is suppressed by the lapsang and the ceylon, but its taste is still present. An interesting mix of smoke, dried fruit and light maltiness. Maybe I will use less rougui next time. Goes okay with milk. Hahaha. A nice caffeine kick after 4 hours of sleep

It is interesting how two mediocre teas and one awful tea can come together into something very drinkable.
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