British taste in, and knowledge of, tea

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Baisao
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Sun Apr 19, 2020 1:29 pm

bentz98125 wrote:
Sun Apr 19, 2020 12:54 pm
Also, (as with US independence from Britain) did socializing over tea and sugar ironically play a role in abolition of slavery?
Certainly not before playing a role in encouraging slavery. Sugar did and still does mean slavery. The Dominican Republic still used Haitian slaves on its sugar plantations, much of which has made it to US consumers.
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Victoria
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Sun Apr 19, 2020 2:24 pm

Baisao wrote:
Sat Apr 11, 2020 4:05 am
Now for an opinion that is sure to ruffle some feathers.

C. sinensis-assamica is inferior in taste to the more refined C. sinensis-sinensis. It’s twangy and more bitter. To correct these imperfections you would ideally add milk to attenuate the twanginess and sugar to make the bitterness more palatable. These are steps you do not need to take with C. sinensis-sinensis. So it is my opinion that milk and sugar are added to British tea (assamica) to make it palatable.
Very interesting observation @Baisao. Since I enjoy Darjeeling without milk or sugar, I double checked if it is C.-sinensis-sinensis and found that it is. I remember reading that Assamica leaves have a higher level of catechins (polyphenols, antioxidants, tannins) and that those compounds lead to bitter flavors in tea.
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Baisao
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Sun Apr 19, 2020 3:55 pm

@Victoria, I think this is why the indigenous teas of Yunnan are processed in such unique ways. The indigenous tea obviously has similarities to C. sinensis-assamica. The unique processing and selection allows for a tea that does not need sugar and milk.

However, I have had a hongcha from wild mountain tea in Yunnan that would have benefited from milk & tea, and others that were as smooth as any C. sinensis-sinensis.

Again, unique processing and selection.
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mbanu
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Tue Apr 21, 2020 2:16 am

bentz98125 wrote:
Sat Apr 11, 2020 3:40 pm
My perplexity and fascination with the British blue collar association with 'normal' black tea, stems from how un-blue collar it is in the US.
This is largely due to White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), I think. They made up the hereditary upper middle-class in New England, and many families never completely Americanized but considered themselves ethnically British, a bit like many Italian-Americans consider themselves ethnically Italian even several generations removed from Italy. In the era before the internet though, it really wasn't possible to develop a good understanding of British social class distinctions. For many of these families, the only time members had even been to the UK was for graduate school, or possibly as a temporary work assignment. So they had a generalized Anglophilia that was American class-specific rather than a British class-specific Anglophilia, if that makes sense.
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bentz98125
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Sat Apr 25, 2020 7:31 pm

Yes it does. And fits in with the rabbit hole of complicated religious/class relationships in the history of the British Isles dating as far back as the battle of Colluden I've read about that allegedly accounts for the political/economic life of USA from early colonies up to and through the civil war ( )! Vaster subject than I could absorb, but fascinating. Thanks for the explanation.
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bentz98125
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Mon Jun 15, 2020 11:42 am

Interesting if brief addition to understanding English approach to tea:

https://tching.com/2009/11/anna-the-duc ... rt-1-of-4/

The subsequent pages of the 4 part series are more about asian tea culture but for those of us less knowlegeable about the English approach, the first one is enlightening.
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