When people think of tea in Thailand they think of iced tea with condensed milk and indeed people in Thailand drink this and there is a huge industry making teas for it. In the US if you order a "Thai Tea" you will most likely get Vasinee brand tea mix which contains an assam style tea, a coloring agent, and star anise. In Thailand the variation is a lot greater, with many of these drinks being made with plain tea or tea with a caramel flavour added. A lot of companies are set up to make mixes which are sold as "Thai Tea."
But a smaller number of companies are actually growing tea, processing it by orthodox methods, and selling it both for export and local consumption, and while we were visiting Thailand we visited a couple tea gardens and tried their black (red) teas. Why just the black teas when so many other styles are being made? Mostly because I like black tea and if we tried everything we'd never finish.
Tea has been grown Thailand for centuries but most of the people growing tea today are Chinese nationalists who fled China after the revolution of 1947. The Thai government actively supported them in developing the tea industry and setting up new tea gardens both large and small. Tea plants (aside from Yunnan big leaf tea) are all the same species, Camellia sinensis, but come in may different varieties each of which has one or more jats, or bloodlines. Each of these is bred for making a specific type of tea, but can be processed in any way, so that a dark-leaf Assam jat which was originally used to make a black tea can today be used to make a nontraditional green tea.
After visiting some tea gardens, we tried a number of different teas, all made with boiling water and multiple steeps, with varying concentrations of tea leaves.
The plantation itself is a great visit. There is no formal tour, and no
charge to just wander around on the grounds of the gardens. There is a
pleasant outdoor restaurant where you can drink tea and have lunch. The
gardens themselves are planted in rows that seem to go on forever, much as
you would expect the stereotypical tea garden to be. The production facilities
themselves are locked up and you can't see any of the processing going on,
but you can watch tea being picked.
Choui Fong sells mostly green and oolong teas, as well as flavoured versions of the green and oolong products (such as an osmanthus oolong, orangle oolong, jasmine and lemongrass greens). Clearly aiming at the Chinese market or the domestic market that drinks Chinese-style teas.
I found this interesting as they are clearly growing an Assam jat which was almost certainly intended for black teas, but which in fact seems to make an excellent green tea. The only black tea product they sell is an unspecified black tea in bags.
The tasting at the garden itself made the black tea seem kind of bland and have little nose to it, but maybe this was the altitude because when tested at home this was one of my favorites. It has a sweet vegetal taste, almost like a squash. Not very tannic. It survived two steeps, with the second one being milder but with the same basic character and flavour as the first. The third steep was insipid.
Barbara tried these teas with milk and she liked this one, even though it was not very tannic.
As a short addendum, I have to say that I am impressed with anybody who can export tea to China.
The Araksa tea plantation is about an hour and a half north of Chiang Mai proper, taking rt. 107 or 1001. It is near the Srilanna national park.
This plantation is nearly a hundred years old, and has some very old tea plants, but it appears to have been left idle for some time. The people now operating it are actively trying to plant new plants, and have installed a new processing facility with machines from India. All of the plants are from some Assam type, and they are not planted in rows but in a more wild and random pattern. The garden itself is large, but nowhere near the size of some of the larger ones in the area.
These people are very actively trying to get the tourist trade, and offer a facility tour with demonstrations for a reasonable fee, and also have an excellent lunch available for an additional fee for those taking the tour. People on the tour are asked to pick a small basket of tea, and all of the leaves picked are hand-processed into green tea on the spot so it can be served to the next tour. Then tea from the previous tea is served. Unfortunately there is no real tour of the new processing factory although you can look at the machinery through a window as you walk by. I cannot help but think that a large portion of the profits are coming from tourism rather than from tea production itself, and that's not a bad thing if it helps them grow.
Again this facility seems to be aimed more toward making green teas, as well as a white tea. Interestingly they use the normal "two leaves and a bud" picking for green teas, but their black tea is made from a larger portion of the branch. It's ground to about the consistency of an BOP, and is sold as "Organic Nin Black Tea."
Testing at home, this tea seems weak, and but has a very strong malty flavour up front. If you make a cup with two teaspoons, it's got a clean and malty flavour but hardly any tannic taste and with no finish at all. This would be a great tea for blending with a more bitter variety. Alone it feels unbalanced to me but a lot of people will like this. The second steep was weak, so consider this a single steep tea.
The Suwirun plantation is 560 acres and has an organic certification from the USDA, growing tea as well as a lot of other herbs. They have a tea shop in Chiang Rai and a large plantation in Mae Lao slightly south of Chiang Rai which is not open as a tourist destination. They do oolongs, greens, Japanese-style roasted rice teas, jasmine and lemongrass blends. We tried their generic commodity black tea which we purchased at a supermarket.
This is a very light tea that is tannic without any bitterness. A slight
woody or burlap aftertaste. The second steep is definitely much better
than the first. Broken leaves but larger pieces than an OP.
https://www.suwirun.com
https://www.thaiteasuwirun.com/en
The Monteaco teas are not from tea plantations like other teas, but they are forest-grown from plants that are within the forest and shaded by the forest. This has been traditionally done to produce tea leaves for eating, but as that market has shrunk, those farmers have been left without a market. Monteaco purchases teas from these small growers and does their own processing. They make a variety of green and oolong teas, but only three unflavoured black teas: the Jungle Black, the Monsoon Blend Black, and the Lanna Black. Of these we tried only the Lanna Black.
Centuries ago, the Lanna Kingdom occupied the space that is now northern Thailand, thus the name.
This is a full unbroken-leaf tea, and it is very very tippy with a lot of powder. It has a malty and fruity flavor when made properly, but it is very sensitive to steeping time and volume.
This was Barbara's favorite, as it had a good bouquet but could still stand up to drinking with milk. More tannic than the others but with a fruitness that comes across strongly. A second steep is acceptable but not as good as the first.
I bought this tea at one of the night markets in Chiang Mai.
Qing Fu Cha is a tea garden on Wawee Mountain that is not open to
the public. Its a full leaf tea where the leaves have been rolled into
little balls like a gunpowder green tea. I have seldom seen this process
used for black teas.
This tea had a very pleasant and almost fruity scent in the cup, and a
bitterness that provided a good balance to the overall flavour. It held
up respectably to three steeps and continued with the same balance throughout.
If made a bit more strongly it became quite tannic, but with the proper
ratio it was quite good.
https://www.facebook.com/QingFuCha/
Yod Cha is a chain of tea and coffee houses throughout Thailand, started by Mr. Prayong who initially made his own tea in a clay oven. The company continues with the same process for green teas, bringing the processed tea to Bangkok for packaging, blending, and distribution. Where it is actually grown I don't know; the company says only that "We do everything by ourselves, baking, roasting, blending. There are three factories in total, will produce the main base and then transport it to two large factories in Bangkok." They also say it is "Baked in the heart of Chiang Mai Longan Garden use the firewood from the longan tree to warm the fire."
I would be interested in trying their green tea processed with this traditional method but I cannot claim to be impressed with the black tea. Their website shows only the green tea and has no mention of black teas.
The Sunshine black tea appears to be only available in a bag. It seems to be orthodox processed finings. Drinking it in Chiang Rai, I thought it had a strong scent and flavour of pencil shavings, but drinking it at home at a lower altitude it was much more pleasant. It had a slightly sweet assam flavour profile and made a very intensely strong tea without being tannic. This is clearly not a high end tea but was surprisingly pleasant.
