Curious Tea – Tumoi Nandi Hills Black
You will recall that recently I staged the Tea Fancier Tea Cup Championships, in which I pitted 16 different English Breakfast-type teas against one another in a high octane knockout tournament. In fact, I think the whole nation followed it avidly, and it is still being excitedly discussed in pubs and bars up and down the country.
One thing I noticed as I was comparing cups of tea against other cups of tea, is that teas from Kenyan didn’t do as well as other teas in the competition. Assam and Ceylon blends hurtled forward to the next rounds while Kenyan teas, for the most part, took an early bath.
Now, I certainly don’t want to overlook the efforts of a whole tea growing nation, So in the spirit of scientific inquiry and to determine whether I disliked those competing teas, in particular, or Kenyan teas in general, I purchased a black tea produced in the Nandi Hills in Kenya by the Tumoi Tea Co-operative.
Curious Tea source marvellous single estate super-high quality teas, so I knew that buying from them, would ensure I get the really good stuff. And readers, it did not disappoint. Tumoi Nandi Hills is absolutely gorgeous. It is a dark rich brew which tastes like a ‘proper’ normal cup of tea that you would happily serve up to people who aren’t fancy tea weirdos.
This tea, however, is anything but ordinary. The leaves are large and luscious and when steeped produce a deep, dark bronze-coloured tea which smells and tastes divine. As is often the case with Curious Tea’s teas, the word that comes to mind is ‘smooth’. The difference between Tumoi Nandi Hills and mass produced Kenyan tea bags, is I imagine like the difference between a 10 year old aged malt whiskey, and some hooch you have knocked up in your bathtub.
There’s no doubt that the Tumoi Tea Co-operative produces exceptional tea. So why hitherto has my experience of Kenyan tea not being a positive one? Basically, it seems to be that Kenyan tea growers, on the whole, specialise in cheaper tea production methods which meet the criteria for mass-produced tea bags. Clearly I’m tea snob – that’s pretty much the whole purpose of this blog – but, you know, a lot of people aren’t quite so obsessive about the tea they drink. It’s like the difference between cheap disposable biros and fancy schmancy fountain pens. The majority of people just want something inexpensive that gets the job done.
85% of Kenyan tea is produced using the ‘Crush Tear Curl‘ (CTC) method, which is a mechanised process whose speed and cheapness come at the expense of its quality. The other 15% is produced using what is known as the ‘Orthodox’ method, which is a more time-consuming manual process, which produces better quality tea (like this here, Tumoi Nandi Hills).
By contrast, India’s tea exports are 60% CTC and 40% Orthodox, so the odds of getting a quality cup of Indian tea are rather more in your favour. (Also when it comes to Indian exports, a lot of CTC tea is used as a base for Chai teas. In my case, the addition of hefty amounts of ginger, cinnamon and cardamom rather increases my tolerance for lower quality tea.)
All of this theorising falls down somewhat when you consider that plenty of the Sri Lankan and Indian teas in the Tea Fancier Tea Cup Championship were probably also produced using CTC.
But hey, I never claimed to have all the answers. I’m not sure I even have the right questions yet. I’m still learning. And what I learned today is that Curious Tea’s Tumoi Nandi Hills Black is a bloody good cup of tea. And I don’t hate all teas from Kenya.
I’m sure all 55 million residents of the world’s largest tea exporting country are relieved to hear it.
Today’s featured book is Secret Lives & Other Stories by Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
