I should know better, and there are people who are going to be very disappointed in me.

Marshall Malone and Jonathan Blakeslee, owners of Portsmouth Tea Company and White Heron Tea, respectively, would be disappointed because right now, I am drinking Celestial Seasonings “Mountain Chai” and the water I used was boiling. I suppose that’s OK if you just want to do a quick, morning tea, and you don’t care how it tastes, but if you really want to sit down and “have a cup of tea,” there are some things you should know.

Celestial Seasonings, for starters, is a blend, rather than an estate tea. Many of the products we buy at the grocery store—Hershey’s chocolate, store brand olive oil, Lipton Iced Tea, to name a few—are very carefully blended and monitored to have the same taste every batch.

“They take multiple chocolates or oils from all over the world,” says Malone, “and they change … the percentages of each one as flavors change, to give a consistent taste.” Companies that work with blends don’t want consumers getting any surprises. In fact, according to Malone, for a company like Lipton, it takes two years to train a tea taster who can tell which blends taste like the Lipton Iced Tea that consumers know.

With estate teas, the idea is that the difference in taste is only natural.

“Most people think of tea and coffee, but tea is really more closely compared to wine,” says Malone.
Malone and Blakeslee are separately but nearly simultaneously embarking on a new venture.  Each is in the process of opening a tea company to serve the Seacoast and to sell by mail order. Their mission is to help customers cultivate their palates as well as to bring attention to fair trade and organic products with tea that tastes good.

Like fine wine from an estate vineyard, specialty tea can taste different year to year, depending on weather and soil. A wine connoisseur might say something like, “Ah, Napa Valley 2003—that was a good year!” and someone who knows tea might exclaim similarly.

For Blakeslee, tea is also like wine in that its taste changes according to the temperature at which you drink it. “If chardonnay is too cold, you can’t taste it,” he says. And given that tea is equally susceptible to temperature fluctuations, he ventures that “Most people haven’t really tried tea.” The ideal temperature for a good cup is 205-212 degrees Fahrenheit. Or, if you don’t have a thermometer on hand, just under boiling.

Tea is also closer to wine than coffee in the nuances developed through differences in processing and from other ingredients that can be added to it.

All products labeled “tea” however, are supposed to come from a single species of plant, Camellia sinensis. “This goes back to the Tea Act in the 1700s,” explains Malone, “when China was sending over just about anything and calling it tea. Congress said, ‘We need to specify what exactly constitutes tea.’” So they limited it to one plant.

But from that one plant is made green, black, white, and oolong teas, including teas like English Breakfast and Earl Grey (Earl Grey is simply black tea with bergamot oil). As for tea made from mint, red clover, camomile, ginger, or fruit? “I cannot even advertise an herbal tea as a tea,” says Malone.
(I called Celestial Seasonings to ask about tea. I wanted to know why their “Almond Sunset,” “Peppermint Organic,” and “Sleepytime” “herbal teas” have no “tea” listed in the ingredients. Did they forget the “Tea” Act of the 1700s?! Apparently everyone else had questions too, because I never got through.)

If C.sinensis is dried, it’s called White Tea. If it’s dried, rolled and then fired, it’s called green tea. If it’s wilted, rolled, fermented and then fired, it is called black tea. And if it’s dried, rolled, briefly fermented and twisted into a tiny ball, it’s called oolong. (The term “fermented” is used loosely, as there are no micro-organisms involved and alcohol is not produced.) A tea leaf will let out a different set of chemicals depending on how much its cell walls are broken and exposed to the air, which is the purpose of the rolling. The twisting is meant to protect the leaf for a longer period of time, and the more fermented a tea, the stronger its taste will be.

As for caffeine, Malone has a theory that caffeine content is determined more by what variety of the leaf you have than by how it’s processed. But he stresses it’s just a theory. What he means is that there are different varieties of C.sinensis, like there are different varieties of roses, and caffeine content may not be determined purely by whether it’s a black or a green tea. If you want to lessen the amount of caffeine in any cup of tea, you can steep it, throw off the first water, and then steep it again, since caffeine is one of the first parts of the leaf to be released.

Some other components that are released in tea when it’s steeped include polyphenols, catechins and a variety of antioxidants.

“A lot of people are switching to tea because of health reasons. We have all kinds of data on tea and health,” says Malone. There is not enough space to go into it here, but it should be noted that the studies on tea and health have used C.sinensis, not herbal teas.

People who are concerned about their health also might be interested to know that teas come in organic and Fair Trade varieties as well. Both Malone and Blakeslee are heading in this direction, although they are going about it in slightly different ways.

Blakeslee recently moved back to Portsmouth from Portland, Oregon, where he taught at culinary school and worked as a cook and waiter at various five-star restaurants. He’ll be visiting Taiwan next year to study more about tea, but at the moment, Blakeslee, who began work creating White Heron Tea this past July, is on his way to becoming a fair trade and organic certified merchant. This involves filling out a lot of paperwork, “a lot of governmental approval,” and “verifying all of your sources of where you’re getting tea,” he says. “Maybe at some point I would have some things that are not certified organic, but (that) I know are grown in a healthy way,” he adds, but for now, he’s working with only organic and fair trade products.

Malone, on the other hand, believes in taking a different route. Portsmouth Tea Co. has been two years in the making. Malone and his business partner, Jere Vincent, wanted to “know everything you can possibly know about tea.” They recently returned from Sri Lanka, where they spent time getting to know some of the plantations and the people who work there. They buy both from organic and fair trade companies, as well as from companies that are not employing those practices yet. Malone’s reasoning is that once he becomes a major buyer, he’ll be able to have more influence over his suppliers’ business practices. If a company knows that one of its major supporters wants it to learn how to treat its employees better and grow healthier tea, he reasons, it will be more likely to do so than if asked by a smaller buyer with whom it has no personal relationship. To Malone, the most important thing is to enjoy what you’re eating.

“I’m going to enjoy it more when I know that I’m not putting money into slave owners’ pockets,” Malone says.

If you would like to learn more about tea, and even taste some for yourself, Malone and Vincent will host an open house this Saturday, Dec. 3, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at their warehouse in Somersworth. You can also visit their Web site, www.PortsmouthTea.com. Jonathan Blakeslee is hoping to have White Heron Tea Company up and running by February or March, but his Web site, www.WhiteHeronTea.com, should be ready sooner.