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Welcome to Twinings Tea Tasters, my name's Mark and this month as the Summer turns into
Autumn here in the UK, we've got a very special tea that might warm up the heart, as the temperature
begins to drop.
Now this is a Keemun tea, a Keemun Black-Tea, and this is made from the Camellia sinensis
sinensis, or predominantly known as the China leaf. And the Keemun Black-Tea occupies a
very special knish in the tea-drinking world. It's a good quality, soft, well balanced black
tea that's good enough to be taken with milk or equally delicious to be taken without milk.
It's going to be an absolute joy to taste, and I hope you look forward to taking a sample
with me.
Now Keemun is a town, and a county in China, in the province of Anhui, and it's a beautiful
story that goes with this black tea actually. A government official was visiting the area,
around 1875, and it said that he was trying to discover some of the secrets of green tea,
and accidently discovered that using the China leaf, he could make a perfectly delicious
black tea, and that is the very birth of the first Keemun teas.
Now this particular area of China was synonymous with trading and heavy tea trading within
that period, so it wasn't long at all before Keemun started to turn up on the breakfast
tables, and afternoon tea sets of the rich and famous, and those who liked tea around
the world.
The China leaf produces this beautiful black Keemun tea, and of course the way that black
is produced changes significantly depending on where you are in the world, the elevation,
the type of weather that you have. But some of the principles that apply is that the tea
is plucked, it's then withered so it has some of it's moisture taken out of it, that makes
the leaf slightly more malleable, so it can be rolled, and release some of those delicate
enzymes and juices from the inside of the leaf, that then coat the outside of the leaf.
And it's the oxidisation over a period of time, and those sticky enzymes that eventually
turn the tea black. It's then baked or fired to remove any remaining moisture, and there
you go, a black tea.
Let's have a go at making some of our Keemun Black-Tea. Now there are three or four different
grades of Keemun tea that people are aware of, and this is probably more synonymous with
some of the finer, more twisted leaf, associated with Gongfu Keemun, and we're going to have
a go at making it in a kind of Gongfu fashion or my Gongfu fashion, so I'll show you how
to do that a little bit later on.
But as ever on tea tasters, we are going to look at here at the leaf, and like I was saying,
a beautiful black twisted leaf, and very often in many parts of the world, tea is bought
on the colour and the shape of it's leaf. And when you come up to have a look at this
in a bit more detail in a second, you'll see just what a really attractive and engaging
tea it is to use. You can see me here, playing with it consistently, it's a great tea.
So on tea tasters of course we can use our teapot, and you can pre-warm your pot, it's
always advisable. And pre-warm your cups as well. But I'm going to put a good six teaspoons,
or heaped teaspoons of this into the pot. Now interestingly Keemun was also know by
many as China Black, so if that's a name that resonates with you, you're certainly going
to be able to enjoy this tea as a blast from the past, as some people would say. So I'm
just going to fill this up now with our hot water.
And then while that's filling up there I'm just going to show you the Gongfu method here.
So these are some small delicate wares that are associated with drinking black tea, and
this is a particular fashion that I like to drink Keemun with. So we have a small pot
here, and we'll have a look at that in a bit more detail in just a second.
Because of the delicacy of Keemun tea, you can leave it a little bit longer to brew,
it's got very delicate tannins, so slightly longer to steep, it certainly isn't going
to do any harm, in fact would bring out some of those deeper flavours that find in a very
good quality loose leaf tea.
And of course our tea tasters at Twinings we use this tea tasting equipment here, I'm
going to put one heap teaspoon into the pot, and again fill that with some hot water, and
try and use freshly drawn water because it's really important to try and keep as much dissolved
oxygen within the water as possible, and boiling it, and boiling it, and boiling it can remove
some of that.
And I'm just going to put a teaspoon of tea in there, in fact I like it slightly stronger,
and the beauty with this is, doing it in this fashion, you can brew multiple times. So I'm
just going to pop that in there. And you know your first brew you might only want to leave
for a minute, and then start to appreciate some of those really delicate flavours that
are being release by the leaf. And subsequent brewing, or subsequent steeping can release
slightly different flavours.
So like I was saying, about a minute possibly for the first go, a minute and a half, two
minutes, three minutes and so forth, until you start to exhaust all the natural flavour
coming from the leaf.
The first thing that's really striking with Keemun is the beautiful and unmistakable deep
tan coppery colour that comes off the leaf. And also the aroma, the aroma is one of the
important attributes of tasting tea, and the aroma coming off this is slightly smokey,
and somewhat plummy. There's a great word as we go into autumn, slightly plummy aroma.
So I'm just going to pop that in there, give that a little twirl, now you can see here
on our little Gongfu set, that that very first brew is produced a very amber liquid, liquor
there, and I'm just going to poor that into my little pot.
And you know what, it's always great to see a tea looking attractive in a cup, and the
light is just bouncing of the surface of this. Beautiful ruby red with a hint of greenness
in there, that's a good quality Keemun tea. And we're just going to have a slurp here
and a little taste and see if we can unlock, or find some of those deeper flavours within
the leaf. Beautiful. I always describe personally flavour
as a journey of taste through time and through your body, and Keemun is one of those teas
that ticks all those boxes, you get a sensation straight away, and then you get a good follow
through, you get a good after taste coming through. It's deep, it's plummy, velvety might
be a way of describing it, and in my mouth I can feel a slight draw down to the bottom
of the jaw.
This is a beautiful tea, and like I said, maybe a dash of milk, but equally good without.
And if you're going to use your little Gongfu method, I enjoy it with a cup and saucer.
So this has been Keemun, one of the most famous black teas in the world, and probably associated
with some early English Breakfast recipes, but it's an absolute delight to drink any
time of the day. A soft golden amber colour, really, really tasty, plummy, deep velvety
notes. Can be an absolute for you to enjoy over the turning seasons that are ahead of
us, so until next time, happy tea times.