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Dominion Tea - Passionate & Informed Tea Drinkers Dominion Tea Passionate & Informed Tea Drinkers Menu Blog Home Shop Dominion Tea About Dominion Tea Tasting Room in Purcellville, VA Tea Video Library Scientific Studies of Tea Leave a reply As a tea drinker, we rarely to stop to think about who is studying our favorite beverage and what are they learning. The complexities of the tea leaf itself and what drives those complexities are head spinning. So, it is truly exciting to find a translation in English of a qualitative review of who has been conducting scientific studies of tea and what they are learning about the plant and beverage. Published in the Frontiers of Plant Science , a group of scientists from the Hunan Agricultural University in Changsha China, did a review of the past decade of scientific studies of fresh tea leaves [1] . So, what did they find? Who is Studying Tea? It should not surprise anyone that most of studies of tea are coming out of China. They are largest and oldest manufacturer of tea, with the Chinese tea industry having an estimated total revenue of $99.8 billion in 2022. This accounts for approximately 1/3 of the total tea industry worldwide. The Chinese national government and local governments have designated the tea industry as a critical economic driver, making available government money for scientists to research tea. Interestingly over the past decade, while China logged over 600 studies, the United States actually managed to do 17 studies and worked in collaboration with the Chinese on enough of their studies to actually get mentioned by the authors. So, if you want to study tea in the US, head to the University of Florida, Rutgers University, Montana State University and the University of Georgia. What is being Studied about Tea? Both 2007 and 2017 seem to be watershed moments in the scientific study of tea. In 2007, the Human Metabolite Database was created. This freely available electronic database gives scientists detailed information about small molecule metabolites found in the human body. With access to this database, the study and identification of metabolites in tea as well as the effects of those metabolites on humans became the largest types of studies over the past decade. In 2017, the first full genome assembly of the tea plant was published which caused the expansion of studies into gene expression under stress caused by climate, soil and other changes. This category is expected to expand in the coming years as the publishing of studies, not surprisingly, decreased during the Covid pandemic. The authors project based on current trends in topics in scientific literature that we will see the publication of more studies in the future around the metabolic effect on the tea plant of cultivation treatments (watering schedules, fertilization, pesticide, and fungicide applications). Other studies will include resilience of plant gene expression in the face of climate change, as these studies were starting to pick up in 2019 and again decreased dramatically because of the Covid pandemic. As an avid tea drinker, these findings and projections bring me great joy and hope in the future for my favorite beverage. [1] YiQuin Chin, YunFei Li, ChengWen Shen, and LiZheng Xiao, Topics and trends in fresh tea (Camellia Sinensis) leaf research; A comprehensive bibliometric study”, Frontier of Plant Science, Volume 14, April 6, 2023. This entry was posted in General Tea Background on August 8, 2023 by admin . Visiting a Panama Tea Plantation in Boquete Leave a reply Panamanian tea is not a phrase you hear in the tea industry as I write this blog. However, if one entrepreneur has his way that may change in the future. During our travels, regardless of country, David and I are always looking for tea. We were shocked to find a tea tour offered in Western Panama. It’s available in a larger portfolio of tours alongside zip lining, coffee tours and general outdoor eco-adventures in Boquete. Even with the $30/person price tag, David and I had to find out if they really had true tea. Panamanian Tea Tour – Boquete, Panama Panama is better known worldwide for its Geisha or Gesha Coffee. As a side note to my tea drinkers, find this coffee – it tastes like tea! In fact, it was this association with tea that led to the tea plantation experiment. It’s also hardly a surprise that Gesha Coffee got rebranded as Geisha” to improve marketing in Asia, especially Japan. So, finding a steep mountainside of Camelia Sinensis Assamica in Boquete, growing at about 5,700 ft above sea level, was truly a delight. Planting Tea in Panama Boquete is a rural town about 9 hours by car outside of Panama City. The closest airport is about 45 minutes away in the town of David. It is high elevation, wet and sunny with plenty of fog, especially during the rainy season. This climate is similar to Sri Lanka or the Nilgiri region of India. It is home to large number of coffee farms, most of them owned and run by Americans and Europeans, and a few by Panamanians. Kotowa Tours (aka Boquete Tree Trek) is a Panamanian company, with a Panamanian owner, that has been around for over 100 years. While their properties are for outdoor recreation, like zip lines and hiking, they are growing coffee, chocolate and tea there as well. Our tea tour began with a walk through the tea fields with Kotowa’s tea master in training, Octavian. Currently, plants cover less than 1 acre, but there is plenty of room to grow. The first of the tea plants went in 7 years ago and Octavian and his team of four other grounds keepers have been diligently collecting seeds and replanting every year progressing higher up the mountain. The plants are in beautiful shape, with just a few grasshoppers leaving an occasional bite mark on some of the leaves. The biggest pests” are armadillos. They periodically burrow in to the ground near the roots killing a tea plant here and there. It was fitting to be climbing through the fields, only to be hit with incoming morning mountain fog and rain. The plants are truly in their perfect environment and their huge dark green leaves let you know it. Harvesting and Manufacturing Tea The plants are so happy that Octavian and his team are harvesting roughly every 25 days, year round. Now, that is not unheard of in Sri Lanka, India and parts of Africa. So we posed the questions about which months produced the better tasting harvest. It was not surprising to hear the December-March produce a sweeter tea since those are the dry” months in Panama. The entire harvest and processing is done by 5 people. They are plucking, rolling and shaping the leaves by hand. With only an acre, their largest given harvest is only about 250 kg (roughly 550 lbs) at a time. That will become roughly 50 kg of finished product, which is only 110 pounds of tea. This is very manageable for a team of 5 people. From harvest to finished product, it is only 4 days, with most of the time spent waiting on the tea to dry. The processing of the tea will likely change as the tea plants expand and there is more to harvest and produce. Plucking will remain by hand as the mountainside is too steep for machines. We had a good laugh about finding tea manufacturing machines with instructions in English\Spanish and available replacement parts in the Western Hemisphere – there aren’t any. Cupping Panamanian Tea Kotowa is currently trying to make white, green, oolong and black tea. With the help of an experienced tea master from Taiwan, Octavian is playing with withering times, baking times, and steaming techniques. We had a great time talking about his lessons learned and where he thinks he will continue to play and fine tune flavor. Given his tea master is Taiwanese, it was no shocker that the teas where lighter and smoother, mimicking Taiwanese tea. The green tea has a real chance of being a unique flavor profile, as they are steaming the green, which is causing it to taste and smell like the corn meal on the...