The Whole Leaf

by Christopher Beard

It was a weekday morning in Las Vegas, and a small room at the World Tea Expo was packed for a presentation titled “How to Put Together a Comparative Tea and Wine Tasting.” Gathered in front of the masses were the event’s presenters: Kyle Stewart, co-owner of Dallas tea business The Cultured Cup, and James Tidwell, master sommelier and beverage manager at Four Seasons Resort & Club in Las Colinas, Texas. The pair had assembled the presentation after observing that the complexities of tea and wine greatly complement one another—and that tasting them together is actually a creative event. Stewart and Tidwell first thought of the idea while working with Sharon Hage, the former head chef at York Street in Dallas and a multiple nominee for the James Beard Awards. Stewart says Hage introduced him to the idea of pairing tea with untraditional food and drinks, encouraging him to think beyond the tea box. She had worked for many years at York Street pairing tea with food, even setting up multiple courses the way one might with wine. “Quality tea was just as important an ingredient for York Street as the pristine fish from Browne Trading Company or the free-range chicken from Windy Meadows Family Farm,” says Hage. “Learning about tea for me was similar to an artist discovering a new range of colors.”

Tidwell, a longtime tea drinker, agreed: He found tea not to be a replacement for wine or coffee, but something additional—a new culture and range of experience that has been largely unexplored in American “foodie” culture. He says tea exploration is necessary for those in fine dining. “Wine professionals are being called upon to manage or present many facets of the hospitality industry,” he says. “With roles changing, and well-rounded experts needed to fill key positions, knowledge of the world’s second most-consumed beverage is essential.”

To truly display tea's depth to American food culture, then, Stewart and Tidwell attempted to create a unique tasting experience that truly connected tea and wine. By revealing the complexities in each, perhaps they could give restaurants a way to show their customers that tea can be more than simply a comfort to the sick. Wine has become a benchmark beverage at fine-dining restaurants, and tea has the potential to hold a similar space, but perhaps hasn't had the exposure. Though tea has a huge worldwide following, it is not well known in America that it has a vast range of flavor profiles, and that it connects cultures across the world. With the right amount of access and education, perhaps tea will begin to matter in our country's food culture too. By tasting a selection of fine teas alongside some equally fine wines, that access and education begins.

Communicating these concepts at the seminar was a hands-on affair. Before participants began the tasting, Stewart and Tidwell explained that tea does not simply or exactly parallel wine, but that both the cultures and flavor profiles of each can complement one another. Many audience members had likely experienced a tasting or two before, learning how to use an unfamiliar vocabulary to locate specific tastes, learning how to hold the liquid in one’s mouth and be patient with one’s taste buds. Many had at least one experience attempting to place terms like “vegetal” or “woody” in regards to a liquid. But Stewart and Tidwell first wanted to dispel the myth that there were “correct” flavors, or that it was some riddle everyone was trying to solve. In tasting, they encouraged tasters to let sensory memory help locate the dominant flavors, and reminded the tasters that these complex flavors can be experienced differently from person to person.

As the tasting began, the largest contrast between the two beverages appeared to be the alcohol. Normally, one of the most difficult lessons for beginners to learn while tasting wine is how to differentiate the wine’s flavor from its alcohol. However, in this comparative tasting, tasters easily learn to differentiate the alcohol’s effect from the wine’s other flavor notes. For instance, in tasting a light-bodied tea against a light-bodied wine, one may notice that the astringency in the tea remains balanced with a slight citrus flavor, and the bite given by the alcohol in the wine achieves a similar balance. In each case, a subtle sweetness is coupled with a slightly dry mouth-feel. As one compares the two beverages, one gains awareness of the alcohol's effect upon the palate. Furthermore, in tasting a tea and a wine that are both earthy, for example, people discover that “earthiness” is not all that specific. It can apply to both drinks, but one might discern the difference between hay and grass, or rather, detect a note of limestone. Not everything crosses over, exactly—for instance, you are not looking for acidity in tea. But the beauty in the comparative tasting is that a flavor experience does not need to seamlessly translate to inform another experience, people learn through difference. When people sense the contrasts between similar tea and wines, they naturally search for greater detail, and in turn, begin developing a more detail-oriented palate.

The first tea and wine pair was a Bai Hao Yin Zhen white tea from Teas Etc. with a Greek white wine, the 2010 Domaine Sigalas Assyrtiko Santorini. Stewart and Tidwell led the audience through the two beverages, explaining the light body of each, what they tasted and looked for, why, when, and how.  The white tea was ideal because of the subtlety of its sweetness, its freshness, its notes of hay, and because it was discernibly unoxidized. The white wine was also good—refreshingly earthy, and not overtly sweet. It had notes of green apple and a naturally clean and crisp mouth-feel, indicating it was well-made. But after letting the crowd in on their tasting notes for the first round, Stewart and Tidwell turned the task over to the audience for the second. Participants were asked to study and enjoy Shui Jin Gui, a lightly oxidized Chinese oolong, along with a Texan white wine, a 2010 McPherson Cellars Viognier. The boldest flavors were saved for last: a more oxidized Taiwanese oolong, Oriental Beauty, and a French red, the Vincent Girardin Santenay Terre D’Enfance from 2009.

In these last two, the audience began to notice how much more depth and range becomes possible in a tasting event when complexities of flavor are experienced through contrast. All of a sudden, the natural sweetness of Oriental Beauty and its smooth mouth-feel became dominant characteristics in contrast to the dry French red. Though both drinks were medium to full bodied with strong notes of fruit, people begin to notice the difference between a note of stone fruit and a note of cherry or apple. In this, one discovers new beauties and complexities in beverages they have enjoyed countless times. Moreover, at this tasting, people begin to see that flavor experience is not isolated. We have a word for aftertaste because we realize that taste is a developing experience, and at this event, the audience enjoyed each new sip as a continuation of that development.

The simplest reason to begin tasting tea and wine together is to amplify an experience—to draw unique connections and contrasts between two complex beverages. Another further reaching reason to do a comparative tasting is to educate a burgeoning American food culture about tea in a way that highlights both its depth and its usefulness. But this sort of exercise can be very difficult for those who are new to it. So perhaps the more detail-oriented goal of the class was equally important—the class aimed to train people to recognize different flavor notes and tones in tea, and to give them a vocabulary with which to describe what they recognized. 

The comparisons and potential appear so clear, but why is one beverage so popular while the other lags behind? Do people simply love alcohol that much? Or have they been taught the value and complexity of one and not the other? Looking outward beyond the World Tea Expo event, there are numerous possibilities for adding a “new set of colors” to our culinary painters’ palates. It is clear that the recent American phenomenon of foodie culture is still growing, which means people are interested. Hopefully, as the attendees walked back out into the Vegas sun, slightly buzzed on both tea and wine, they were even more jazzed with the inspiration to explore outside the tea box.

Wine drinkers can become tea drinkers, but education has to extend beyond the Expo—and beyond the tea industry. We must strive to be more than a seldom-convincing Amazon advertisement: “You’ve purchased X, and other people who purchased X bought Y.” The wine industry is synonymous with foodie culture because restaurants have helped establish it there, and if tea is to grow in that direction, restaurants will first need to educate themselves before they can educate their customers. If fine-dining establishments show that they value high-quality tea, and if they demonstrate its complexity by pairing it not only with wine but with food, then people may begin to understand something the aforementioned industry pros already do: Our palates are unrealized in their potential, and there are no closed doors in the world of taste.