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Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 108: Brewing Knowledge - The Global Tea Journey
Step into the aromatic world of tea with John Snell, a 42-year veteran of the global tea industry whose journey spans from apprentice at UK's Lions Tettley Tea Company to international consultant. What began as an accidental career choice to avoid desk work evolved into a profound passion for tea "from bush to cup," fueled by witnessing firsthand how this humble leaf supports millions of livelihoods worldwide.
John unravels the fascinating distinctions between tea varieties, explaining how Camellia sinensis plants differ dramatically between China and India. The smaller-leafed Chinese variety thrives in higher latitudes with less sunlight, creating delicate teas perfect for green tea production. Meanwhile, the large-leafed Assam variety, evolved for hot, humid conditions, produces robust black teas packed with beneficial compounds. This botanical education extends to a masterclass on terroir – how regional growing conditions create distinctive flavour profiles as varied and complex as fine wines.
Perhaps most revealing is John's insight into how your supermarket tea has changed over decades. The carefully balanced blend of malty Assam, astringent Ceylon, and coppery East African teas that once defined a proper cup has given way to cost-cutting measures by major brands. Today's mass-market teas rely heavily on African sources, creating what John describes as "two-dimensional" flavour profiles. Yet there's hope in specialty tea's resurgence and the growing popularity of herbal "tisanes" like turmeric, raspberry leaf, and hibiscus that are repositioning tea in the wellness category.
Whether you're a casual tea drinker or aspiring connoisseur, this conversation will transform how you perceive what's in your cup. Subscribe now and join our journey to discover the fascinating world that exists under the canopy of nature's most beloved beverage.
How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way. Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show.
Speaker 2:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that's might be for more fishing than it was punching you so confidently.
Speaker 1:You said hey Pat, have you ever eaten a drum? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 3:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. They are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest, use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of the strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. Live their lives under the canopy Well, as always. We want to thank our listeners all across Canada. We really appreciate you listening to us and the support. You know it's always a big help. If you're a listener, just click subscribe, which helps us out a lot. And, of course, our listeners in the States and Switzerland and Ghana I can't imagine Ghana is still listening as much as they are, but I appreciate it and I'd like to know more why but also in Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas and all around the world. We very much appreciate all the support that we get.
Speaker 3:Now, normally I give an update on my Chocolate Lab, gunner, and what's happening there and what's taking place, but I got to tell you the past couple of days we had him up at the lake and he spent a considerable amount of time in the water and it happened with the same lab that we had before Strider. He ends up with these hot spots, as I mentioned in the previous podcast, and these hot spots are a little bit irritating and it's kind of a disgusting looking open, sore, almost, where it leaks a fluid of some kind. We can't figure out what that fluid is, but anyways, they put him on antibiotics, and it seems to help out, which he's been doing now, and on his antibiotics from no problem, but he's developed a limp, and we don't know why, and he gets a little grumpy when you try to look at his paws and his pads, because you know it's a dog and he doesn't know what you're doing. So you look at his foot to see if there's anything there and stuff like that, and he kind of grumbles, which is unusual.
Speaker 3:When my wife goes to, when Diane goes to work, and you tell him she's going to work, he grabs a toy and runs and rolls on his back and you'd think he was growling at a biter, but he just kind of grumbles anyway. So every time we look so he tried to check out his pads and things like that Can't really tell. We got a good look at it, but seemed to be okay, getting better. What that means, though, is I'm not out doing my morning walk to give updates on what is happening with our living apothecary and what's happening out there, and I still am enjoying that Merlin app and listening with the bird sounds and identifying all the birds just as we walk, and I'm amazed at the number of different birds that I can identify just by walking through the bush and listening to the various birds. But today we're moving forward with a new guest, and a new guest is John Snell. John, thanks for joining the podcast.
Speaker 4:Pleasure Glad to be here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, john. So we'll get into some of the details about some of your expertise. But tell us a bit about your background, john. Where are you from, or where are you so our international listeners kind of know from, toronto where you're from or where you are now from, or where you so our international listeners kind of know from Toronto where you're from or where you are now, jerry.
Speaker 4:Well, I'm sitting here in Toronto, which has been my home for the last 32 years, but originally from the UK, with a brief spell as a kid growing up in West Africa. So that's really yeah, so I'm really really Canadian, but with two passports.
Speaker 3:Very good. So what part of West Africa did you grow up? It didn't happen to be Ghana, did it?
Speaker 4:No, it didn't. It was Nigeria, which is a neighbor as good as and, yeah, a delightful time there, a beautiful place to grow up in central city Ibadan, which is still dear to our hearts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I spent some time and volunteered some time in Nairobi, kenya, and the lifestyle there is very different. I mean the average house here I live in basically a three-bedroom ranch bungalow that was built in 1958. And when we were visiting, because I was helping out with the UN and working in Kibera Actually it was a suburb of Kibera, if you can have a suburb of Kibera. Kibera, for those that don't know, is the largest slum in the world where 1.4 million people live in absolute poverty, and I was in Legata helping out Father Macarius there, but all the houses there were surrounded with 10-foot concrete walls with barbed wire or electric fence and glass, and it was just basically a small bungalow as well that the entire property was surrounded with a 10-foot wall with a concrete wall, with glass or things like that cemented in or placed on top, and then electric or barbed wire fence above that and the entire house is the property is completely surrounded with it and that's just normal there and which kind of shocks you when you're there and see these sort of things.
Speaker 3:But it's it's. It's interesting in in itself and in learning the way different cultures live, I mean, and to see the work that we were doing there. Once a day they turn on the water where this facility that I was helping in and the locals come to get their water and they do their washing in the creek and clothes washing and things like that in the creek. But it was certainly a learning experience that I think the more that you people gain understanding of those things that happen around the world is the norm, the more they appreciate the things that we have here. Yeah, so nigeria. Much similar there. What was happening there?
Speaker 4:you know, as I say, I was a kid there, um, but you know africa's like, and when I say Africa, the whole of Africa is, I think given a bit of a rough tilt, it's pretty similar to here. Honestly, you're right that of course there are certain areas where security is key, but, frankly speaking, the same could be said of here. People are the same throughout the world. Just commerce is different and communities and connections are different and therefore the opportunities provided to those around the world vary. But I would say that really folks are just the same. In fact, in my little tea factory here in well, just outside Toronto, my help there is Nigerian and I will say, the most industrious, pleasant chap you could not meet, which just shows that we're all from the same species.
Speaker 3:Yep, absolutely, it's understanding what takes these sort of locations to the level they have, and you're right. What takes these sort of locations to the level they have? And you're right, you know, we all look at things in different perspectives and, quite frankly, people coming here could see the same things if they look for those sort of things. But, john, tell us a bit about your expertise and why we brought you on the program. Where did you develop and how did you develop it?
Speaker 4:And let us know, yeah well, I've been in the tea industry for 42 years. I dropped into the tea industry by accident after an early career in the Royal Navy the Grey Funnel Line as it's jokingly called and when I left the military service, I was really looking for something that was not a nine to five desk job, and the Lions Tettley Tea Company in the UK offered that in terms of an apprenticeship that takes you all over the world to different production origins to learn tea from bush to cup, as we like to say, tea from bush to cup, as we like to say, and that it wasn't because I had a great desire to be in tea, but that's what got me. However, having spent time at Origin, where tea is responsible for employing millions of people and therefore supporting millions more, I just became totally hooked, really, with the social impact of tea, but obviously, uh, the liquor itself is something that excites me even to this day, despite the fact that, obviously, if you say tea to people now, they will think anything from black, green, white, oolong, chamomile, peppermint, etc. When I joined, the tea was what I like to call the Henry Ford of the industry, which was you can have any color you like as long as it's black, and it was very unidirectional.
Speaker 4:But within black tea because that's all we tasted there are infinite varieties. You can taste terroir differences as strongly as you would in wine and with malty assams or astringent and citrusy uvas and oedipus alawes from Sri Lanka or even a vanilla character from Rwandans. So yes, that's where I started. I then moved from branded companies through private label manufacturing companies and then to the largest trading company in the world, van Ries, a Dutch company, and that brought me really over this way. And from there I went back into a private label world in product development and eventually started my own company and my own consultancy where I do work for the United Nations, fao and as well as pack tea for my customers here.
Speaker 3:Very interesting. When you talk about the various black teas and where they come from and the different, basically, flavors, I guess you'd say that come with the teas. Where does the most popular black tea come from, then? That you would find in your Earl Grey, shall we say, or morning teas and things like that.
Speaker 4:Well, it has changed.
Speaker 4:And it's changed not because anyone has decided any consumer has decided that they prefer tea from one area or another, but really because CPG, consumer packaged good companies, the big brands, have decided to move their buying from one area to another because of price, which is a real disappointment to me, because it used to be that the predominant teas that were found in your normal cup of orange pico would be Assam from northeast India, giving you that lovely malty balanced cup.
Speaker 4:It would be Sri Lankans, so from what we call Ceylon teas, high grown, giving you all that point, as we like to call it, if you will, positive astringency or positive bite and flavor, and you would have some East Africans, kenya or Rwanda in there which are just coppery, beautiful coppery cups with good briskness and flavor. These days you find that both the Indians, who are basically almost a net importer, now they drink what they produce and more. And salons are too expensive for the big brands, so they really started buying a lot more from Africa, making it honestly two-dimensional, and it's lost a lot of tea's appeal and it's only the growth in specialty tea, uh brands that has really reinvigorated the interest in black tea interesting.
Speaker 3:So you mentioned orange, orange pico. What goes into an orange pico tea? Why is it called orange?
Speaker 4:just so people understand why they call it orange pico yeah, well, it's quite funny because I will tell you that in my days of packing tea I've had people complain that their orange Pico didn't have any orange in it.
Speaker 4:Well, that's not the origin of it at all. Orange comes from the fact that the Royal Dutch household, the House of Orange, used to well, one of the first importers of tea into Europe from China, and Pko is a quality notation, so orange peko is the royal household quality of tea, and so actually all you get with orange peko is black tea. If in the trade, orange peko or OP is purely a grade of leaf or OP is purely a grade of leaf and that means it is going to be a long, twisted, well-twisted black tea leaf somewhere between, I'd say, three-quarters of an inch to almost an inch long, and that would be OP. And everything that is smaller than that has a different grade name, like FBOP, Fly, broken orange, pecko, gbop, golden blarry, broken orange, peko, gof, golden orange, fannings OF orange fannings, et cetera, et cetera, until we get down to dust grades. But they all come from the same plant, produced at the same time. So what you get in the tea bag or what looks like a beautiful leaf actually have the same quality potential.
Speaker 3:And that leads to more questions, of course. So what plants produce tea leaves? And is it just plants? Because I know if you add cinnamon to it, cinnamon is a bark. So what other sorts of parts of plants? I mean, we work together with dandelion root or chicory root and things like that, but what plant produces the average black tea, shall we say?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so it's actually a camellia plant, a beautiful flowering camellia plant. Camellia sinensis is the name of it. And then there are two distinct varieties camellia sinensis, variety sinensis, which, as the name suggests, comes from china, and camellia and camellia sinensis variety asamica, coming from asam, or which is really a bit wrong, but still comes from asam in northeast india. The smaller leafed variety comes from china. You can imagine higher latitudes, not such strong sunlight, so it doesn't require such a big photosynthetic engine, if you will. And the Assamica, grown in very hot, humid conditions, has got these huge, broad leaves, and the difference between the two of them in terms of what they can make is that the Sinensis or the Chinese variety is very good for making green teas or for making leaf teas, and the Assamica we're giving you lots of guts, because it's this huge engine that produces lots of polyphenols is very good for making good coloury, robust teas. So it's the main type which is used for tea bag manufacture.
Speaker 3:Very interesting for tea bag manufacture. Very interesting. So the green tea and the black tea is from the same plant or not?
Speaker 4:Same plant, different variety. So the green tea normally comes from the Sinensis Sinensis, so from the Chinese. I'm going to just call them Chinese and Assam varieties. The Chinese variety will give you a softer profile. If you make green tea out of the, out of the assam variety, um, it usually comes out a bit too bitter and people you know, when they try green tea, because usually they've heard of its health connotations, um, they may turn away from it if it's a little too astringent, which a lot of Assam star greens are.
Speaker 3:Okay, so well.
Speaker 3:You mentioned polyphenols and about being in teas, because polyphenols are very key and I've done a bit of research on polyphenols in regards to the Chaga product that I produce, in that it has quite a bit of polyphenols that it gets out of the birch trees and the birch bark itself, and the polyphenols are kind of I think the best way to describe it is as we, I usually say, gain experience in life we get these.
Speaker 3:They call them liver spots, age spots and things like that and essentially the polyphenols in our own skin and that start to essentially wear out and it's sort of like if you took an apple and you peeled the apple and then exposed it to the sun, it kind of turns brown. That's because of the protective coating. The skin is no longer there, and that's what happens with a lot of people. And so if you increase your polyphenols, we find that it has a tendency to assist in eliminating some of these age or liver spots, whichever we're calling them. Now, I'm not sure if you know much about polyphenols or not, john, but that was some of the stuff I found out and you can tell me I'm wrong, but that's some of the basics that I found out about it.
Speaker 4:It's quite interesting. I mean, I know a reasonable amount of polyphenols. So polyphenols you'll find them in all plant material, but there are some that are more useful than others. So in the tea leaf itself. It's quite funny. Plants are fascinating things really.
Speaker 4:When a new bud on any bush but on a tea bush is there, it's very soft and it's very supple, and so bugs love to eat it. So the plant produces something which is very astringent and not tasty to bugs to protect it, until it opens out into a leaf and those things are catechins, or very small polyphenol if, if you will, bits, as well as caffeine, which is also bitter. And as the leaf, uh, opens up and it transpires and it starts to build, those things start to join together to produce other fully fledged polyphenols, um and other complexes, and eventually, as you go down and down and down, they'll become wood and lignin and everything else, the. That is why, whenever you're producing anything, if you want to get the health benefit, you want to get the youngest part. When you're talking about leaf, anyway, you want to get the youngest part. So when people see tea pluckers in a field, if they have seen a video of it plucking the top leaves, that's because we're trying to get that maximum polyphenolic content.
Speaker 4:To your point, jerry, about the apple, what's quite interesting is that, when you get, the difference between green teas and black teas is purely oxidation. It's taking those catechins and it's exposing them to oxygen by breaking the leaf open and the oxygen will join these things together to produce the longer chain molecules that then absorb more light blah, blah, blah chemical nonsense and or physical nonsense and and absorb some of the light spectrum so that you see it as red. So when you bite an apple and you leave it there, what you're seeing is you're seeing that happening. You're seeing catechins being oxidized, producing polyphenols that absorb and reflect out the red part of the spectrum. So those are the larger polyphenols. That's the simplest way of describing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's difficult to try and put things into a podcast. That's the simplest way of describing it. Yeah, it's difficult to try and put things into a podcast in terms that make it quickly understandable without going into great depth about, you know, the betulin and betulinic acid that's brought in by birch bark and things like that. But I find it very interesting. I know I did spend some time in Sri Lanka as well and they sold different grades of tea, which was the gold leaf or the silver, and the gold were the youngest ones and I'm assuming from what I'm hearing here has the highest concentration of catechins and polyphenols in it.
Speaker 4:You're right. So the gold and silver parts that you see sometimes in a leaf are the unopened leaf bud. So that is the youngest bud and it produces, and so it doesn't have the chlorophyll yet. So therefore it doesn't come out as green as a green leaf. And so these are the things that tell you that it's been plucked from the top of the bush. It doesn't necessarily, it's not necessary. You know, you can have a black leaf that has been plucked from the top too, because what a lot of producers will do is that some of that gold tip, as we call it, or silver tip is so valuable that they will pluck the leaf and then they will separate out the tip from the leaf and they will sell the tip separately, or they will use the amount of tip that they get over a larger quantity of black tea because it's so expensive.
Speaker 3:so, um, you can still get a good tea even if it doesn't look silver or gold, so to speak so, john, I'm trying trying to visualize what a tea in regards to the, I guess what we're talking about a tea plant, the ones that you mentioned look like. Is it like a bush, or is it like a tree, or is it like what does it look like offhand? I don't even know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so the camellia, if you let it grow in the wild it will grow to 10 meters high.
Speaker 4:It's a fully-fleshed tree, but obviously that would make it very hard to harvest the leaves, though there are some places, like in Yunnan, there are some places in southwest China, where people climb ladders into the trees, the old trees, to plant the leaves, but what generally happens is these trees are planted in rows and they are specially pruned to produce a flat table, if you will.
Speaker 4:Basically a single stem, a bit like a wine glass, a single trunk that then blossoms out into this wide array of branches that will look just like a red wine glass, and that what you're trying to do is maximize the amount of leaf that can be that can be got at by direct sunlight and rain.
Speaker 4:So when you look at a tea field, it just looks like a green carpet, but the pluckers can walk between these because actually there's quite a bit of space between the trunks itself and pluck these leaves and yes, so you can tell and the height of these is kept to a level that is comfortable for the indigenous pluckers to pluck. So, for instance, what we call the table height, which is the height of the bushes is different in Kenya than it would be in Vietnam because the workers in Vietnam are shorter than the workers in Kenya. So the height is kept to a level which makes it easy for the tea plucker to pluck a level which makes it easy for the tea plucker to pluck. So what is indicative of the average height of the workers in different origins is the height of the plucking table that they keep it to. So, for instance, in Kenya the plucking table height is higher than that in Vietnam because the people are taller.
Speaker 3:Right. So, and if it's taller, then I imagine they have more leaf capacity for the plant to be able to harvest.
Speaker 4:Well, you can get the same amount of leaf if you will table surface area from a shorter bush. But in reality, is the fact that the Sinensis Sinensis, or the Chinese variety, which is grown throughout Vietnam, china, indonesia, etc. Actually has a lower yield than the Assam variety, which is grown predominantly in India and Africa, right? So, yes, the yields are quite different, in fact.
Speaker 1:Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show, but now we're hosting a podcast.
Speaker 2:That's right. Every Thursday, ange and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio.
Speaker 1:Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week?
Speaker 2:Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 6:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes, All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garton Turk and all the Russians would go fishing To scientists.
Speaker 2:But now that we're reforesting and letting things breathe.
Speaker 6:It's the perfect transmission environment for life.
Speaker 5:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 2:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are.
Speaker 1:Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside.
Speaker 2:Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, we've got Rob from Hamilton here, who's had some success with the Chaga cream. Rob, can you tell us about it?
Speaker 7:Yeah, I've used it on blemishes, cuts, just basically all around healing. I've used it on blemishes, cuts, just basically all around healing, anything kind of blemish. It speeds it up really quick. Great, it speeds the healing process up really well. It leaves no marks and doesn't stain. It smells okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, thanks, rob, appreciate that. You're welcome. We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code canopy C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode.
Speaker 3:One thing, john I get a lot of people coming to me and asking me. They ask me for the. They want the mushroom coffee, and some of the difficulty is is with the Chaga. Every time that I put a new line out, a SKU line out, within a couple of weeks my competitors come up with it. So I had something which I called Chaga coffee and essentially all it was was organic coffee mixed with grounds of the Chaga. But I show people how to get better value and just getting the grounds doing their own. So a lot of my customers come up with mushroom coffee and I asked people. I said, okay, what does that mean? Does that mean you're mixing it with coffee or does that mean they don't know? So in the same sense, john, what I'm leading to is what makes a tea a tea and a coffee a coffee.
Speaker 4:You don't doubt the plant species from which it comes. I don't think you know. It's quite funny. I don't think you can mess around with the descriptions of species. Though tea in the lexicon of the public has been released to include herbals etc. Whereas we would call herbals, ie those infusions made from botanical species other than camellia, made from botanical species other than Camellia sinensis and obviously other described botanicals such as coffee, cocoa or some malt drinks. We would call those tisanes, and they are basically caffeine-free and do not carry the same health benefit as those coming from the plant Camellia sinensis, which is tea. And coffee, without a doubt, comes from two particular species of plant, but both of them are cafés. They both produce the same bean.
Speaker 4:When people talk about mushroom coffee, all they're really doing by putting coffee, by suffocating it with coffee, is they are talking to the largest hot beverage consumer group in North America. So they are trying to. You know, if they just said, oh, this is hot mushroom, I don't know a hot mushroom beverage they would not attract the same interest by calling it coffee. So whether it's got and some of them do have coffee in them, but the majority of mushroom coffees do not, they are just, um, you know, mushrooms have the the. They have the same brown notes, if you will, of coffee and they look a bit like coffee. They don't taste like coffee. But yes, if you want those benefits from certain mushrooms and you're currently a coffee drinker and you may be thinking about cutting down on your caffeine intake, et cetera, et cetera, then I can ascribe to calling mushroom infusions mushroom coffee.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it took me a while to get a blend and I think you know what I utilize is the chaga, of course, roasted chicory root and roasted dandelion root as a coffee substitute. And I explained to people who come in and they want the mushroom coffee and I said, well, this is a coffee substitute. And I explained to people come in and they want the mushroom coffee and I said, well, this is a coffee substitute. Essentially, there's no caffeine and people are gravitating it toward very nicely, but it's understanding what the public want and giving them. There's a lot of people come in and they don't really know what they're asking for, because if it's well, I guess it'd just be advertising and promotion of certain ideals that these people believe is the way to go, but it's. I find it very interesting. So what are some? Obviously, the these black teas the one you mentioned can't grow in Ontario and Canada at all.
Speaker 4:No, no, they can't. They couldn't take the winter at all. There's a little bit of tea production in British Columbia and there are quite a few smaller states in the US with one particularly large plantation, relatively in Charleston or just outside Charleston, madualoa Island. But really you know the tropics of the place. It requires abundant rainfall we're talking 2,000, 2,500 millimeters a year and it wants to be in temperatures really between 20 and 30 Celsius most of the time and it will not tolerate frost very well.
Speaker 4:Chinese variety can, and there are some special hybrids actually that were designed by the Russians to plant out what is now the Republic of Georgia, and they have some what they call snow varieties which are fabulous, fabulous quality deliverers. But of course their yield is low Because, like anything you know, the thing that gives you quality in a bush is one dormancy, ie a period when it doesn't grow and the plant wants to concentrate sugars into its roots as a store during a winter dormancy, and then slow growth. Slow growth, not too much uptake of water. It's the same with grapes. It's the same with grapes, it's the same with tea, it's the same for any plant. The best quality comes from those slow growth post-dormancy periods.
Speaker 3:Well, but, as you mentioned, a lot of the herbal teas are now becoming very popular. The raspberry, which I imagine is the leaf, is utilized for raspberry, or what are some of the other ones that are very popular? The raspberry, which I imagine is the leaf, is utilized for raspberry, or what are some of the other ones that are very popular?
Speaker 4:So yeah, so obviously, chamomile. Chamomile has been a staple, so has mint, both peppermint and spearmint Depends, if you like that softer, earthier mint, or whether you like your bubble gum or toothpaste. You know, experiment if you will. Hibiscus is exceptionally popular, you know. It gives you that nice red ruby character, nice tart, sort of anything from cherry through sort of plum notes, depending on the origin, the dry of the origin, Egypt, sudan, very cherryish, but Nigeria or China, more plummy if you will, more humidity growing there.
Speaker 4:And then all the spices. We see them in chai and we see them separately cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, you know they're all there. And then newer ones to the fore are things like turmeric. And newer ones to the fore are things like turmeric. Turmeric, particularly activated by black pepper, together and the purpurine brings out that curcumin, for that anti-inflammatory is becoming quite a thing. And you mentioned raspberry leaf. Raspberry leaf has really hit the heights, as has dandelion, milk, thistle, nettle. You know, you can go on and on, but those are all you know, big movers in what's becoming more and more a health and wellness category rather than a tea category.
Speaker 3:So you mentioned the plum. Now is it the leaves or is it the fruit that is utilized for that sort of and the same, I guess, would it be for, like black blueberries? You know, I've dehydrated blueberries and made them into a tea, but do they utilize leaves, or is it just the fruit part that they use?
Speaker 4:Yeah, sorry with tea, but do they utilize leaves or is it just the, the fruit part, that they use? Yeah, sorry, that was uh. Maybe I was uh not meaning plum itself. I was saying that that was the flavor you get from hibiscus is stretches from, depending on the, depending on the dryness. I either sort of cherry to plum, but you're right regarding you know, we know that any purple or any purple colored coloration in plants is due to a polyphenolic mix, which is very good for you. So you know, grape skins, blueberries, plums, they're all exceptional, exceptional for you. But I hasten to add, because I'm a tea guy, that there is irrefutable evidence that tea is actually this tea from Camellia Senances is a more potent polyphenolic provider than blueberries, red wine or chocolate, and so I think I'm in the right place.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, so, as I mentioned, is it just the blueberries or they use the leaves from blueberry plants as well?
Speaker 4:So they do use leaf both from blueberry and blackberry, but really it's the fruit. You know, the fruit in the skin, you know, dried, is the predominant thing. The other thing, jerry, that you know we have to consider when we're producing new blends is whether we can actually manufacture it. Manufacture it, you know, it's all very well saying, oh, I'd love to, you know, I don't know have just the pollen from chamomile, which is the sweetest part. But if you but the trouble with the pollen is, one is it's rare and expensive, but two is it's very fluffy and has no density, it's sort of fly away. And so try to machine that, if you want to get it into a teabag or even into a loose packet, is very, very difficult.
Speaker 4:So there are some things that mechanized packing and blending just cannot manage. And then we have to consider that, yes, we may like the leaf of a particular plant and the berry of another and the bark of another, but because they are different densities they won't blend together, or at least you can blend them, but they'll fall out of blend very easily, so that when the consumer gets the pack, the thing that will be on the top will be the lightest, fluffiest stuff, and as they go down they'll that will be on the top will be the lightest, fluffiest stuff, and as they go down they'll get different cups all the way down. So we have to manage consumer expectations and desires with that which is practical and actually, in the end, something that will perform satisfactorily for them.
Speaker 3:Well, raspberry though. They use raspberry leaves, do they not?
Speaker 4:They use raspberry leaves. But there's a funny thing Raspberry leaf is. Again. It looks like something that you might pull out of an old fashioned pillow. Frankly, it's very. It's got this white bloom to it and it's very spongy and and sticks together in balls and very difficult to manage. Now how do you cope with that? Well, you can hand fill it. But what a lot of people are doing now, a lot of the producers. They're actually taking that and they're grinding this down and then they granulate it so that they can produce a good density, regular sized particle that can be packed by anyone and still maintain the same health benefits. Right Well?
Speaker 3:I have to tell you I found it very, very interesting. How can people find out more information about tea and details and the benefits and all those sorts of things? Where would you suggest that they look for that kind of information?
Speaker 4:well, I think that a really good place to start would be the tea and herbal association of canada, thac. That is always a great place to start. They have good sources to look up and I would say, because Google has reduced the planet to a second, you can look up the UK Tea Association too. They're also a great source for learning about teas. But hey, in this day of elbows out, the Canadian Tea and Herbal Association is a very good place to start. Shabnam Weber that runs it is always willing to educate people in that regard.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, john. We really appreciate you taking the time to inform us and enlighten us about all the teas and the backgrounds and all that. It's just something a little bit different that happens out there under the canopy. Thanks a lot, john, I appreciate that.
Speaker 4:Well, thanks, Jerry, and I'll see you with some chaga soon. Oh, very good, John. Thank you Okay.
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