Excerpt from: The Tea Drinker's Handbook Introduction We have been visiting the mountains where the world's premier teas are grown ever since we first began selecting the rarest blends of tea for Le Palais des Thés. We spend several months every year walking the plantations from Darjeeling to Shizuoka and from Taiwan to the Golden Triangle. We always experience the same sense of wonder and joy on seeing their mist-wreathed summits, and the vast expanses of green that are so patiently worked by the men and women who carry out the same task every day, plucking buds and leaves between forefinger and thumb, in a ritual that hasn't changed for centuries. In our twenty years of visiting the plantations, we have built up some very precious relationships with the plantation owners and workers and as a result have had many professional secrets confided in us. But we felt that it would be pointless acquiring all this knowledge simply to store it and not pass it on. In fact, it was our desire to pass on some of what we had learned and our passion for tea, that led us to set up L'École du Thé (School of Tea) in 1999. The courses the school offers have enjoyed continuing success, reinforcing our conviction that the world of tea, with its many different facets, is capturing the imagination of an ever-growing public. It is against this background that this book has been written.
We believe that tea, with its wonderful range of flavors, has been ignored in gastronomic circles for too long. Rather than simply giving an account of all its many aspects--a number of books have already done this, suitably bathed in nostalgia for the old days--we prefer to take you on a visit to the tea gardens. There cannot be a better way to discover how tea is grown that to meet the people who, with patience and love, every day devote their knowledge to pleasing tea aficionados the world over. To ensure the consumer is satisfied, an intermediary is needed: the professional taster, whose role is similar to his counterpart in the wine trade, using his expertise to evaluate thousands of teas every year. As with wine, this skill can only be acquired after a long and absorbing apprenticeship. Nonetheless, the art of tasting is open to everyone, and anyone who is interested in tea will discover the basic information in this book, together with a variety of indispensable tips about preparing it. And since every taster loves to pass on their enthusiasm, we could not resist the pleasure of sharing with you our choice of the world's fifty best teas. Happy tasting! François-Xavier Delmas and Mathias Miner.