Jefford on tea

Posted on 17 November 2011

I want to share a few important texts with you. They’re by Andrew Jefford, my favorite wine writer. But they’re actually on tea.

Andrew’s latest column from his widely-read series at Decanter.com summarises the deep affinity between wine and tea. Andrews exhorts wine producers to explore the complex world of tea, saying that it could well help them in reaching the Holy Grail of today: inroads into the Chinese market. It’s an interesting point. Is the understanding of tea terroir so deeply rooted in the Chinese consumer as to help appreciate Gevrey-Chambertin and Wehlener Sonnenuhr? In the elite of taste, it might well be.

This last tea article by Andrew Jefford is by no means a debut. Readers might remember my recent series of wine and tea articles (Part 1 – 2 – 3) where I urged wine writers to taste tea more regularly, an exercise that I find expands horizons and fine-tunes the palate. Jefford actually has a long tea experience, and you can read his exquisitely written report from Taiwan, another short tea and wine parallel, a rightly militant take on teabags, and most importantly, this very comprehensive article that is in tune with most of my own conclusions on why wine and tea are sisters. I just hope other wine writers take example from Andrew and brew some good Dancong in between their daily glasses of DRC.