DENTON — What was served at the Chesapeake Culinary Center on Thursday is not your mamma’s tired Lipton tea bag.
About 15 women came to experience tea done right at the Tea Talk that afternoon, where a tea master brewed fresh loose Oolong tea from his Taiwanese farm.
Joshua Wang owns Wang Family Team with his sister. He was the tea master brewing and frothing the tea up into bubbles with what looked like a bamboo men’s shaving brush.
He brewed it to the correct temperature and served it in a tiny ceramic cup — no sugar, no milk, all flavor.
Oolong has malty, floral flavor that is light and fragrant. Wang said it can help with weight loss and lowering blood sugar.
Taiwan has 23 million people and is a mountainous region about the size of Maryland. It has the perfect soil to grow tea — not too wet and not too dry.
Wang is a third generation tea farmer, processor and roaster. His family’s farm is on two hectares (about five acres) in Taiwan. Not only does he grow the tea, he also roasts the tea with hot charcoal. This way of brewing the plant goes back to 2000 BCE.
He had a glass infusion teapot. As the hot water opened up the tea buds, darker tea fluid emerged. Wang said the flavor opens up in time.
He had a white tea aroma mister about the size of a lipstick case. He sprayed the intense sweet aroma of the charcoal roasted oolong tea to each participant. Each participant waved the mist in and delighted in the bouquet.
They grow seven different types of Oolong tea and two black teas on the Wang family’s farm. They are grown at different altitudes and have names like “Honey Scent” and “Taiwan No. 8.”
Wang roasts different teas at different rates in pits. Some are roasted for 8 hours and others are 60.
“Our Oolong tea is bitter or astringent. It is sweet and fragrant. These three qualities are a perfect balance. With a different altitude and community you get a different flavor because of terroir. In Taiwan we have many cultivars. Maybe we have 30 different types of tea.”
One of the teas he whipped with the whisk for those in Denton Thursday. He called it the original bubble tea, as it had a pillow of bubbles on the surface.
Everybody got to taste three different teas. They savored their ceramic cup’s offerings. Color, taste and fragrance were all considered.
Appreciation for tea was evident among the class participants.
“I respect coffee drinkers, but I think a tea drinker is a bit more zen. I mean I would compare tea sometimes more often to wines. We could talk about the cultivar and the terroir and the picking season and how the weather is happening in the Darjeeling region and the first flush versus the second flush,” said Monika Mraz, who owns Doehrn Tea Company in Oxford where she sells loose teas.
“I think the coffee drinkers are looking for a great kick, but the tea drinkers are looking for more finesse,” said Mraz. “I always like trying new teas,” she said later.
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