The drinking of tea has a hallowed place in the history of beverages. To borrow a cliche, “It is more than just a drink.” For many cultures including the Indian, Japanese and Chinese, tea and its associated ceremonies are the stuff of near-extreme reverence.
The Japanese version for example is anchored on the four principles of harmony, reverence, purity and tranquility. Their traditional tea ceremony is a multi-hour event with strict protocols designed to encourage an attitude of humility and spirituality. The motions, attitudes and brews, in a sense, are literally paving the way for transcendence.
To transcend my own knowledge about tea — which has up to now centred only around Japanese tea and the occasional cuppa of milk-laced earl grey — I signed up for the tea journey at Tannin Hill, a tea bar located in Sentul, a northern suburb of Kuala Lumpur.
Unlike the Japanese tea ceremony where I would have to leave my shoes and my worldliness at the door, Tannin Hill’s tea journey borrows from the Chinese Kungfu tea tradition – so I kept my shoes on as I entered the tea bar’s interior.
The environment is pleasant, restrained and contemporarily appointed with scattered hints of Japanese design thinking. It’s also immaculately kept, revealing, perhaps, a meticulousness stretching to the tea-drinking experience itself.
Advertisement
Chinese tea for a new age
Kungfu tea is not about the transcendental. It’s about connoisseurship. In a nutshell, it involves a series of short steeps of tea in small delicate vessels to allow the tea’s evolving flavours and aromas to fully develop.
The preparation of tea in this tradition requires adherence to a variety of formal rules. If one is to be pedantic about it, there are movements such as pouring boiling water into cups in an anticlockwise spiral pattern and other showmanship techniques to adhere to.
The tea master must have the skill to judge the temperature of the water, the amount of tea leaves, the length of steeping and so on in order to prepare the perfect (tiny) cup of tea.
But there’s more to it. The tea master apparently should have the superpower of deciphering whether the drinker likes the tea or not by looking out for any flicker across the face of the drinker.
The experience at Tannin Hill eschews all that scariness in favour of what owner Tan Ban Leong calls Chinese Tea Drinking 2.0. He’s devised a tea journey precisely designed to demystify the art of drinking tea – ripping it away from the rosewood furniture, if you will (though this move has apparently not sat well with some traditional tea masters) and confining the entire affair to under an hour.
The root of all tea
The first fun fact imparted during this experience is that all tea comes from one plant – the camellia sinensis – with differences arising from their terroir and region-specific processing methods.
In Chinese tea culture, tea is broadly categorised into six basic types: green, white, yellow, red, oolong and black. They bring a broad taste array to the palate. The taste of each type (and subtype) is teased from two main factors – how they’re processed, and how they’re steeped.
Tannin Hill’s tasting experience winnows down the vast selection of tea from the slopes of China’s mountains and hills into just eight specific varietals. The journey starts with the lightest, the Shou Mei from Fuding, Fujian Province, which is essentially oxidised, unprocessed leaves – basically, a young tea.
From there, the teas are served in ascending heaviness, ending with the Liu Bao Rich, which has the appearance of a TCM herbal brew (though tasting, however, nothing like that of a bitter medicinal concoction typical of Traditional Chinese medicine).
As a visual aid, the eight teas (ranging from loose leaves to fermented nuggets to tiny stems) are showcased on a sample board. A chart, colour-gradated succinctly guides one through understanding the four modalities of aroma, body, taste and aftertaste.
Yes, the entire process is not unlike wine-tasting. It involves taking the nose to the tea, sipping, swirling around the mouth and then noticing any lingering notes.
Take the tea epiphany I had midway through the menu. The fourth tea in the sequence – the Rou Gui – has umami hints. I’ve never thought of tasting umami in tea. And it wasn’t my imagination because steeped tea leaves release caffeine, tannins, polyphenols, essential oils, carbohydrates and amino acids. And amino acid is the taste of umami.
Unlike wine though, I had to remind myself repeatedly that all eight teas placed in front of me technically come from just one plant. Nuances are readily apparent, even in steps as simple as the length of steeps.
For example, a young tea like Shou Mei has to be steeped for longer while the aged Liu Bao is done in 10 seconds. To impart method into the madness, Tannin Hill has devised two-, five- and ten-second beats.
Chinese Tea Drinking 2.0
Tannin Hill also expresses its tea-losophy with a five-course tea pairing menu. Among others, the combination of the house brand Teaspec’s Qi Lan blend with tempeh slathered with cheese and sprinkled with Furikake was moreish. A worthy choice if you’re coming by on an empty stomach.
I also sampled a thirst-quencher of cold nitro-infused tea (where nitrogen gas is introduced into the brew) which tasted like a refreshing analogue of ale, sans alcohol. This liquid amuse-bouche did a good job of clearing my mind for the serious business of the tea journey, where I was able to slow down and detect nuances.
Though I haven’t yet achieved transcendence, Tannin Hill’s tea journey has set aside ceremony for vocabulary. The modalities explained in its tea-drinking chart arm visitors with the tools they need to conduct conversations in service of further tea appreciation.
Wine drinking has a vocabulary. Coffee has a vocabulary. Why not tea?
Tannin Hill
Location: 481, Jln Sultan Azlan Shah, Taman Million, 51200 Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Opening Hours: Tues – Sun, 10am – 6pm
Tel: +6016-617 8379 (Whatsapps)
Website: https://tanninhill.com/
