Timing Matters.
Fussing over when you drink a certain tea is a matter deeply debated and poorly resolved. I attempted to find my own answers.
I am a ‘3-cups-of-tea-a-day’ kind of girl. Any more and I run the risk of reducing myself to a caffeine junkie. This is why I try to resist the urge to pour myself extra cups of tea on most days. But I recently received some autumn flush teas from Darjeeling and that’s my cue to refill the kettle and steep an extra cupful. Or two.
Autumn teas from Darjeeling in north-east India are the easiest-to-drink black teas in the world. They produce an amber-coloured liquor (tea parlance for the colour of the brew), mostly medium-bodied but brimming layers of flavours - dried apricots, stewed apples, white flowers, and oak. But unlike the teas that are made during the spring and summer seasons, autumn teas do not overwhelm with tannins, which means they are not all that bitter. They also contain less caffeine than a typical Darjeeling because nature is mostly weak around autumns and this shows in the tea. For this reason, popular convention dictates that autumnal teas be consumed during afternoons when the body can use light nourishment but not necessarily the jolt of caffeine.
Now I am not big on following conventions. In fact, I am one of those people who will go out of her way to do things differently just for the fun of it. My lavender and rosemary-infused cappuccinos invite eye rolls from friends every time I drink them. I eat my KitKats without breaking the slab into individual bars. And I will trade ‘Jack and Coke’ for ‘Jack and flavoured tonic water’. So while I have experimented with autumn teas at various hours of the day, for some intrinsic reason, I do find autumnals more enjoyable in the afternoons.
If my moralities about this tea seem affected, it’s probably because they are. It could be due to the fact that I am acutely aware of the drinking etiquette or that I have actually tried this tea at all agreeable hours of the day to verify that drinking autumnals in the afternoon actually works. I think it’s mostly the attraction of this magnetic belief that eating and drinking a certain something at a special time of the day will reveal secret pleasure that would otherwise elude me. This, I feel, moves me to want to obey conventional wisdom.
Thinking about it, a lot of the standard knowledge about how one must drink a certain tea is framed in the context of the time of the day or the four seasons. A caffeine-rich black tea in the mornings and a green tea brimming with antioxidants for the evenings. A hot milky chai for the nippy days and an iced tea for blistering summers. As a system, conventions like these are rooted in something factual (like the chemical properties of tea) and seemingly rational (hot tea on a cold day requires little convincing). But I believe they also exist to stir something greater and more evocative.
Sure, it’s not wrong to think that no matter the time of the day, a tea should deliver - on taste, on caffeine, on satisfaction. But timing a cup of tea to a convention - whether it is a time of the day or a specific style of preparation - is believed to produce great effect and pleasure that’s beyond what’s in the cup.
Also, this insistence on drinking a specific kind of tea at a specific time of the day is reflective of humankind’s deep-seated love for order. As a friend of mine said in a recent conversation, “Order makes coping with vast sums of knowledge easy.” Of course, he said this not in the context of tea but that of Indian classical music, something we were discussing at the time. Yet, his comment got me reflecting on my own notions of tea and, more specifically, tea time. If people seek order in activities like classical music, might they apply such consciousness to tea? Could they be convinced to follow convention?
This friend, a professional Indian classical musician himself, tells me that the cornerstone of all Indian classical music is raaga - best understood as a curated framework for developing songs. Each raaga comprises select musical notes (from the main 12) that are set to a specific scale. A raaga by itself is a complete melody but it can also be used as the foundation for developing complex, more nuanced pieces.
Performance of raaga, as a musical piece or as a dance, is a hallmark feature of Indian culture. In the olden days, these performances were seen with great veneration, many even believing that the most powerful way of connecting with both the supernatural and the natural order - a season, an occasion, a time of the day - is with a raaga that is singularly dedicated to it. “It is said that a raaga comes alive only during particular hours of the day. In those moments, emotions and notes align, and the perception of the time is enhanced,” my friend tells me. Which, to me, meant that a raaga could never just be played or sung for the sake of it. That would be wrong and outright irreverent. Timing is key.
“What does it do for you, when you play a raaga at a particular time of the day?” I asked. He paused for a second and then said, deftly, “...on days when I have the time to sit with it, it helps me connect with the hour.”
He goes on to share a composition based on raaga ‘piloo’. “Listen to the piece and visualize,” he asks me, “tell me what colours come to your mind? What are the shapes and how do they feel? Do you feel calm or a sense of rising energy? Try to notice things you see, think, and feel when you listen to this bandish (composition).”
This sounded like a familiar exercise. As a tea taster once upon a time, I remember my job’s fundamental ask was to evaluate a cup sensorially. In fact, this is the underlying ethos of any tasting exercise, fulfilled by actively looking for details apparent and appealing to every sense - sight, smell, sound, touch, taste - as well as perception. Perception, because while it is easy to forget facts like the name of the brand or grade of the tea, one is less likely to forget experiences and feelings.
Listening to the swooning composition of raaga piloo, I imagined softness and weight; like the touch of velvet, this piece had a rich presence. There was also warmth and all sorts of bright yellows channelled through the melody. But what really took me was how spectacularly familiar it all felt. For someone who’s held an occupation where success depended on identifying striking little details, the fact that nothing about this bandish felt elusive or extraordinary felt like a new experience. The composition itself was vast and expansive, vaguely defined and variedly punctuated by an uneven tenor. But the sense of familiarity that inhabited the entire length and breadth of this melody, that’s the thing that stayed with me long after I was done listening.
Piloo is an afternoon raaga, my friend tells me, performed between peak hours of 12 and 3 pm. It’s considered one of the most pleasing raagas, a favourite of old school romantics and monsoon aficionados. ‘You are not too far from the expected experience,’ he goes on to remark, while I rejoice.
Curious, I inquired what would happen if I were to consume this raaga at a different hour of the day? “I won’t say you will derive any less pleasure. If it’s a raaga you enjoy, you can enjoy it any hour of the day.”
I asked what, then, promoted early musicians to fuss about the time of the day. “Maybe they needed a way to classify and archive their creation, a way of grouping things that otherwise would just compete with one another,” he tells me.
Reflecting, I realized that every type of tea is made with some intention but rarely with any consideration to when and how it must be consumed. I have never met a maker who’s told me they have made the tea only for early mornings or late evening drinking. But, just like it is with raagas, with so many teas out there, a time of the day-based classification sure helps give every tea a fighting chance at consumption. There are at least 6 types of tea, 30+ tea leaf grades and hundreds of blended varieties. Daunting as it is, under the trappings of tea time, teas are codified culturally and this makes buying tea easy. Fair and equitable trade seems to be the real point of time-based classification and promotion of tea.
As for the consumer, following set tea conventions can be a source of intimacy; it is an opportunity to engage with an order that guarantees a certain level of satisfaction. At its best, this order can evoke seasons and a time of the day that is, possibly, in sharp contrast to the reality outside your window.
“There’s a notion that if you want to pass off as a connoisseur of classical music, you must consume music the way it is ‘supposed’ to. But the best thing someone can do is just pick a piece that appeals to them. As much fun as it is to follow a set order, finding your own has its charm,” my friend remarks, almost as a postscript.
I could see his point. Our realities are not the same as when these conventions were first set in place - centuries ago and in simpler times. And I admit - rules around activity as basic and routine as tea making should not feel undaunting. But as with anything in life, there’s always room for elevating behaviours, in an attempt at harmony and balance.
So, all said and done, I don’t see conventions like tea time as an essential defining quality of a tea. But I do see them as this beautiful add-on, a supplement, that can enhance and sometimes even complete the experience of tea. For this reason, I choose to follow timing from time-to-time.