I have an odd relationship with lavender; while I don’t really care for the scent of it at all (and that’s the way it’s most commonly used here in the U.S.), I do enjoy the flavor of it, particularly combined with other flavors.  Lavender and tea is a natural pairing in my eyes.  When I have lavender teas, I most commonly choose black teas with this assertive flower, but there’s every reason for it to blend well with the clean, grassy notes of green teas as well, not to mention making a refreshing change from the traditional blend of jasmine with green tea.  And so I was intrigued by Lavender Zen from DAVIDsTea, which blends a  Tibetan green tea with lavender flowers.

The initial scent of this tea out of the package is decidedly lavender, but it’s not heavy or overwhelming; there’s a clean note to it, the fragrance of the tea itself coming out as a green, balancing note underlying the flowers.  I find the appearance of the dried tea really attractive, a lovely combination of the purple lavender petals and the soft brown-green of the tea leaves.  This is nice enough to be put in a bowl as potpourri, except that it would be a waste of good tea.

I prepared my first infusion of this (Western-style, using a Swissgold infuser and a stoneware pot, brewed for the recommended three minutes) on a chilly early spring evening, when winter was still hanging tenaciously in the air, and the scent of the tea as it infused was like a promise of warmer days.  It had a mild, soft character that reminded me of a soft breeze on a spring afternoon, and a lovely floral note like flowers on the wind.  It didn’t smell “lavendery,” that strong, almost antiseptic scent that too much lavender can have, but rather was sweet and pleasant, just recognizable as floral without being anything too specific or overwhelming.  The color of the tea was a pale, clear green, like the shade of budding leaves or flowers before they open.

The first taste of the tea carried through this springlike, softly-floral motif; it was pleasant and light, although it did have a bit more of a “perfumey” character than just the scent alone.  In the middle, it surprised me, becoming unexpectedly mouth-filling and with a surprising toasted note, very much like a traditional bancha, and without much evidence of the lavender; I found this really enjoyable, though more of the lavender flavor would have been nice.  The finish was very traditionally “green,” with a strong herbal character, and it was rather astringent.

Overall, I think this tea lives up to its billing as being relaxing–certainly, the echoes of spring it brought helped cheer and calm me after an unusually long winter.  I really appreciate that it’s not strongly “medicinal,” the way some lavender teas can be, nor overtly flowery.  I do wish the flavor was a little more assertive, and that the overall blend of the green and lavender notes was more refined.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed my time with this tea (and plan to again), and I think it’s a good bet for those who would like a green tea with something a little different about it.

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Despite the name, The Teacup‘s Snow Leopard Blend is not camellia sinensis flavored with snow leopards. It is not even picked or drunk by snow leopards. Part of it does come from growing regions that overlap with the big cat’s range, however. The blend is made up of Yunnan black tea, Assam black tea, and Nepalese first flush high mountain tea. It has quite an interesting pre-brewed scent, kind of sour, kind of sweet. The tea liquor is very unlike the types of teas that I usually drink, but I have been enjoying drinking it.

The tea’s relationship to the beautiful endangered big cats of the Himalayas is that 10% of each sale goes to The Snow Leopard Trust, an organization that promotes conservation of snow leopards and their habitats. This great idea germinated through the friendship of The Teacup’s owner with some of the members of the organization, which is locally connected to Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. The snow leopards are indisputably in need of the clearly envisioned and implemented assistance provided by the trust. From the Snow Leopard Trust’s site:

The Snow Leopard Trust strives to follow these principles in all its community-based conservation efforts and throughout this website you will read about the different projects that we are implementing with our community partners. While the projects differ in response to the local needs and conditions, the underlying principles of each of the programs remain the same. We constantly endeavor to improve our conservation projects to better meet the needs of cats and humans, and we are seeing wonderful results at our project sites where the livelihoods of families and communities have improved greatly and snow leopards are being protected.

Snow Leopard Blend is not on The Teacup’s website, but if you are local you can go to their store in Queen Anne to buy it. Or perhaps they might be willing to sell and send you some if you give them a call or email them. You’ll enjoy the tea, and you’ll be helping to save a group of very magnificent cats.

Photo credit: Helen Freeman, courtesy of Snow Leopard Trust. Photo location: Woodland Park Zoo; Seattle, WA USA

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There is something particularly terrible about a centuries-old tradition within a culture leading to suffering among its people. One particularly poignant example of this is the rampant fluorosis among the Tibetan people resulting from the consumption of traditional Tibetan brick tea, also called “churned tea” or “butter tea.” The traditional Tibetan drink uses tea that has been formed into compact blocks using older, lower quality leaves and stems. With longer growing times before cultivation, these parts of the tea plant absorb a considerably higher amount of fluoride (and aluminum) from the soil. Traditional preparation involves boiling and combination with yak butter and salt in a churn, a method that allows for more of the fluoride to be released into the tea liquor. Not only does the particular tea consumed by the Tibetans contain much more fluoride, the 40-50 cups of tea per day that constitute average daily consumption ensure that intake of the toxins is going to be staggeringly high. Even children consume large quantities of tea, often mixed into tsampa, the traditional roasted flour porridge, a key staple of the Tibetan diet.

The milder, earlier manifestation of fluorine poisoning is dental fluorosis, seen as streaks and pits in the teeth. A remarkably high percentage of Tibetan children exhibit the symptoms of this disease. Ongoing exposure leads to skeletal fluorosis in adulthood, characterized by crippling bone degeneration.

The students love this thick, off-whitish, butter-laced tea. They drink it every day, and as a result nearly 90 percent of them suffer from dental fluorosis. You can tell by looking at their teeth: white but dull, as if stalks of chalk had been implanted in their mouths–results of incomplete calcification of the enamel. Some of their symptoms might progress to permanent brown or black discoloration, chipping, pitting or decay.

High levels of fluoride in Tibetan brick tea were identified in the ’80s, which led to a Chinese research study of the tea and tea drinking habits among the minority populations in Tibet, Mongolia, Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Xinjiang. The cause and effect were clearly identified, leading to efforts at amelioration, including the launch of a program by the Tzu Chi Foundation, the Taiwanese Buddhist relief organization, aimed at bringing safer tea to Tibet. Led by the heroic efforts of Professor Cao Jin of Central South University in Hunan Province, the program has met with a measure of success. The strategy was both reasonable and effective – The organization did not attempt to excise the tea drinking tradition from Tibetan daily life, but researched and found ways of manufacturing lower fluoride content brick tea without a tremendous increase in cost. This new type of brick tea, which was then introduced into select parts of the region, included a binder which helped minimize absorption of the fluoride into the body. Results have been quite promising, with exposure levels among test subjects down to acceptable levels. Despite marked successes among the test populations, the challenge is in convincing the major producers of the brick tea consumed by the Tibetans to alter their growing and production methods to produce a safer product. Currently there are no regulations or incentives to convince them that this needs to happen. The tragedy of the situation is illuminated in this article extract:

Tibet is a Buddhist country. Monks spend long hours chanting sutras, and therefore they drink more tea than ordinary Tibetans. These spiritual cultivators thus have a higher than average rate of severe skeletal fluorosis.

This disease is common outside of temples among secular Tibetans, too. Armar is 72 years old. She wanted to welcome and thank us visitors from afar. She greeted us with a bottle of highland barley wine in her hand. As she tottered towards us, I thought that she already had had too much to drink. Professor Cao examined her and thought that she was probably crippled by a severe case of skeletal fluorosis. Now she couldn’t even do her own hair, much less fetch a pail of water from the courtyard.

But what bothered Armar most of all was that for the last five years she had not been able to prostrate herself in front of statues of the Buddha to show her piety. She, and many others like her suffering from skeletal fluorosis, might be wondering if they were therefore unworthy of the Buddha’s blessings now and after death. Now she doesn’t even go into a temple. “If I can’t prostrate myself to show my respect for the Buddha, what’s the point of visiting a temple?” she thinks.

There are two excellent articles about the noble efforts of Professor Cao and Tzu Chi. The first was written near the beginning of the program in 2002 and the other, quoted above, was written in December of 2007, near the conclusion of the program.

There are a lot of additional sources for further reading:

• Tzuchi offers tea aid to Tibetans
• an article on making butter tea (which does not rely on fluorine-laced tea bricks)
• a good article on the history of tea in Tibet
• The Relationship of Fluorosis and Brick Tea Drinking in Chinese Tibetans
• Safety evaluation and fluorine concentration of Pu’er brick tea and Bianxiao brick tea.
• the section on fluoride absorption by the tea plant is particularly relevant
• Fluoride in Tea

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