GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / AMONG THE VINES – There is nothing quite like a sip of 100-year-old Pu’er tea unless it’s a 2009 Chateau Fleur de Petrus wine from Bordeaux.
They make odd siblings, but the genes are there: Mother Earth, Father Sky, with terroir products par excellence as the offspring.
Bordeaux is a quick one-hour from Geneva on EasyJet, so when I was invited to join a tasting session for vintage teas from China’s Yunnan Province and vintage Bordeaux wines, in Libourne, I said yes. The rationale for the event Monday evening was the twinning for commercial and cultural purposes of Bordeaux’s town of Libourne and Yunnan’s Pu’er.
Libourne sits at the crossroads of three wine regions, Saint-Emilion–Pomerol–Fronsac.
Pu’er is high in the western mountains of China, with one of its most famous tea-growing areas, Mount Jingmai, nearby.
I’ve been a huge fan of Chinese teas since I rode my bike across China in 1985, shortly after I was given my first wine-writing assignments by Time magazine. Over the years I’ve gained more knowledge of both and the parallels between tea and wine, at the top end, seem more and more apparent.
The Bordeaux tasting session in Libourne added to that sense.
What is less obvious is how to help Chinese connaisseurs of fine tea learn to appreciate fine wine, and lovers of great Bordeaux to find the exquisiteness in an excellent cup of tea. The initial enthusiasm of new markets for both is easing and the hard reality has arrived, learning how to step into another culture.
The tea ceremony: condensing opera into small scenes and nature into a teapot
Pu’er Chinese tea ceremony in Libourne, FranceThe tea master who led the first part of the tasting session, the Pu’Er teas, described the Chinese approach to a tea ceremony as bringing together sky and Earth – their bounty – in a teapot.
The performance that accompanied our tea ceremony was, she said, like a small version of Chinese opera, just as tea is a small version of nature, the idea of terroir.
Points in common
The parallel was clear for anyone who loves terroir wines, including Bordeaux’s best. Soil, climate, weather and sunshine from the sky combine to give artisans grapes they can work with to make some of the best wines in the world.
There was talk of a Chinese version of the French Paradox – the discovery that French people in the southwest who eat foie gras and drink wine regularly have lower rates of heart disease – because Pu’er tea is widely appreciated throughout Asia for its health properties, particularly its beneficial effects on digestion and its reputation for clearing fattiness from the system, akin to lowering cholesterol.
In Yunnan, the constant 21C temperatures, the mountain mists, ancient forests of indigenous large-leaf tea trees and fertile soil provide some of the best conditions for a variety of teas grown and prepared according to traditions that date back 1,000 years.
Near Libourne, the varying soils of the three wine regions, coupled with its climate and a long tradition of blending Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc grapes has made these Bordeaux wines famous for centuries.
The teas
Small tea-gathering baskets resemble larger wine grape onesWe first tasted a light Pu’er unfermented green tea, alongside a Pu’er red, or fermented tea, both of them young, to help us smell and taste the difference. The light was refreshing with a very delicate hint of orchid, while the red was what most people probably think of when they hear of Pu’er teas: a dark red tea with a woody, sometimes bitter taste that can seem medicinal the first time you taste it.
It grows on you. I first sampled it in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, where every other shop seemed to be a tea boutique with tasting areas. It was nothing like my idea of Chinese green tea and I wondered how these hard cakes and bricks of tea could do such a thriving business.
By the end of a week there I was buying a stock to take home.
The region has several teas, unfermented white and green, as well as fermented red and black – the “black” tea is a darker version of red and is not the same as Indian black tea or what people in the West generally consider black tea.
A series of short performances by costumed dancers who also prepared our tea evoked similarities to the world of grapes and wine, from the baskets for picking tea that look very like smaller versions of those used by grape pickers, to the elegant tea-making utensils, china cups and presentation that brought to mind the equipment and finesse of the best sommeliers.
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The vintage teas were 30, 50 and 100 years old. We were encouraged to nibble on the small plain cakes with a dried fruit centre. Next to the cakes were the baskets of small bread squares to nibble on during our wine tasting, another parallel between wine and tea “cultures”.
Chinese delegation samples Bordeaux vintage wines, after tea tasting sessionMy table neighbour who is a wine journalist and not a tea drinker told me later that although he could appreciate the differences he was a bit lost trying to identify anything in particular in the “nose” of the tea. For my part, the first was pleasant but the most bitter, the second the most perfumed with orchid and woodland nose, and the third the most balanced, what the Chinese called a “sweeter” tea – nothing to do with the sweet of sugar, but rather what a wine drinker would call good structure with excellent mouthfeel.
Having just written the previous sentence, I smugly discovered that tea expert Austin Yoder has written, “Mouthfeel is one of the most overlooked qualities of a tea, and if there were one thing we could get everyone in the tea world to pay attention to (that many currently don’t) – it would be mouthfeel.” Yoder also talks about the importance of “finish” to tea, making the point that both wine and tea offer, when very good, offer a finish that unfolds and lingers, in an article “Adapting the language of wine to tea”.
I would happily drink more 100-year-old tea, made from a tea brick that has been carefully stored and preserved.
I’m not sure I’d know how to explain what I was drinking though, for the language to describe tea hasn’t really made the leap from Chinese to English or French. Bitter has negative connotations in English, but bitterness will always be a part of tea, especially Pu’er teas which are particularly high in polyphenals.
I’m afraid my description wouldn’t pass muster in the tea industry, where professionals have their own glossary.
The kings of Bordeaux: three of the great wines
Bordeaux wines tasted alongside Pu’er teas in LibourneThis was more familiar territory to most of the people in the room. We had three wines, all from excellent vintages: a Chateau Cheval Blanc 2010, followed by a 2004 Bélair Monange, and a 2009 Chateau La Fleur-Pàtrus.
The wines as they were presented by the chateaus:
Chateau Cheval Blanc 2010
The Chateau Cheval Blanc has a luscious deep red colour and a nose that immediately offers a rich palette of fruits – black currant and ripe red fruits with notes of bergamot orange zest and fresh verveine. I had trouble finding the verveine at first but the bergamot was very present. I really loved the floral notes that appeared when we dutifully followed instructions to swirl our glasses. Roses and violets rose to the occasion.
The wine was described as having a mineral layer, with a nod to the trendiness of the term “mineral” when talking about wines. Here it adds “fresh and pure notes” and provides excellent balance between the tannins and the good acidity of the wine. In mouth the tannins were wonderfully smooth and silky for such a young Bordeaux and the finish was long and exquisite.
Chateau Bélair Monange 2004
Chateau Bélair Monange is a Saint-Emilion winery owned by Jean-Pierre Moueix, the old Bordeaux negotiants now led by Christian Moueix. The firm also owns Chateau Chateau La Fleur-Pétrus, our third wine. Bélair Monange was once considered one of the glories of Bordeaux and the Moueix family, which acquired it in 2008, is working to bring it back to its former splendour with a replanting programme. The chateau has 45 vine parcels on 39 hectares and the blend is made from various terroirs, with the wines selected only after they have matured for four to five months. It’s a mix in many ways: the soils which range from limestone to clay on limestone on the slopes to sand, vines that are 5 to 80 years old, three grape varieties (Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon).
I loved the nose of this wine, an extraordinary treat, with red fruit, then flowers (violet), menthol which gives it freshness. Our guide also noted licorice, which I didn’t find.
In mouth, the wine opens fully mid-mouth and I was surprised that this seemed to be its peak, until we were told this is intentional, a style that suits these wines: “We’re not looking for a long finish but rather a mouth that is fresh, with fullness mid-mouth.”
Chateau La Fleur-Pétrus Pomerol
Christian Moueix leading a tasting session with his elegant Chateal La Fleur-PétrusArguably one of Bordeaux’s finest wines, along with Chateau Pétrus which is just across the road. The winery acquired a gravelly hill in 1992 which owner Christian Moueix told us has been a wonderful addition, with the stones retaining heat during the day and releasing it at night.
The red of this wine was more somber than our first two wines.
The nose is all rich black cherries – I wondered if the Chinese delegation followed his explanation that this is black cherry and definitely not red (cherries are often imported luxury items and those that are grown in China, mainly in the northeast of the country, are usually a sweet red variety). Notes of violet follow.
In mouth: simply gorgeous is my first thought. Less acidity than the others, which Moueix tells us is thanks to the heat from the gravelly soil. The grapes are macerated 8-10 days. “If we went for 20 to 30 days we’d have black wine” he tells the Chinese guest, not as desirable as black tea. “This is a powerful, supple wine, which you can already tell by the nose,” he says, glass in hand. Plum skins come to mind.
It’s also very easy to drink, “marvelously supple”, which he attributes to the Merlot. The vineyard is 80 percent Merlot and 20 percent Cabernet Franc. It’s thanks to Merlot that Bordeaux wines became hugely popular in the US after the second world war. “You don’t have to know a lot about wine to appreciate Merlot.”
The 2009 is one of the very best of the 43 vintages he’s produced, one of the most generous. “The challenge in such a year is to harvest at precisely the right moment. When I was young we harvested exactly 100 days from the moment when the vines were in full flower. This year that would mean 26 September – but the grapes would be just at the start of their maturity,” he notes, and would give a wine that is “more energetic, more lively than the wines today, but probably with a somewhat better aging capacity.”
Now the winery waits abut 105 days, so the harvest is likely to take place around 1 October this year.
Bordeaux’s great expectations from a few years ago of massive sales of fine wine to China haven’t been realized and while Chinese buyers were very much present at Vinexpo in the city of Bordeaux this week, there is an air of dampened hopes that surfaced when I talked to wine experts at this industry
Whether or not the Libourne cultural exchange will result in more sales of Bordeaux in China or more tea in France is hard to say, but it may have helped both cultures realize how far they have to go to really understand how similar but different wine and tea are. The drop by drop approach to learning about both is probably a more realistic approach to sharing their cultures; the benefit is that each drop is its own reward, appreciated a little bit more with each sip.