NaNoTeaMo, Day 6: “Defining a Doke Tea State of Mind”
Doke
/’dōk/
noun
verb
Let’s talk a little about terroir.
It’s a word usually bandied about by wine folks in order to sound “edumacated”. Blame the French. The word “terroir” derives from the French word “terre”, which literally means “land”. Terroir, as a concept, is applied to plants that are influenced by the “land” where they grow. Geology, geography, climate, and other aspects of the biosphere affect what grows in certain ways. And especially in the case of wine, coffee and tea, the taste of said terroir shows up in the finished product.
Tea plants are especially absorbent of their environment. Case in point (as I’ve mentioned in prior articles), Hawaiian teas taste distinctly . . . well . . . tropically Hawaiian. Wuyi cliff teas taste rather . . . uh . . . cliffy. [Credit: Nicole Martin] And teas from the Himalayas take on a grapy bend, for some reason.
Which brings me back to Doke Tea. Yet again.
Seriously, I think I’ve written about this tea garden more than any other. I can’t help it. Their teas are awesome, the Lochan family is awesome, and I feel awesome when drinking their wares.
Of the four or five types of teas this garden in Bihar, India produces, I’ve noticed a common underlying flavor profile. It’s difficult to describe, and far different from any other Indian tea growing region. Something about the terroir near the Doke River imparts an ever-present, honey-nut-spice taste trifecta. A trinity of taster notes that is especially present in their flagship black tea – Black Fusion.
I have a very interesting relationship with this tea. One would if they’ve written about it three times. After three successive growing seasons. Only now do I realize how wonderful an opportunity that was, to see a tea’s evolution and growth over the course of a year. And in February of this year, Vivek Lochan offered me a chance to try their 2015 first flush Black Fusion.
A slight digression: The journey of this tea to my cup was especially frustrating. I wasn’t at my apartment when the package arrived, so the courier left a note telling me where to pick it up. The next day, I went to fetch it after work . . . two towns away. I made the trek only to find out that they delivered it to my apartment complex’s office.
Well, why the hell didn’t you do that the FIRST time?! I said to myself (but not out loud).
Two months would go by before I dipped into the new batch of Black Fusion. The day I finally decided to brew it up, my Internet died. I needed something to calm me amidst the downtime.
The leaves were gorgeous – brown-to-black, large, plump, and obviously hand-rolled. The smell was like last year’s various flushes of Black Fusion I tried – equal parts honey-like, malty, nutty and slightly spicy. The Doke terroir was in full effect, and I was pleased to see it again.
I approached it like I would any other Indian first flush tea, with a little bit of a light touch. I used about a teaspoon of leaves. (Although, with how large they were, it was more like a tablespoon.) I put them in a 6oz. steeper cup filled with 200F water, and waited for three minutes.
The result was a dark amber liquor with a deep-bodied, honey-nut machismo to the aroma. When I tasted it, I noticed immediately that it was different than last year’s offerings. The introduction was smooth and sultry, like a dark-haired Latina in a silk dress. As I kept it on my tongue, the honey-nut-spice thing it had going came to the forefront, but absent was the usual astringency that followed. That was the puzzling part. There was no astringency, or at least none that I could detect.
I’ve become sort of an expert on the Doke flagship tea, at this point. I even adamantly declared that August 2014’s batch of the tea was my favorite, May was second, and December rounded out third. All were wonderful; all were different. But they all had a rough character to them. This year’s batch was like a distilled whiskey or a matured wine. It was Black Fusion refined – terroir transcendent.
A day or so after I did my solo tasting, I was greeted with a photo posted to my Facebook Wall.
It read: “Iced Black Fusion from Doke in their office in Siliguri, jealous?”
Phil “World Tea House” Holmans had visited the Doke Tea Estate with a bunch of other tea folks I knew. Jealous? Oh yes, quite a bit. Those lucky bastitches were sampling Doke teas straight from the terroir! My only reaction to this was to drink. A lot. Not sure if it was my seething jealousy, or my poor impulse control, but I went on a total Doke bender that week.
During a chat session with other tea bloggers (Rachel, Jo, Nicole, Other Nicole, and Chris, respectively), I was hopped up on Doke Silver Needle white tea.
About three pints of it.
A mere day after that, I prepped my daily travel mug with some Doke Rolling Thunder oolong.
And brewed it at double the usual strength. Coworkers noted that I was a tad off the wall. One girl even said, “I like you like this.” I was too hyper to properly manblush.
I concluded the week taking the last vestiges of my first flush 2015 Black Fusion . . . and blending it with the two 2014s I had in my possession.
Yes, individually, they all tasted differently, but put together . . . magic ensued. It was like the honey-nut-spice terroir was somehow amplified. All the creamy, sweet, spicy, malty, nutty, and majestic aspects coalesced into the ultimate tasting experience. Like I was tasting pure Doke.
Toward the conclusion of this brew-binge, a friend of mine dubbed me a “Doke dork”. I had no rebuttal to that. If I had, I probably would’ve answered like some terroir-spouting wine snob, “I can quit whenever I want.”
I picked a helluva month to quit drinkin’.
Okay, not “quit”, per se, but definitely a self-imposed sabbatical toward beer. A beerbatical, if you will. Over the last couple of years, I’d naval-gazed my relationship with alcohol. Sure, I didn’t overdue it often, but questionable decisions had been made. That and it was no longer as “social” a beverage as it once was.
I hung out with maybe five other dudes who drank – never all at once. That’s not a party; that’s a Family Guy episode. And I won’t even go into the missing hubcap on my car.
As a result of this catharsis, I decided a break was in order. I wish I’d known what was ahead of me before I did so. Work drama, matters of the heart, and other familiar growing pains manifested in rapid succession. Good things were happening, true, but they were automatically offset by a perpetual feeling of being kneed in the groin.
I needed an outlet – a social one.
Enter the Portland Tea MeetUp group.
Tea – the beverage that never steered me wrong. I drank it often, but I was rarely social with it. Sure, I was social online about my tea consumption, but rarely in real life. There was a burgeoning tea community present in Portland, but I stuck to its periphery like some kind of creeper with a cup. I thought it high time to change that.
As luck would have it, a meet-up was scheduled for this weekend. The reason? Freaking tubas!!! In Downtown Portland, situated at Pioneer Square, was a holiday tuba concert. Tubas…playing Christmas carols. And we would drink tea during it.
Everything about that sounded amazing.
The biggest issue for me? Finding the perfect tea to bring. The internal struggle didn’t last long. I chose the best black tea I’d had all year.
Black Fusion, Autumn Flush 2014, from the Doke Tea Estate.
Yes, I’m aware I’ve already written about it. There’s even a Batman Brews video floating around extolling its virtues. But that was only the first flush version. The one I had in my possession now was the autumn flush. And it was perfect.
Like the first flush, there were notes of nuts, spice and malt – betraying it’s assamica heritage – but for the autumnal crop, there was an added nuance. I didn’t quite put my finger on it until the day I brewed it for the tuba gathering. There was a strong sensation I had while tasting it that reminded me of honey. The autumn flush was sweeter and more textured than the first.
*Sigh* Oh yeah…back to the meet-up.
I was almost late to the gathering. Traffic was a particularly artful brand of “SUCK!” that day, and I had a prior engagement on the other side of town. Along with my expected road rage was a feeling of…dread. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t socialized with tea before, but rather that I wasn’t particularly good at it. I’m a bit of a geek, can’t help it.
Luckily, so were they. The moment I arrived, I felt like I was in like company. Three folks brought canisters of chai. One particular gent was rockin’ two travel carafes. One held a high-oxidized Taiwanese oolong; the other, a seven-year-aged purple varietal pu-erh. I partook of both.
The purple varietal…oh my.
Another of the group members brought cups and homemade banana bread for the sharing. It went perfectly with…well…everything. Particularly with the tea.
And in the background, tubas played. The square was jam-packed with people, however. I think I caught a glimpse of, maybe, one tuba – two at the most – until the crowd dispersed. If I had one complaint about the performance, it was that the carols they chose were too down-tempo. If you’re rockin’ a gosh-durned tuba, you must have bombastic carols in your rotation. “Little Drummer Boy”, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”, etcetera. While the concert was nice, it faded into background noise over conversations of tea and general geekery.
I did have moments of occasional social faux pas, though, particularly when I uttered the line, “I am a man, and the world is my toilet!” Yes, I was sober. Tea drunk, maybe…but sober.
In closing, I think I could get used to this “tea socializing” thing.
Next time, I’ll work on the tact.
I want to introduce you all to the oldest tea tool in my arsenal.
This li’l guy has been in my tea retinue for the better part of five years. That’s longer than any teacup, gaiwan, electric kettle, tin or pot. He first turned up in bag of Chrysanthemum Silver Needle I purchased in 2009, and he’s been with me ever since. You – fair reader – may have seen him show up in more than one photo on this blog. Until about a month ago, I didn’t realize the significance of that.
A blue plastic scoop – useful for its simple ability to measure out a teaspoon or tablespoon of leaves – has been with me for as long as I’ve been writing about tea.
And, yet, the li’l guy doesn’t even have a name. I should change that. I dub thee…uh…Scoopy.
Eh, good enough.
Anyway, I wanted to commemorate the fifth anniversary of this useful, yet seemingly-insignificant tool in a special way. Alas, I couldn’t think of one. Then a package arrived this week.
It was from Lochan Tea!
The week before, Vivek Lochan informed me that I would be receiving a delivery of 2014 first flush Darjeelings, as well as a couple of teas from their family-owned tea estate – Doke. I’d covered their estate in the past, and three of the teas they produced. To call them great would be an understatement.
Of the two new Doke wares was their new flagship handmade black tea – one simply dubbed “Black Fusion”. I’d been looking forward to trying this new experiment for months. And I was even more stoked to be one of the first Doke fanboys to write about it.
A quick aside: The moment I got the package, my 14-year-old niece barged into my room. Her eyes instantly turned to the package.
She said, “Oooo, you got a package?!”
“Yep,” I replied. “Tea.”
“Can I pet it with my foot?” she asked…already caressing it with her foot.
“No!” I bellowed, swatting her away.
Then I went to digging.
Amidst the Darjeelings, I found it in a simple bag. I could think of no better way to celebrate a Scoopaversary than with a new, never-before-seen black tea. It was brewin’ time.
The leaves for this were…simply beautiful.
Typically, hand-crafted teas come in two varieties – largely un-tampered with and just “there”, or beautiful/thoughtfully pressed. This was the latter. So much care seemed to be put into the visual presentation – like an oolong, only twinier. The aroma was similar to Doke’s other semi-oxidized offering – their Rolling Thunder oolong – only more robust. There was a malty/woodsy underpinning along with a Dian Hong-ish peppery profile. Very unusual for an Indian tea.
I had absolutely no idea how to brew this one, to be honest. There weren’t any pre-made brewing instructions on the Lochan Tea site for it, and there weren’t any other bloggers’ prior notes to go off of. This was new territory, folks. New tea, new approach. So, I chanced a typical, touchy black tea approach – 1 teaspoon in li’l Scoopy, a 6oz. steeper cup, boiled water, and a three-minute steep.
The liquor brewed light-to-medium amber – a very oolong-y color. Aromatically, the cuppa steam was nutty, slightly earthy, and possessed the malty presence I was expecting. Not unlike the Doke Rolling Thunder in this regard.
As for taste?
It was like someone took a Malawi-grown black tea and drenched Bihar’s soil with it. And the bushes that this black tea sprang from ended up with that profile, plus a Darjeeling/Assam hybrid presence. This was unlike any other Indian tea I’d ever tasted. For a first flush tea, it had a second flush body with an autumnal flavor kick. “Nutty,” in both definitions of the word. As far as experiments go, this was great right out of the starting gate.
My only regret is that I didn’t have more to play with. Luckily, the teaspoon of leaves I’d used lasted two more infusions. Each with their own flavor profile of revolving nuts and malt. My hat (if I was wearing one) goes off to the Lochan family. This is probably my favorite of their excellent pantheon of Doke-grown wares.
I couldn’t think of a better tea to commemorate Scoopy’s “birthaversary” with.
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