When asked what the key to a successful blend is, the first word that comes is “love,” love of the plant and love of the producer, from which stems a desire to always enhance the products and never distort them.
Bringing consciousness to tasting, not just in the sensory experience of the mouth or intellect, but also in the body. Sometimes these approaches face each other: the very Western sommelier side, especially French, and the very experiential Chinese approach.
A tea enclave has emerged amid the Pyrénees Mountains, a natural barrier between France and Spain that runs over 430 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. A young agronomist, Lucas Ben-Moura established a new terroir in the Argelès-Gazost valley, a few kilometers south of Lourdes.
Misako Lelong-Nohsoh shows us that Japanese green tea is nothing to fear. She takes away the formality of the Japanese tea ceremony and introduces us to Japanese green tea as she wants us to experience it: as a beverage like wine, coffee, or black tea that is woven into the everyday fabric of our lives. This is the delightful story of her journey from Japan to France and from violist to Japanese Green Tea Ambassador.
Katrin Rougeventre’s journey is a singular one. She is France’s leading expert on Chinese tea and Chinese culture and has contributed to its diffusion in Europe. Among all the great French tea experts, what distinguishes Katrin is undoubtedly her roots in Asia, where her entire gustatory and sensory training took place.
The world of smells is closely linked to our experience. We work on memory, and so everyone describes tea with different terms. My role as a tea taster is to understand each one and say, “you are actually talking about the same compound.”
A pioneer tea sommelier in France and the author of several reference books on tea, Lydia Gautier has been a consultant for many international brands. Her 25 years of experience and proximity to producers have led her to become one of the major figures in tea expertise in the world, and in 2107 to create her own brand, Lydia Gautier Thés et Tisanes.
With its 1,800 hectares of soil, the Jersey Royal is spoilt for choice when it comes to deciding where to plant tea. The islands’ acid soil is perfect for the tea plant to grow. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, Jersey winters are mild, without any risk of frost, while summers are moderately warm and sunny. The island’s high humidity also provides ideal conditions for the tea plants to thrive.
The Léonard region of Brittany in Northern France has been considered a land of plenty for centuries; but who would have thought that a tea perfectly expressing the alliance between land and sea would grow from its soil?
In 2014 in Brittany, France, Denis and Weizi Mazerolle processed 50 grams of their very first green tea using traditional Chinese methods. The tea had its own typicity, expressing aquatic, greeny, and seaweedy notes, it was a pure evocation of its terroir. Two thousand trees now make their garden, Filleule des fées, one of the largest in Europe.
Pionnière dans le domaine de la sommellerie du thé et auteure de plusieurs ouvrages de référence sur le thé, Lydia Gautier a été consultante pour des marques internationales. Ses 25 années d’expérience et de proximité avec des producteurs l’ont conduite à devenir une des figures majeures de l’expertise du thé dans le monde, et à créer en 2107 sa propre marque, Lydia Gautier Thés et Tisanes. En 2021, elle préside le jury technique des thés monovariétals du concours de l’Association de Valorisation des Produits Agricoles (AVPA) qui récompense les meilleurs thés de spécialité.