Thailand - Tea by Origin
Our Special Select Thai Origin Tea:
Ming Thai Oolong - Item: MTO-05 – Standard Min: 11Lbs [Kosher]
Origin: Chaing Mai, Thailand. This is a lightly oxidized (approximately 10%) Oolong has great qualities across a range of steeping times. Overall the character is mild, with rich nutty notes and a light sweetness with green overtones. This is a very exotic tea. We suggest using 2 grams for one cup with 2000 to boiling water, steeped 3 to 6 minutes.
Country Statistics
Area: 313,026 sq.miles (514,000 sq km)
Capital: Bangkok
Main Cities: Chiang Mai, Sattahip, Laem Chabang
Languages: Thai, English, Regional Dialects
Religions: Buddhist, Muslim
Map of Thailand
Overview of Thailand Tea Production
The first unified Thai kingdom was established in the mid-14th century. Known as Siam until 1939, Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country never to have been taken over by a European power. A bloodless revolution in 1932 led to a constitutional monarchy. In alliance with Japan during World War II, Thailand became a US ally following the conflict.
Although Thailand was never a tea drinking country historically, Thai tea is quite common throughout. Most are familiar with the thick sweet treat that is Thai tea. It typically consists of black tea with Star Anise, food coloring, sometimes other spices and condensed milk. It is served either hot or over ice.
The tea plant is native to northern Thailand, but the Thais themselves do not have a long established tea drinking tradition. Thailand and its close neighbor Burma do have a tea eating tradition however. An ancient recipe calls for green tea leaves pickled in brine, which is eaten as a vegetable. The salty, tart, slightly bitter pickle that results called Miang in the local dialect, is a strange tea to Western tastes. Not your typical cuppa.
The relatively recent story of how steeped tea cultivation came to Thailand is rather fascinating, including a bit of history that touches upon the Chinese revolution of 1949 and the Cold War period.
In late 1949 a portion of Chiang-kei Shek's Nationalist Army in Yunnan (called the Guo-min-dang, or KMT) became separated form the main force. In the meantime, the defeated Nationalist Army fled to Taiwan, leaving behind the separated "Lone Army" of former Yunnan KMT regulars. Isolated but not dispirited, these soldiers led guerilla raids against the People's Liberation Army. Eventually however, they were driven south into Burma, where they continued to harass the Communists. In 1960-1961, they were driven out of Burma into northern Thailand, where their assimilation was only partially complete.
For decades, displaced KMT warriors ran illegal operations in the Golden Triangle: gem and drug smuggling, black marketing and similar activities. Eventually, through education in government schools and innovative programs such as the Royal Project for Crop Replacement, which offered alternative (legitimate) livelihoods, a new generation of immigrants assimilated culturally and economically into Thai society. Tea farming was one of the legal options. Coming from China's Yunnan Province, the homeland of tea, naturally tea growing and tea making was one of the new economic activities chosen by the new Thais. The first tea plants were imported from China and Taiwan and introduced into the highlands of Chiang Mai Province in the late 1980's. The Taiwanese Tea Grower's Association, wanting to support their former KMT compatriots, sent tea experts in to provide technical agricultural support to the fledgling growers. Two clonal tea varieties, know locally as No. 12 and No. 17 (ber sip-song & ber sup-jet in Thai), were widely planted bringing about more consistent leaf quality, greater productivity and resistance to disease.
Today, what began as a primitive Chinese enclave engrossed in illegal activities in the hills surrounding Mae Salong Village, has now become a legitimate, cohesive, economic community, dotted with independent tea gardens producing Oolong tea. It is a beautiful, cool tea village and a vibrant rural economy, with its own schools, small hotels, Chinese and Thai restaurants, and regrettably, its own convenience stores and video arcades as well.
The style of tea produced in the tea village is predominately the classic Formosa type. A tightly rolled, gray-green to greenish partially oxidized leaf produced in the style of Tung Ting, in Taiwan's Nantou Province. The tea produced in Mae Salong sells well in the local Thai tea market and is sought after by Thai hotels, spas, and food stores. A portion of the best leaf is exported to Europe, notably to Mariage Freres, Paris, and to the Taiwan market. It is still virtually unknown in the U.S.
Common to most stories about the spread of tea, Thai tea found its roots in the midst of war, but a civil, rather than a colonial war. Thai tea was not established by a colonial power attempting to exploit natural resources and cheap labor. It was established in the hills by the progeny of a defeated force, retreating from the victorious Communist PLA forces. This is a unique bit of history, a fascinating side bar, as tea frequently is, to the machinations of the world's nation-states.