UPTON TEA QUARTERLY.Established 1989.

Vol 26 No. 4 Holliston, Massachusetts Fall, 2017

Copyright 2017 Upton Tea Imports, LLC. All rights reserved.

Understanding TasteThe Quest for Flavor

hen professional tea-tasters sip a spoonful of tea, they do so with an enthusiastic slurp that would be considered inappropriate at the dinner table. In an interview published at businessdailynews.com, veteran Tetley tea-taster, Sebastian Michaelis, described the slurping as sounding “pretty horrendous if you’ve not heard it before.” Whether or not the average tea-taster understands the complex flavor cognition system that Gordon M. Shepherd refers to as the human brain flavor system, they have known for over a century that exposing the retronasal receptors to tea vapors, with a pretty horrendous sounding slurp, is essential to proper tea evaluation. Please turn to page 48.

W

TEA-TASTERS DECIDING UPON THE QUALITY AND VALUE

OF A NEW CARGO IN A WHOLESALE WAREHOUSE

A sketch from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, February 12, 1876.

Fall, 2017Page 48 Upton Tea Quarterly

The Quest for FlavorThe front cover illustration, published in

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, wasaccompanied by the following brief article:

By some accounts, there are now only afew hundred professional tea-tasters in theentire world. Just how accurate is that esti-mate? That’s uncertain; many tea profession-als have extensive tasting experience, but tea-tasting is not their primary role.

Those who have successfully joined theexclusive club of official tea-tasters have likelyreceived training at one of the larger tea com-panies, working as an apprentice to hone theirskills and prove their competence. This cantake several years.

Desire, commitment, patience, and akeen palate are a few of the requirements forlong-term success as a tea-taster. The mostsuccessful tea-tasters also possess a distinctphysiological advantage: they are supertasters(i.e., they have an unusually high sensitivityto taste).

Although the term supertaster is relativelynew, the concept has been understood forcenturies, and was documented in JeanAnthelme Brillat-Savarin’s pioneering workon gastronomy, elaborately entitled Physiolo-gie du goût; Ou, Méditations de GastronomieTransendance: ouvrage théorique, historique et àl’ordre du jour (The Physiology of Taste; OrMeditations on Transcendental Gastronomy:Theoretical, Historical, and Practical Work).First published in France in 1825, Brillat-Savarin’s work was translated into English byM. F. K. Fisher in 1936.

Brillat-Savarin understood that the den-sity of “papillae” (taste buds) on the humantongue varied widely, and “some may possesseven three times as many of them as others.”The simplest concept of supertaster is “onewho possesses an unusually high density ofpapillae.” However, Brillat-Savarin under-stood that taste sensation is a complex processinvolving aroma as well as simple “taste”:

... I am not only convince that there is no fullact of tasting without the participation of thesense of smell, but I am also tempted to believethat smell and taste form a single sense, ofwhich ... one serves for the tasting of actualbodies and the other for the savoring of theirgases.

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Fall, 2017 Page 49Upton Tea Quarterly

To clarify his perception, Brillat-Savarinpresented the following example:

He who eats a peach, for instance, is first of allagreeably struck by the perfume which itexhales; he puts a piece of it into his mouth, andenjoys a sensation of tart freshness which inviteshim to continue; but it is not until the instantof swallowing, when the mouthful passes underhis nasal channel, that the full aroma is revealedto him; and this completes the sensation whicha peach can cause. Finally, it is not until it hasbeen swallowed that the man, considering whathe has just experienced will say to himself,“Now that was something really delicious!”Professional tea-tasters long ago perfected

a process that allowed them to fully evaluatethe character of a spoonful of tea with a sim-ple, robust slurp. The need to evaluate hun-dreds of teas in a single day does not allowtime to dwell at length on each tea. Separatedfrom the demands of their profession, how-ever, most tea-tasters (and others that haveawakened their sense of taste) will take extratime to savor the flavors of foods that othersmight consume with indifference.

In response to the last article in the UptonTea Quarterly, one of our long-time customershappened to mention that his father, Henry F.Semke, was a professional tea-taster for theOtto Gerdau Company in Manhattan. Thetime frame was post-World War II throughthe 1950s, a period during which the Ameri-can food industry was undergoing a majortransition. Small, local family farms werebeing replaced by large-scale, industrializedagriculture and, about the same time, the eraof fast-food and junk-food was rapidly gain-ing momentum.

Mr. Semke was a highly regarded tea-taster. He was known for his ability to ascer-tain not only the origin of each tea from a sin-gle sip, but also the local weather conditionsthat affected the flavor of the tea.

While employed as a tea-taster, Mr.Semke roasted and blended coffee for afriend’s company in Brooklyn. He also devel-oped his own line of quality teas, which weresold by mail in the 1950s. His list of six teascovered the popular spectrum of tea offeringsof the time.

Mr. Semke was an epicure, and his wifewas a gourmet cook. His interest in food waswell understood by his family, but they wereshocked when he suddenly announced thathe had purchased a farm in Pennsylvania,which would become the Semkes’ new home.There they raised food for the table, as well ashay, corn, and wheat for their organic beef.On the side, Mr. Semke roasted and blendedcoffee for a company in York, Pennsylvania.

Farming is not easy, but the availability ofseasonally fresh food at the peak of harvest is agreat benefit. Perhaps Mr. Semke forsaw thenegative trend in industrial food production.

Christmas promotional advertisement ofHenry F. Semke, Purveyor of Fine Teas.

Featured item is an English tea caddy, with apound of tea for $5.50 postpaid. Tea options:Darjeeling, China Congou, Jasmine, Formosa

Oolong, Lapsang Souchong, and Japan Green.

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Fall, 2017Page 50 Upton Tea Quarterly

While Brillat-Savarin was ahead of histime in understanding the sensation of taste,he humbly asserted that others “... who willcome after us will know much more than weof this subject; and it cannot be disputed thatit is chemistry which will reveal the causes ofthe basic elements of taste.” What Brillat-Savarin did not predict, however, was that asscientists further explored the sensation oftaste, a new profession of food-scientist wouldarise. Chemistry, physiology, and neurosci-ence would not only explain taste, the sci-ences would also lead to the development ofengineered food products, packed with highconcentrations of engineered flavors.

In recent years, a number of captivatingbooks have documented the fascinating topicof taste, the food industry’s machinationswith our senses, and the way in which flavordrives our eating paradigms. Mark Schatzker’sThe Dorito Effect; The Surprising New TruthAbout Food and Flavor (2015) and JohnMcQuaid’s Tasty; The Art and Science of WhatWe Eat (2016) are excellent examples.

A brief stroll down the snack isle of asupermarket reveals much about the scope ofthe food industry. It began just after WorldWar II in Ireland, when potato chip entrepre-neur, Joe Murphy, wanted to differentiate hisproduct from the vast competition amongU.K. producers. Dusting chips with onionpower and cheese powder proved wildly suc-cessful. A third flavored chip was introducedby dusting chips with both cheese and onionpowders. America soon followed with barbe-cue chips and sour cream and onion chips.

Mark Schatzker’s explanation for the pop-ularity of flavored chips that began in the1960s is simple: natural foods were losing fla-vor, and flavor enhancers were making up forthat loss:

Fruits, grains, meat, and vegetables were them-selves losing flavor. The corn Frito-Lay used tomake Fritos in the 1960s looked just like thecorn Elmer Doolin used when he founded theFrito Company in 1932. But it didn’t taste thesame, because by 1967 an American corn farmwas growing nearly three times as much corn asit had thirty years earlier. There was more corn,

but it tasted weaker, like a lesser version of itself.Corn was getting bland. So were potatoes. Thesame year Elmer Doolin started making Fritos,Herman W. Lay got into the potato chip busi-ness. Back then, a typical American potatofarmer produced about sixty-three sacks of pota-toes for every acre. By the mid 1960s, it was upto two hundred sacks. And just like corn, thepotatoes in those sacks didn’t taste as “potatoey.”That problem could be solved. The gatheringvoid of blandness was filled by industry. Usingthe most sophisticated analytical technology ofthe era, scientists isolated the mysterious chemi-cals that humans experience as flavor, and thecompanies they worked for began manufactur-ing them and selling them to food companies,which added them to their products. You cansee those chemicals right there on a 1968 pack-age of taco Doritos represented by a single,exceptionally vague word: “Flavorings.”According to Shatzker, the original Taco

Doritos listed eleven ingredients, while therecently introduced Jacked Ranch Dipped HotWings Doritos lists thirty-four!

There are seventeen varieties of Doritos,assuming others haven’t been released sincethat figure was published. Impressive? Howabout twenty-nine varieties of Pringles,including Milk Chocolate, White Chocolateand XTRA Screamin’ Dill Pickle?

The common phrase, “you are what youeat,” is a paraphrase of Brillat-Savarin’s apho-rism, “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tellyou what you are.” In her English translationof Brillat-Savarin’s work, M. F. K. Fisher sug-gests another: “Tell me how you eat, and Ishall tell you what you are.”

As we learn more about the value ofproper nourishment, how it relates to ourhealth and sense of well-being, it is importantto understand what those who have studiedtaste and flavor have been telling us for centu-ries: we need to eat to live, but proper foods,prepared well and enjoyed either alone or inthe presence of amicable company, easily per-suade us to “live to eat.”

We all have been eating from earliestchildhood, but learning what to eat and howto eat is a life-long education process. A tree-ripened peach, eaten slowly and deliberately,is a valuable lesson. If that’s not at your fin-gertips, how about a sensational cup of tea,sipped slowly, with a buttered scone? Cheersto your health!

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