An afternoon with Doctor Oolong

On top of everything else she’s doing — permit procurement, landlord negotiations, menu planning — Tina Rosenzweig is forever meeting with vendors as we make plans for what to serve and who will provide it. But it’s been a while since the rest of us have had a chance to test out this or that product, since we’re all running around focused on our own various tasks. So it was especially nice recently when some of us — Julie, Tina, Susan Price and me — took a bit of time to sit down and have tea together. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill tea party. It was a tasting headed up by Jeffrey Lorien, who co-owns Zhi Tea with his partner, Candice Oneida.

The pair are self-described “tea freaks from Seattle,” who, after spending a year deciding that their move to New York was not the right one, decided instead to settle in Austin. Both wanting career changes, they turned to the obvious choice, the thing for which they share an equal, over-the-top passion. Tea.

Hence Zhi Tea was born. “We saw some tea companies with some sustainable practices and some high end good tea. But we wanted to do more than that. No one had the whole package. So we decided we’d do the best website, aim for massive customer satisfaction, sell organic only, fair trade tea, teach traditional methods of preparation and become a world class tea company.”

And so they’ve set about it, customer-by-customer, spreading the gospel of tea to a population that seems, sometimes, way too (pardon the pun) steeped in coffee. Jeffrey encounters his fair share of hurdles on a regular basis, including people who ask questions like Does tea still come from a plant?

Education being part of his very diverse background, it’s clear from his presentation that Jeffrey, who sometimes refers to himself as Dr. Oolong, gets geek-level joy from describing his passion to others. He’s got a bit of a nutty professor factor going, hopping from topic to topic as he steeps and pours first one pot and then another, rattling off facts as he goes. These range from specific information about the actual teas to how they’re learning as they go with the business. (One example being how a change from foil packets to clear, re-sealable packets had the dual benefit of allowing customers to see the product and saved the company money.)

Currently Zhi offers 65 teas that range across the spectrum of super high end to more basic varieties. Rooibos, he explains is a red tea, from South Africa. It’s very nutty, caffeine free, and has 40 times for antioxidants than green tea. Zhi uses rooibos as a blending base. White Pomegranate, a blend we sample, has a base of white tea, which is the least processed of all, plucked from spring growth and sun dried. Zhi offers white tea from India, where it is grown using plants from China, its source of origin. This tea is awesome and luscious and, though we’re drinking it hot, Jeffrey informs us we’d be wise to try it iced sometime, too.

More samples, more facts. Silver Needle is the highest grade of tea, once reserved for royalty. But it’s very subtle and so a lot of folks don’t have the palate to appreciate it fully. Long jing is pan-fried green tea, grassy and slightly sweet. Oolong tea can be either slightly or highly oxidized, covering a spectrum so broad that some oolong tastes like you’re drinking flowers while a different cup could be malty and roasty flavored.. Black tea is fully oxidized.

The tea is fun to taste — some of it really grabs us, some of it makes us ponder the capacity of our taste buds. But the real thrill is watching Jeffrey do his thing, passion infusing every word that comes out of his mouth, like when he’s ticking off how he can tell the temperature of a pot of hot water based on whether it’s barely bubbling (165 degrees), or if bubbles or starting to rise (185 degrees), or if its at a rolling boil (over 200 degrees).

Still more facts are offered as we continue to sip away. We discover common tea mistakes (over steeping), and learn that green tea is the most finicky, preferring a lower temperature and shorter steeping time. White pomegranate is a “fluffy” tea, a half-pound of it taking up as much storage space as a pound of something else would.

And we hear testimony that tea really is, Jeffrey swears, taking off. He offers as example a local high-end restaurant that carries Zhi Tea. After working with the employees to educate them, they passed their new knowledge on to the customers, who have caught on quickly. And with this tale, he morphs himself into a gleeful, wealthy restaurant patron speaking to a waiter,

“I’ll have the elk with the Darjeeling!” he shouts, giddily.

We might not have believed such a tale true pre-Jeffrey encounter. But the guy has an enthusiasm that you have to believe is going to convert the world.