TEA-TASTING.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 2, 10 January 1891, Page 3

TEA-TASTING.

lEA tasters are a very peculiar class. It has been said by a person familiar with the requirements and habits of a tea tester that he is making his living by commiting slow suicide. It is a well-recognized fact that the excessive and constant drinking of tea is as dangerous to the physical system as the excessive use of alcohol, and those who ought to know assert that the majority of the men engaged in this method of earning a livelihood become so addicted to the stimulation produced by the drinking of tea that they are as much slaves to the habit as is the Frenchman to his absinthe or the Chinese to his opium. The office of a tea broker or a tea tester is a very curious looking place. If one should by mistake, not knowing anything about the manner in which teas are tested, drift into one of these places, he would hardly know what to think of the scene that presented itself to his eyes. There you find the man sitting, half dreamily, at a revolving table, sipping alternately from forty or fifty different cups, as with monotonous and regular movement of the hand he revolves the table. A small grate fire burns in a fireplace, and beside this is a small gas stove which is used for the purpose of boiling the water with which the tea is drawn. The room in which the testing is done is kept at an average heat. If it gets too hot or too cold the atmosphere has its effect upon the delicate palate of the man who spends his mornings sipping, tasting and determining the value of a grade of tea. A number of other rules are in force in these tea-testing rooms. They differ, however, according to the peculiar nervous temperament or habits of the man who does the tea testing. Some tea tasters will not allow even an orange or a lemon to be cut in his testing room during the hours in which he is to be engaged in his work. But few of them will allow any one to smoke a cigar in their room, and none will allow the smoking of cigarettes. If a person enters from the street who has been puffing vigorously at a cigar or cigarette, and the fumes of the tobacco stilt linger about his clothing, some of these men become testy and irritable and indicate by their manner, although often too gentlemanly to express it in words, that they would be very glad if the intruder would go out again and let the public on the streets get the benefit of his tobacco perfumed clothing. The tea taster himself lives a very exemplary and regular life. But few of them allow themselves to smoke, as that habit has a tendency to blunt their sense of taste. The same is true of wine and liquor drinking, and those who do permit themselves to indulge in a cigar or a glass of wine take only the very best to be obtained and then limit themselves to very small quantities. They are also careful about the seasoning of their food ; too much red pepper has a tendency to blunt the sense of taste, and the tea taster who wishes to make himself successful in his business has his food much less highly flavoured with red pepper or spices than is exacted by the club man and the epicure. The testing of teas is usually done in the morning, the taster preferring the hours before noon for his work to those later in the day. He himself can give no logical reason for this except that he finds his sense of taste more acute during the hours before noon, and consequently prefers these hours for his woi k.

Besides the fileplace and gas stove mentioned above, there are to be found in the offices two revolving tables about three feet in diameter. These tables are made of hard wood, and a ledge about six inches in breadth is cut around the edge for the purpose of holding the teacups. In the centre of one of these tables is to be found a small pair of brass scales, such as you will see in an apothecary’s shop. These scales are used for weighing out the tea preparatory to its being drawn or steeped in the testing cups. Each of these tables has room for from forty to fifty testing cups, and these are ranged in regular order about the ledge cut at the edge of the table. The cup is a thin porcelain one, about the size of an average teacup. On the gas stove are constantly kept two large copper kettles in which water is always kept boiling during the hours in which the tester is at work. These kettles are lined with tin, as the acids from the copper would have an injurious effect upon the tea and render it impossible for the tester to properly do his work. When teas of different grades are measured out the taster will supply each of the forty or fifty cups ranged about the table, and when the tea has been placed in the cups he will fill each of them with hot water from the kettle. No sugar is allowed about the table. Sweetened tea it would be impossible for him to properly test. When the cups have been filled and the tea steeped for a few moments the taster begins his work. He passes from cup to eup, whirling the table around as he does so. and sips from each cup as it comes in front of him. So thoroughly has his sense of taste been cultivated that, if he be a thoroughly expert tea-tester, he can at once tell the exact character, grade, and line of the tea he tastes. If the tea given him to test is a shade below that usually to be expected from the grade he can at once detect it, and is relied upon by the importer to estimate and fix upon the difference in value between such tea and the best tea of that grade. While engaged in investigating the methods of tea testing the most successful tea brokers are those whose sense of smell is so acute that it is not necessary for them to taste the tea. Few who are able to test the tea by smelling, and even some of these become so addicted to the stimulation of the nervous system produced by the fumes of the tea that they get in the habit of sipping instead of smelling, and soon become habitual tea drinkers. Tea tasting is a remunerative business to those who get enough of it to do to keep them busy, but there are but few men who devote their lives to tasting and testing teas who live to see the three score years and ten allotted to be the age of man. Their business breaks up and shatters their nervous system, and sooner or later the majority of them are forced to stop and treat themselves for their nervrgis debility. By this time, however, the habit of tea drinking and the desire for the specific stimulation of the system produced by tea drinking renders it very difficult for them to recuperate through a cessation of their habit. A young man between thirty-five and forty years of age, who for ten years, between his eighteenth and twenty-eighth birthdays, was engaged in the business of tea-tasting and

had been forced because of a break-up of his nerves to give it up and go intosomething else. He said, * I will take only one drink ; even now I do not dare take but very little alcohol during any one day, and I limit myself to one or two cigars. Ido not believe I will ever thoroughly recover the normal strength of my nervous system. My ten years of tea-tasting so thoroughly demoialised it that I fear it will never be strong again. Drinking and smoking have a most peculiar effect on me. One drink or one cigar doesn’t seem to interfere with me in any way, but let me take more, and I feel a sensation akin to that which one feels when his leg or foot is in the condition the children call going to sleep. There is a certain numbness and prickling sensation conveyed through my nerves which immediately warns me that lam going beyond the proper boundaries. I do not believe a tea - taster could ever become a drunkard. If he had devoted many years to his business he would find himself in such a condition that exclusive stimulation from alcohol would have such a terrible effect upon his nerves that almost the first spree would make him a little cherub beyond the golden gates. A year or so after I quit the business I indulged myself once or twice in the usual amount of wine taken by a good diner, at a coarse dinner, and smoked perhaps from half a dozen to eight cigars during the course of the day. It so completely upset me that I was laid up with nervous prostration, the most disgusting of all diseases, because nobody but yourself believes you are sick for quite a spell. When I recovered my new business arrangement required me to make a six months’ trip to Australia. Before starting on my trip my mother required me to make her a solemn promise that while I was away I would not take a drink nor smoke a cigar. While, as I said before, Ido not believe tea-tasting makes drunkards, it does have a tendency to excite other morbid appetites in a person, ami frequently is the cause of an early and disastrous collapse.’ In every broker’s office where tea testing is carried on there are from one to half a-dozen boys or youths who are being trained to the business. One of the first things that the apprentice is taught is absolute cleanliness. He must keep his person clean in order to develop thoroughly the sense of taste or smell necessary to success in the business he has chosen. This sense is developed in the apprentice much like the sense of touch is developed in the blind or the sense of sight in the deaf and dumb. When one thinks of it, it is marvellous that the blind newsman can tell almost as quickly as a person with all his senses the value and character of a coin presented to him in payment for his papers. So thoroughly has he cultivated the sense of touch that he knows each groove and each figure stamped in or upon the coin of his country. His fingers are as good as many men’s eyes .for this purpose. The sense of taste developed in a tea tester’s apprentice is of the same nature as the unusual development of the blind man’s sense of touch.