A cup of orthodoxy

Kenyan breakfast black tea + a look at orthodox tea production.

The tea: Milima TGFOP, sold by Cofféa. €10.90 for 100g.

After China and India, Kenya leads the world in tea production, though rarely does that name wind up on a label. The vast majority of Kenyan tea is a commodity style destined for teabags and bulk packages. Called “crush, tear, curl,” or CTC, this mass market tea is chewed up by razor teeth in spinning drums until fresh green leaves are rendered into tiny pelletized particles of black tea. The process is designed to make a lot of tea quickly and consistently regardless of agricultural input. It’s like milling flour: you want it to taste and act the same way today as it did yesterday.

This is not that kind of tea. Milima is a brand of one of the few Kenyan producers that makes traditional looseleaf “orthodox” tea. Orders of magnitude less efficient than CTC, orthodox teas allow for more variation and nuance in a given batch, and this one offers a woodsy vivaciousness that keeps me coming back for more. It’s dark and brooding, like an Assam, though it lacks that region’s malty swagger. Instead it’s a touch gentler and imparts some sweetness on the tongue. I’m told that tea bushes allotted for the Milima brand grow at 6,000 feet or higher; this batch’s slick body suggests leaves grown at elevation. TGFOP stands for the grade “tippy golden flowery orange pekoe,” an indication of ample intact buds that contribute complex aromatics and texture to the brew. A nice tea to taste from a region that’s rarely celebrated for its origin.

The source: A friend gave me this tea as a souvenir from his trip to Paris. Cofféa is a coffee brand there. The website doesn’t seem to support international orders, but the Cofféa team told me that they can take US orders if you contact them by email and provide your shipping address. You can find similar batches of Milima tea at Serengeti Teas, Blue Monkey Tea, Harney & Sons, and elsewhere. Consider ordering a few to compare different Milima batches for yourself.

To brew: Kenyan teas are selected by blenders for their color and body. To enhance these qualities at home, I steep a relatively large amount of leaf—by orthodox tea standards—for a relatively short time. In this case that’s 2 grams of tea for a 150 milliliter pot (1g/75ml), brewed with boiling water for 2 minutes. Made this way, the tea tastes deep with twinkling points of brightness. The second and third steeps brew out warmer and mellower. If you’re planning to add milk or sugar, and this is a good tea for either, steep for 3 to 4 minutes instead.

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Understanding orthodox tea

Orthodox tea isn’t a singular style; you don’t see teas sold as “orthodox” in your grocery store. But it’s an important production method to understand if you drink English style teas like Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Ceylon, Darjeeling, and Assam. In our present age of CTC filled teabags, orthodox teas are old timer holdouts. They require more labor, demand more skill, and yield a less standardized product at a much smaller yield. Accordingly they are more expensive than CTC teas and provide greater value to farms and factories that make them.