Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend a tea pairing workshop at the Parchmen Academy of Coffee and Tea. I’ve never been to a workshop like this before (the one at Tea Chapter was my first tea workshop) so I was a little bit nervous. I mean, I’m sure it’s not like school but what if I get some really weird taste? (Spoiler alert: I did, for a few things)

Despite my nervousness, I had a really fun time. Dave, our instructor, is really passionate about tea and he made the lesson very interesting. The first part of the session was on the basic properties of tea, and instead of talking about how it feels, Dave told us about what tea is made of – the polyphenols (which affect astringency), the caffeine (which affects bitterness and makes you alert) and the theanine (which affects the sweet umami tastes and makes you relaxed). I was pretty happy that I managed to remember what caffeine and theanine is for.

After going through the basics of tea, we started the pairings:

During the pairings, we were told to drink the tea while the food was still in the mouth. Basically, the tea functions like saliva. We tried two types of chocolate, some cheese, a brioche, and a spicy sauce. By pairing the teas (a white tea, a green tea, an oolong tea, and a black tea) with the different foods, we saw that tea can enhance or clash with food, can be itself enhanced or diminished through food, and that a third flavour can be created. That’s a lot of things that can be done! Definitely makes me think twice before randomly grabbing a tea to drink with food (although I learned that black tea goes well with almost anything that contains sugar so I guess that’s going to be my failsafe pairing).

There was also something called an elemental pairing, although I confess to still being a bit confused by it. If I remember correctly, it’s not something based on the aroma of the tea and food, but based on the basic properties of the tea and food instead.

Like I said before, I had a really fun time. The event was a free-tipping event when I was there, but I heard that it’s going to have a fixed ticket price from April onwards. Even so, I would recommend this workshop because I learned so much! There’s supposed to be a tea tasting course as well, and I am seriously tempted to go for it.

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