Title: Empire of Tea: The Asian Leaf that Conquered the World
Length: 288pg
Date of Publication: July 13, 2015
Link:Book
Professional Review
'“There is no leaf unturned in Barcelona-based food journalist Koehler's (Spain: Recipes and Traditions, 2013, etc.) exposition on the growing of Darjeeling tea . . . A thorough account that tracks the growing and processing of this fine tea against the wider changes in today's India.”'
Kirkus Reviews
Reader Review:
"Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World’s Greatest Tea was an absolutely fabulous read. So often with food history books, the writer gets so tied up in the cold information and forgets to make the reader feel attachment to the subject. Koehler did not do that here. He seamlessly blends the information about the tea itself and the history surrounding it with beautiful imagery and powerful emotive writing. As the reader, you truly experience the ups and downs of being involved with Darjeeling: you revel in a successful selling flush and you are devastated by a particularly bad monsoon season.
It is a really romantic story, one that starts with questionable characters and the stealing of Chinese secrets. Today, the story is of these struggling gardens with a beautiful, unique product made by the old ways in this special area that also hosts all these perilous factors of terrible weather, inaccessibility, unstable politics, and a waning workforce. Talk about an uphill climb!
The delicacy of Darjeeling combined with the urgency many of the gardens face to remain open created great tension throughout the book. It really is a product that cannot be made anywhere else, a handicraft of centuries. I loved the description of the daily workings of the gardens. It’s stunning how hard they all work every day for mere pounds of the tea. The opening section (a tea auction that fetches a record price for Darjeeling) was particularly exhilarating.
I absolutely LOVED the beginning sections for each part that gave the reader a ‘taste’ of that season’s flush. It is now a life goal of mine to try Darjeeling autumn flush tea (p.167-9) as that part was my favorite of the whole book. Koehler just does such a wonderful job of controlling the flow of the book, jumping from the big perspective of the historical sweep down to the moment-in-time perspective of individual garden managers and a single cup of tea.
At the end of the book is a list of recipes as well. What foodie does not love that! I already am planning to try three recipes: the masala omelet, Glenburn’s chicken and fresh mint hamper sandwiches, and the specced chicken cutlets. Yum! A big thank-you to Koehler for a lovely read that now has a treasured place on my bookshelf!
Favorite quotation: “Fermentation is simply a process of death and decay. We are afraid of death—but love the flavor of it.” (p. 84)
*Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through the GoodReads First Reads program. I want to thank Bloomsbury Publishing for the copy and the opportunity to read it."
- jjstiv02
What does this book teach the reader?
This book teaches the reader about the beginnings of this highly valued and highly elite commodity, and follows it up to the present day.
'“There is no leaf unturned in Barcelona-based food journalist Koehler's (Spain: Recipes and Traditions, 2013, etc.) exposition on the growing of Darjeeling tea . . . A thorough account that tracks the growing and processing of this fine tea against the wider changes in today's India.”'
Kirkus ReviewsIt is a really romantic story, one that starts with questionable characters and the stealing of Chinese secrets. Today, the story is of these struggling gardens with a beautiful, unique product made by the old ways in this special area that also hosts all these perilous factors of terrible weather, inaccessibility, unstable politics, and a waning workforce. Talk about an uphill climb!
The delicacy of Darjeeling combined with the urgency many of the gardens face to remain open created great tension throughout the book. It really is a product that cannot be made anywhere else, a handicraft of centuries. I loved the description of the daily workings of the gardens. It’s stunning how hard they all work every day for mere pounds of the tea. The opening section (a tea auction that fetches a record price for Darjeeling) was particularly exhilarating.
I absolutely LOVED the beginning sections for each part that gave the reader a ‘taste’ of that season’s flush. It is now a life goal of mine to try Darjeeling autumn flush tea (p.167-9) as that part was my favorite of the whole book. Koehler just does such a wonderful job of controlling the flow of the book, jumping from the big perspective of the historical sweep down to the moment-in-time perspective of individual garden managers and a single cup of tea.
At the end of the book is a list of recipes as well. What foodie does not love that! I already am planning to try three recipes: the masala omelet, Glenburn’s chicken and fresh mint hamper sandwiches, and the specced chicken cutlets. Yum! A big thank-you to Koehler for a lovely read that now has a treasured place on my bookshelf!
Favorite quotation: “Fermentation is simply a process of death and decay. We are afraid of death—but love the flavor of it.” (p. 84)
*Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through the GoodReads First Reads program. I want to thank Bloomsbury Publishing for the copy and the opportunity to read it."
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