A tea that captures the essence of the Philippines?
You’ll be able to order such an infusion in the near future from The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf: CBTL’s master tea blender and buyer David DeCandia was in town last week to explore native flavors with local chefs in order to formulate a tea recipe we can call our own.
“We’re looking at incorporating unique ingredients, profiles of the Philippines with tea, and make a Philippine blend,” DeCandia says. “I just created a Singapore blend but I need to know a little something about the country, like I put orchids in the Singapore blend because that’s their state flower.”
DeCandia is the man behind such Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf blends as Chai (a popular favorite), Moroccan Mint and Strawberry Cream (the inspiration of which was strawberry shortcake).
As CBTL’s master blender he’s required to create a collection of 15 teas every year and travels the world visiting tea estates, CBTL stores and spreading the gospel of tea in general, and Ceylon tea in particular. (The prime minister of Sri Lanka made him Ceylon tea ambassador to the United States and Canada.)
“This is fun, this is passion, this is really who I am,” says DeCandia, who left the oil industry a couple of decades ago and never looked back. “Some people can do tea for years and not really embrace it. Because it took me by surprise, I just accepted it. I didn’t even drink tea.”
Hi “aha” moment came when he created his first blend — Chai — for the owners of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and heard them say, “This is really good.”
Today he not only drinks tea but massive amounts of it. I ask him how many cups and he jokes, “If there’s a restroom close by? Probably 20. We have a 32-oz cup, and at the store in the factory where I work, they’ve told me I’ve drunk at least seven of those on any given day.”
He prefers his tea straight — “I’m not a huge latte drinker” — and favors blends like Lemon Chamomile, Ginseng Peppermint and African Sunrise. Though he’s not a fan of Earl Grey because of its citrusy bergamot flavor, he had to make a blend of it for Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. “Key in being a good tea master is being able to create these blends for other people,” he notes. “Your personal preferences stay (in the background) and you bring in your knowledge and how you do it.”
Now that summer is upon us, I ask what teas he would recommend to make the perfect glass of iced tea and he suggests Southern Blend or Swedish Berries.
According to DeCandia, you’ll know a tea is good if it has staying power and unfolds slowly, like a perfume. “The flavors should come in waves,” he says. “If you’re drinking a mint tea and all you taste is mint in, mint out and it’s gone, with no green tea or anything else, that’s usually indicative of low quality and over-flavoring.”
He oversees the entire blending process, which is done according to his recipes, in California, where Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf originated back in 1963, and where he has an office and a laboratory.
“Number one is consistency,” he insists. “You have to write everything down, because sometimes it takes a hundred versions to get to the final tea. It could take months. So if you’re not keeping track, you’re not going anywhere. Is the tea going to be created for a latte, an iced tea, or a hot tea? You have to consider all those things.”
If there’s a DeCandia signature (apart from the one that’s actually printed on the back of CBTL’s tea tins), it’s that he flavors very lightly. “I want the tea to come through,” he says. “Like Moroccan Mint, I don’t want it to be a mint tea; I want it to be a really great green tea with a hint of mint at the end. My goal has always been to highlight the tea and complement with flavor.”
Another tea he singles out is Lemon Chamomile: “It has Egyptian chamomile and Egyptian lemongrass and orange peel from California, so it has elements of honey, lemon and citrus,” he notes. “It’s somewhat simplistic but try it and you’ll find it’s fairly complex.”
Right now he’s working on his tea collection for 2018, of which the Philippine blend will hopefully be a part. Will our blend have notes of sampaguita in it? I predict that it will probably have mango and he says he already did a mango-green tea blend and used Philippine mango in it.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
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All teas are available at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Like The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (Philippines) on Facebook, follow @CBTLPH @BREWPH on Instagram and Twitter, and visit coffeebean.com.ph.
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Follow me on Facebook (Therese Jamora-Garceau), Twitter @tjgarceau and Instagram @tj108_drummergirl.