I’ve mentioned our Tong Mu Mountain Bohea already, a mildly smoked blacktea that embarrasses “Lapsang Souchong” for being, generally crudely (perhaps artificially, smoked, like barbeque condiments). It continues to “grow on me” not just for itself but also for the nostalgic feelings it generates for Lapsangs of earlier years and my youth. The other day at the market I offered some Shincha, now coming to the end of its season, to three young Japanese women whose response to tasting it was “Ah, natsukashi...” expressing the nostalgia for homeland and season which that fresh, grassy brew engendered in them. “We are Japanese,” one of them explained. As if it we didn’t know. A nostalgic moment for me, too.
As for Bohea, a tea word that has a variety of implications, certainly black, possibly indicative of poor-quality (this in the eighteenth century), there remains a certain discussion as to its pronounciation.
As Bohea seems certainly to be derived from a local way of pronouncing Wuyi, the astounding, mountainous region in the north of Fujian Province, the eee sound of the second syllable would seem incontrovertible, whereas I have heard it pronounced on the BBC, no less, as Bo-hay-a. Further evidence resides in a poem by Alaric A. Watts, a minor literary and journalistic figure of the early-to-mid nineteenth century whose verse
About an age ago, as all agree,
Beauteous Belinda, brewing best Bohea
Carelessly chattered, controverting clean,
Dublin’s derisive, disputations dean...
would seem, unless “agree” has undergone a major transformation in pronounciation—not impossible—to be fairly conclusive.
Another occurrence of Bohea in poetry comes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
A good neighbour, even in this,
Is fatal sometimes, cuts your morning up
To mince-meat of the very smallest talk,
Then helps to sugar her Bohea at night
With your reputation.
Alex runs east teas in Borough Market, London, Friday 12-6p.m. and Saturday 9-4p.m. Email epoch@eastteas.com.
