CITY GUIDE >Dining Out
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CITY GUIDE >Dining Out
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Simple taste needs cultivation
By Ye Jun (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-03 09:23 As a member of the European Tea Committee, Dufrene was invited to the 4th Yunnan International Pu'er Tea Expo in Kunming as an expert. She was surprised to find herself the only European there. "The main problem is with communication," she says. "The only time I found written material about Chinese tea in French was in 2003." Besides an updated brochure about Chinese teas, Dufrene hopes Chinese delegations will participate in world trade fairs more often. As Westerners mostly drink from tea bags, while Chinese often use loose tea, Dufrene suggests Chinese tea producers "provide minimum instructions about the temperature and brewing time". Irion says most people in the United States don't know about pu'er. "Nobody has gone into a full-form marketing campaign yet," he says. "The government is waiting for companies to do it, and companies are waiting for the government to do it." Although there are already quite a few creative pu'er products and reasonably priced ordinary quality pu'er, he says, "the companies are concentrating on franchising in the home market". Dufrene thinks even though the biggest share of the European market goes to tea bags, Chinese loose tea is a growing segment, and can take a big profit share because of the profound culture behind it. "People want variety, and matching teas with food is becoming a trend," she says.
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