The country’s specialty tea association was established last year, ten years after its coffee counterpart.

The Specialty Tea Association of Indonesia (AISTea) made headlines in November last year for launching the first-ever publicly-announced tea brewing competition at an annual international food expo to mark its birth.

“AISTea in the tea industry is like the Specialty Coffee Association of Indonesia (SCAI) in the coffee industry,” said AISTea secretary-general and Bukit Sari Organic Tea Plantation product manager Ronald Cahyana Goenawan.

“Specialty tea,” he explained, “is tea that originates from a special clone, a new cultivar or a unique terroir; tea of leaves plucked at certain hours, tea made from at least a tip and one or two leaves underneath (known as fine plucks), tea that is specially made in a certain way and not just with a machine, tea that undergoes special treatment, such as being grown organically without the use of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, fungicides or herbicides.”

To be regarded a specialty tea, the tea has to be of “better taste”, which is “determined by the number of tips in it,” he added. “So, if the tea doesn’t contain a lot of tips as is the case with lesser products, you cannot get a good taste.”

His opinion was immediately refuted by AISTea president Galung Atri. “My oolong tea, for instance, contains no tips but is surely a specialty tea due to its processing. What’s the point of fine plucking if processing is done haphazardly? Things have to be considered in their entirety,” said Galung, marketing and finance director of tea producer PT Sumatra Toba Wangi.

He cited a “fantastic-tasting” final product as another key determinant, noting that consumers had to decide on that themselves.

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