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Tea Masters Cup: Comparing apples and oranges
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The Tea Masters Cup was held on the first two days of the recent Food and Hotel Indonesia expo in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta. (Shutterstock/-)
C
ompetitions are essentially comparisons to find the best, and for a competition to truly make sense, the comparisons have to be reasonable.
So, comparing local, lesser-known Javanese white tea prepared by a former Javanese tea seller whose mind is cultivated in Javanese tea traditions against premium Chinese rock oolong tea prepared by a seasoned tea expert and reviewer highly knowledgeable in Chinese and Japanese tea simply doesn’t make sense.
But that’s exactly what occurred at the recent Tea Masters Cup held on the first two days of the Food and Hotel Indonesia expo in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta.
The contest was organized and individually sponsored by PT Bukit Sari, the producer of BankitWangi tea and one of the Association of Indonesia Specialty Tea’s (AISTea) founding members, and run by the Australian Tea Masters, which claims to be "the leading organization for tea training and tea education in Australasia".
The contest was actually the first ever Australian Tea Masters Cup held in the country under the auspices of AISTea. Thus, it came as no surprise that all the local judges had Australian Tea Masters certification.
They included local tea traders Omar Syarif, Bambang Mukhtar Rusdianto, Neysa Valeria, Oza Sudewo and AISTea secretary-seneral and Bukit Sari production manager Ronald Goenawan.
