Potemkin tea. The Chinese reality of Grigory Potemkin

In our ethnographic expedition, tea does not occupy a leading role, but one way or another, it travels with us and meets all the time on the way, to my great joy.

Yesterday we had a wonderful morning tea in the company of Grigory Potemkin, a businessman and tea grower who supplies Chinese tea to Russia.

We are in the central office, Grisha talks about how pu-erh is pressed, at this moment I am brewing light shen-puer 2004. Video as always by Peter.

I almost did not make tea pictures, but I managed to brew three varieties. I met here such a teapot-drainer, which is also a cup - a modern, convenient and fast option. However, I am for the old tradition, it is more convenient and pleasant for me to brew in that white harbor that stands next door.

After tea, I managed to take a walk for a couple of minutes and make several portraits of Grigory, my answer to tea gifts.

1) Chinese teas are special teas. These are completely different emotions compared to Indian or Kenyan teas. Do not mix Chinese teas with milk, sugar, or lemon. This is a standalone product.

2) We do not drink marshmallows, cookies and sandwiches with Chinese teas. They require your mouth to be clean and free of foreign tastes. So amazing sensations await you. Tea time is an hour after a meal.

3) Chinese teas are brewed using the infusion method. We pour water through the tea leaves, but do not insist it. Good teas can withstand up to 7-10 infusions. At the same time, each strait sounds with new notes, making tea drinking exciting and constantly different.

About tea samples, as well as a new place where I bought the original Xiao Zhong - a fragrant version of red tea - traditionally, at the morning tea.

Includes: tea diary, Chinese tea online store, tea tours in China.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/realchinatea

The history of the creation of the Realchinatea.ru project

Grigory Potemkin has been living in China for many years.

Photo: http://realchinatea.ru/about/gregory-potemkin

One day he became interested in tea.

Gregory liked Chinese tea and the aura that surrounds it, and over time this topic became his hobby. And then - and the subject of study.

Gregory painstakingly and thoughtfully understood more and more new varieties of tea, learned to distinguish and understand them.

But just understanding tea was not enough. Grigory decided to take a closer look at tea, find out how and where it grows. How is it processed. How is stored. How the price of tea is formed, and why it is so different.

Gregory spent a lot of time communicating with tea farmers, traveling to different provinces of China.

This is how the project - RealChinaTea.ru - appeared. As part of this project, Gregory travels around China, looking for known and unknown tea plantations, collecting information about tea.

As part of the same Internet project, a shop was organized selling tea, which cannot be bought in Russia. These are elite, and often unknown in Russia, varieties of Chinese tea, which Grigory personally selects and buys in small batches first-hand.

Tea tours

Also within the project RealChinaTea.ru Gregory organizes tours.This is a tourism-training program that is being held in China.

A group of people gather for tea tours to travel around China during the spring and autumn gatherings. The group visits amazing places where there were no tourists yet.

Assortment of online store Realchinatea.ru

teas

• Oolong
• Green tea
• White tea
• yellow tea
• Red tea
• Black tea
• Mixes
• Tea bags
• Pu-erh
• Non-tea tea are drinks that are not formally tea. Such as Kudin, Stevia, Goji Berries, etc.

Four years ago, a young economist from Yekaterinburg, Grigory Potemkin, sold his construction business and left for China. Then he could not even imagine that a simple trip would be the beginning of a new business - the supply of Chinese tea to Russia.

Blog to help

“At first, in China, I only studied the language. I traveled a lot around the country, took pictures and wrote about my impressions in the blog, ”recalls Grigory. His travel notes on the Web called Realshina became popular among Runet users. He talked about beef sweets, and rice cookers sold in Chinese stores, and about how the Chinese only drink cognac in an iced green tea cocktail, and about the peculiarities of local public transport and female sexuality. Everything changed when Potemkin decided to tell his readers about tea. “I wrote a post about what types of tea are most popular in China, where they grow, when they are harvested, how they are brewed, and what properties different varieties of the drink have,” he says. In response, in the comments to the article, requests from Russia to send several packages of tea rained down. “I sent the first packages and realized that this could turn out to be a good business,” he says. Actually, the company grew out of the blog, and even the name for it was partially borrowed from the Internet resource - Realchina Tea.

Give grow up

According to Potemkin, he invested only $1.5 thousand in his business, and most of the money went to the creation and promotion of the site.
The work was structured as follows: customers received all the information about the product on the site, placed an online order and paid for it, and a few days later they received a parcel from China with tea. Such small deliveries were also convenient because they did not require certification and extra expenses, they were sent as personal parcels. This made it possible to save money at the first time - before the appearance of wholesale customers and the company's entry into high turnover. Today, the scheme of work with private clients has not changed: website, order, package. An order can be formed from 1 kg, while you can purchase one type of tea or different varieties, packaged in 100 g in separate packages. Wholesales - from 30 kg. The cost of 100 g of tea starts from 400 rubles, the minimum order price is 5-7 thousand, the price maximum is unlimited.

Tea is sent to Russia in freezer containers. It turns out that real Chinese tea must be stored at sub-zero temperatures, otherwise it loses its properties. In Yekaterinburg, a warehouse was rented from Realchina Tea and the services of a logistics company were ordered. All the tea comes there, and already from Yekaterinburg, the logisticians, according to the orders sent, send it all over the country. How much money the company spends on delivery, Potemkin does not specify.

As for taxes, their Realchina Tea pays in Russia, as it is not registered in China. “In China, we are not officially a company. According to local laws, we even have no right to rent an office. However, both the authorities and the police turn a blind eye to this,” the businessman says.

Xiamen Business

The fact that the construction company in Yekaterinburg was sold, Potemkin does not regret. “What is construction? Dirt, dust, concrete mixers, gloomy guest workers. And now I live in a very comfortable city of Xiamen, on an island in the Taiwan Strait, there are no enterprises, clean air and amazing nature,” he says. However, Potemkin not only enjoys living in China, but above all it is strategically beneficial for his business, because the businessman is in close proximity to tea suppliers. “There are 400 different varieties of tea in China, it’s almost impossible to sort them out from a distance,” he says. Grigory himself travels to "tea" towns and villages, gets acquainted with farmers and orders goods. “I don’t cooperate with Chinese tea corporations, because it is profitable for them to inflate prices and sell low-quality tea under the guise of an elite one,” he says. These tricks are designed for Western companies that buy products in large quantities and come for tea from time to time. “For example, Tieguanyin tea may cost 100 yuan per kilogram in one place, 1,000 yuan per kilogram in another, and 5,000 yuan in another. It has the same name, it is indistinguishable in appearance, while this tea is strikingly different in quality, ”says the businessman. The only way out in this case is tasting.

Potemkin, on his trips to the farms, tastes tea before buying it. The maximum amount of drink that he had to drink per day during the tasting process was 5 liters. Sometimes tea drinking is the only way to negotiate with farmers. “I communicate in Chinese without an interpreter, but the language barrier is still huge. China has a common national language and hundreds of different dialects. In fact, each locality has its own dialect, completely different from the generally accepted one, ”says Potemkin. According to him, in many highland villages, the planters not only never saw Europeans, but almost never spoke the official Chinese. “But if the farmer makes awesome tea, then it is always possible to reach an agreement,” the entrepreneur sums up. Another feature that complicates the work in China is that many Chinese farmers do not care about good relations with regular customers, after several months of partnership, they can easily reduce the quality of products.

Who is waiting for Potemkin tea

It is difficult for Potemkin to describe his clients, he believes that the target audience is extremely diverse. “Last week a Moscow church placed an order with us, and two weeks ago I sent a package of tea to the Dublin office of Google, and even earlier they collected an order for clients from the Magadan prison,” says Potemkin. The application from the zone impressed him very much, it came from the site, they asked to send 2 kg of tea. It would seem that nothing unusual, but in the comments, the clients wrote: “We are in a prison in Magadan, do not be surprised, tea is also loved here.” The tea company employees were very touched and sent twice as much tea. “We receive orders from people who do not mind spending 60,000 rubles on tea drinking, but there are applications from ordinary students who save up money to buy real Chinese tea,” the entrepreneur says. Potemkin has 50-60 wholesale clients, mainly specialized tea shops, restaurants, tea clubs. Exactly 90% of orders come from Russia, 5% from CIS countries and 5% from Europe. “These are Russian people who live in different parts of the world,” adds Potemkin. The businessman is convinced that soon a third of the Russian population will prefer fresh tea, but for now he believes that we do not have a tea culture. “When I lived in Yekaterinburg, I brewed a bag in a cup and thought that this is how real tea should be,” he recalls. Potemkin says that large tea companies buy the cheapest raw materials from Chinese partners, in fact, cake and dust from last year's harvests. Such tea gives color, but does not give the desired taste and aroma. In many ways, according to him, the consumers themselves are to blame, giving preference to packaged or flavored products.

However, experts are skeptical about the sale of Chinese tea in Russia. Our fellow citizens traditionally consume black leaf tea, so tea from China, which is famous mainly for green teas, is not yet so popular with Russians, they say. “Sri Lanka and India produce mainly black tea, and China - green tea, these characteristics are reflected in the place of these countries in the structure of imports to Russia,” says Ramaz Chanturia, General Director of the Roschaikofe Association. The factor of taste orientations also plays an important role - in their preferences, Russians associate the product "black tea" with precisely those varieties that grow in Sri Lanka and India. Ramaz Chanturia does not agree with statements that there is no culture of drinking tea in Russia. “Tea is practically the national drink. Our country is one of the world's largest tea consumption markets. By the way, the indicator of per capita consumption indirectly testifies in favor of the high penetration of tea into our culture - we consume about 1.2 kg per year, while, for example, the same Chinese drink about 700 g per year, ”says Chanturia. According to the expert, neither the Japanese, nor the Chinese, nor the Indian traditions of tea drinking have taken root in our country, but their own tradition of consumption, close to the European one, has appeared - tea is drunk daily, without ceremony, with sweets, sandwiches or pastries.

I will be short and logical. I do it well. And in a few paragraphs I will tell you why RealChinaTea, how we do it and what is the benefit for the buyer.

The project site has existed for ten years. All this time we have been selecting the best varieties of Chinese teas directly from the producers. We are highly specialized only in Chinese teas and not in any others. Since the project was founded, we have sent over 60,000 parcels to more than forty countries. We are trusted. Probably because we trust ourselves and do the job beautifully and correctly.

The catalog of the online store RealChinaTea has one hundred and fifty varieties of Chinese tea. Each of these varieties I personally select on plantations directly to the place of growth. When purchasing, my task is to get in the optimal price-quality ratio and offer the client a tea of ​​such a level that he cannot find anywhere else. At an adequate price and with delivery anywhere in the world.

Our clients are tea gourmets. People who subtly feel the differences in taste and aroma, distinguish notes, hints and aftertaste, who know how to enjoy it. Surprising such customers is an ambitious task. I select my teas from the upper plantations, the mountain ranges and peaks, the highest points. Where there are maximum differences between day and night temperatures, where there are above the clouds, where there are ideal environmental conditions.

These places often have no roads, no electricity, or the locals don't speak common Chinese. That happens. Over ten years of work, we have learned to cope with this.)

RealChinaTea online store - organized simply and intuitively. High-quality photos, comprehensive descriptions of teas, a simple payment algorithm, educational materials, a free hotline. We respond as quickly as possible to 100% of incoming correspondence and give detailed answers to any tea question. Even the most difficult one.

We don't just sell teas. In fact, we are selling something more. Quality assurance, gentle service, convenient delivery. Exactly the same as you buy not only tea, but tea emotion and great mood. This is a bit of metaphysics. But that's exactly what makes us us.

Working directly with suppliers, we bypass the chain of intermediaries. It adds a nice feeling to our work and allows us to do amazing things in terms of quality. This makes a lot of sense.

Choosing any item from the website catalog, you are guaranteed to get tea in the ceiling of its quality. With maximum potency in aroma and taste. Guaranteed last collection. In professional packaging.

When ordering more than 5000 rubles, we provide free shipping to anywhere in the world. Except North Korea. There rusted hinges at the entrance.

Delivery of tea in Moscow will take 1-2 business days. In Russia - 2-7. Around the world - depending on ..., but not more than twenty.

Sichuan province has quietly become my favorite. In order to understand my feelings, you need to visit here once. Everything about these places is special. Special flavor, special people, special traditions. Here in the eyes of passers-by I read awareness. In gestures - grace. Walking is pride. Trust me, this is not the case everywhere in China. There is something special about Sichuan. There is something special about these people.

Imagine for a moment that you are here. It is not difficult. Just play a little with your imagination. I will guide you.

Aug 8 2014

In Chinese, the name of tea is written like this: 水仙 . And it translates as "narcissus." It is one of the most popular teas in China. The Chinese themselves know this tea, love it, and often even idolize it. And, believe me, there is a reason!


It is also interesting that this tea has nothing to do with either the narcissist himself or psychoanalysis. It's just called Shuxian. Narcissus. Remember this name. You will need it!

Shuxian tea is grown and processed by tea farmers on plantations located around the city of Wuyishan.

Mar 31 2014

Flashes and tips- two incomprehensible words from the tea theme that you need to know and understand. They are important. Today I will tell you what they are and explain which ones make teas. I'll show pictures. Go!

Most Chinese teas are harvested once a year. Spring. The collection of tea lasts a little over a month. In some provinces, the collection starts earlier, in some - a little later. But in general, in China, the collection takes place from March to May. What happens during this period? During this period, tea bushes vegetate. Simply put, they quickly throw out arrows with new leaves. These young shoots differ from the rest of the leaves in color and density.

Mar 4 2014

The name of this tea in Chinese is written like this 银螺 . In Latin transcription it is written like this: yin luo. And it can be translated into Russian as "silver snail". Suddenly?


I have always liked snails. From early childhood. They seemed small to me, but wise. Wise, probably precisely because they are never in a hurry. I wish I could learn the same... How did "snail" end up in the name of Chinese tea? You will understand everything when you see him live.

Jan 21 2014

Here is a standard Pu-erh pancake. He weights 357 grams. Have you ever wondered why exactly 357? After all, the number, in fact, is not a fig not convenient. I decided to find out the truth and climbed into the abyss of the Chinese Internet. LuChan, my colleague and faithful assistant, helped me a lot in my search, getting more and more new facts. It turned into a whole investigation that took us several days. Each time, historical facts threw us back into the past. So an innocent idea became a real research. Today I could write a serious academic paper on this topic.


But, in order not to drive you to sleep, I will retell everything in my own words. Let's start with the distant past. The very first mention of tea dates back to 900 BC! Think about it! Then, of course, there was no tea trade and tea industry. Apparently, tea was grown very locally, in someone's garden, somewhere in the place of modern Yunnan province.

Sep 5 2013

One of China's favorite jasmine teas is "Jasmine Pearl" or "Mo Li Long Feng Zheng". I know - the Chinese name is quite difficult to pronounce, so let's call this tea in Russian - Jasmine Pearl. This is a literal translation.


Jasmine Pearl tea is produced immediately in several provinces in southeast China. The feature of this tea is that during the production process, the tea is “aged” along with the buds of jasmine flowers. It is thanks to this that the tea takes on a delicate and refined aroma.

Sep 5 2013