Region · in Vietnam
Thai Nguyen
Thai Nguyen is the province an hour north of Hanoi that supplies Vietnam with its everyday green tea, and Tan Cuong, a commune on its western edge, is the small piece of it that carries the reputation. This is not an export story. Thai Nguyen green is what households brew for a guest and what people buy in boxes as a New Year gift, and the best of it is bid up at home and rarely leaves.
What grows here
Pan-fired green tea and effectively nothing else. It is sold as loose curled leaf and it is also the base under most Vietnamese jasmine and lotus tea, so a Hanoi lotus tea is usually a Thai Nguyen green wearing a scent. Tan Cuong is the sub-place with the name; the rest of the province, and the districts of Dai Tu, Dong Hy and Phu Luong in particular, makes the same style in far greater volume.
The ground
Low hills at the foot of the Tam Dao range, only a few hundred metres up, which is unusually low ground for a famous tea. Growers credit the combination of Tam Dao taking the afternoon sun off the gardens, the mist that comes down from it and the sandy alluvial soil along the Cong river for what Tan Cuong tastes like. As terroir arguments go this is the usual shape: a real difference in the cup with an attribution rather than a demonstrated mechanism behind it.
The bushes
Trung Du, the old midland bush, is what the reputation was built on and it is now a minority of the planted area. Higher-yielding clones went in from the 1990s onward, LDP1 above all, along with Taiwanese material such as Kim Tuyen. They crop more heavily and give a rounder, less astringent cup. Vietnamese buyers who care pay a premium for old Trung Du gardens and say so on the label, a distinction almost invisible in export copy.
Harvest seasons
Picking runs through most of the year in this climate, so the tea is graded and priced by picking round and by picking standard rather than by season. Spring lots after the winter slowdown are the ones that get talked about. The standard is strict and it is part of the price: one bud and two leaves for the ordinary grades, bud only at the top.
How it is made here
Withered briefly, killed in a heated drum, then rolled and dried in stages until the leaf tightens into the hooked shape the trade names it for. The final step is the local signature: a short low firing done to lift the aroma rather than to dry, which is where the toasted note of young green rice over the vegetal body comes from. Nothing here is steamed, so a Thai Nguyen green sits closer to a Chinese pan-fired tea than to a Japanese one.
What to look for
Tan Cuong is a commune and Thai Nguyen is a province, and far more tea is sold as the former than the commune could possibly grow. The 2007 geographical indication covers neighbouring communes too, so even the protected name is wider than it sounds, and unqualified Tan Cuong is provincial tea unless a producer is named. Learn the domestic grade ladder, because it drives the price: moc cau, the hooked standard grade, then non tom, the tenderest bud-and-leaf picking, then dinh, bud only, with a very wide gap between the ends of it. Pesticide residue is a recurring subject in the Vietnamese press, which is part of why certified gardens command what they do.
How it got here
Tea came to Tan Cuong in the early 1920s, brought from the French-era plantings at Phu Ho in Phu Tho by a local village head, Vu Van Hiet, remembered as Doi Nam, so the commune's reputation dates from that generation rather than from anything ancient. He opened a processing workshop in 1925 and his tea took a first prize at the Hanoi fair in 1935. Growing was reorganised into cooperatives under the state period and Thai Nguyen kept its domestic name throughout.
Other places in Vietnam
- Ha Giang
- Son La
- Yen Bai
- Lao Cai
- Lam Dong
- Phu Tho