The small difference
It is as if time has stood still here: the red brick shines in the sun and, like a hundred years ago, the company name "Hälssen & Lyon" proudly appears in big golden letters on the wall.
The tradition-steeped Hamburg tea trade company already sat in the Speicherstadt, when the tea was brought to Europe with special sailors, the tea clippers from the Far East. And perhaps almost exactly as it was a hundred years ago, inside the sample room, the shelves are filled to the ceiling with tea chests and jars, and the tables and glasses are neatly arranged on the tables to be sampled.
"Teaologist" Frank Pauls
Slurp, taste and spit it out again. Tea button Frank Pauls in action.
The whole palette of the world of tea comes as a pattern on Frank Pauls table: Assam, Ceylon, Darjeeling, black tea and green tea are available as an infusion and leaf pattern - the colors in the cups vary from delicate, bright yellow, over green, orange to strong dark amber tone. That's something for the eyes and the nose, but in the main it's all about the taste. And Frank Pauls is not just a very sensitive one, he has to be a teatroaster after all.
Chord slurping
Indispensable utensil of the tea testers: the copper spittoon (Spitton).
He also tests damn fast: As if in chord, the expert sips through the cup series and immediately spits the whole thing back into the copper spitton - a movement routinely as in sleep. However, as you can taste at the tempo at all, the layman remains a mystery.
But it works. The verdict - made in seconds with absolute certainty - is the result of many years of training. It takes seven to ten years for the taste and smell of a "teaologist", as Paul likes to call himself, to be in tune with the more than 3,000 different types of tea and associated qualities and to name them accurately.
Only very last is it then to taste the best among the teas. To be able to distinguish the finest nuances - even with around 600 tea samples per day - takes a lot of time, a lot of patience and, above all, a lot of experience.
