I’ve been rolling over this introduction in my head for weeks nowโmonths, actually. It keeps coming back to a central thesis, something I’ve talked over with friends and colleagues in advance of writing this feature, and it goes something like this…
It’s never been more difficult to tell, on appearances alone, whether a coffee bar is great, or really even any good. Specialized equipment, once an obvious avenue of sussing out a shop’s chops, is no longer the sure-fire arbiter it once was; interior design, also once considered a logical way to separate wheat from chaff (or at least the haves from have-nots) has been democratized and imitated so thoroughly that everyone’s Instagrams kind of look the same. But there’s one sure-fire sign in 2016 that your coffee bar is up to something delicious: if you’re serving Song Tea.
Yes, a tea companyโthat’s my choice du jour for today’s quality canary in the coffee coal mine. So dialed in is Song Tea’s approach to partnership, and so high are its standards, that if you are partnered with the San Francisco brand, I can nearly guarantee that your coffeeโor your food, wine, and boutique goodsโare of a very high quality. Their wholesale partner list reads like a list of places I’d like to spend my dayโit is a who’s-who of America’s best and buzziest shops, including our recent Sprudgie Award winners for Best New Cafe (Paramount Coffee Project in Los Angeles) and Notable Roaster (Heart Coffee in Portland, Oregon).
Nothing is guaranteed, and I don’t want to deal in absolutes, but if your establishment serves Song Tea, as a consumer there is a high degree of certainty that bodes well for the entire experience.ย And behind that all is one man: Peter Luong, owner, founder, and world-traveling tea buyer for Song. Born in San Francisco’s Richmond District, Luong’s narrative is inextricably tied to the city he calls home, from growing up in his family’s traditional Chinese apothecary, to the days of dot com boom and bust, to his work now at Song, a living and thoroughly modern expression of San Francisco’s centuries-old connection with China.
From a chance meeting in 2015 at an event with Madcap Coffee in Grand Rapids, Michigan, my interest in Song Tea as a brand has grown into a greater passion and appreciation for tea itself. I’m buying new tea stuff all the time now, brewing at home, attempting to learn this soft and delicious art as a consumer and enthusiast. This culminated in an hour-long interview with Luong at his tastefully appointed headquarters in San Francisco, during which he effortlessly selected and steeped a dizzying assortment of delicious teas.
I emerged from the interview, gloriously tea-stoned, with an even deeper appreciation for the tremendous ally new wave coffee has found in Song Tea. We talked about how to grow a small business with mindfulness and care; a life spent traveling between San Francisco, China, and Taiwan; America’s dark past and bright future for tea appreciation; and why coffee and tea go together not despite, but rather, because of their inherent differences in nature. To accompany this interview we asked Peter Luong to suggest some of his favorite teas from the current Song collection, so that our readers may steep along at home. You’ll be glad you did.
Let me start by asking about this first tea we’re drinkingโwhere does its name come from?
This is called โDragonwellโ aka Long Jing as a transliterationโโLong Jing” means dragonwell in Chineseโand itโs got the Chinese characters as well. Iโm very straightforward about how tea is named, and I prefer not to make up names. Itโs pretty much direct translation.
Why do you take this approach?
I find it confusing when you make up names for teas, because it moves the product further away from what it is. Tea itself is quite confusing, and this adds to that. Youโre dealing with a product that has thousands of permutations in terms of variety, and just as many permutations in terms of quality. itโs very hard to tell what is good or what is not. It comes down to tasting, and beginning to build the context of what is good and what is not.
Even in China, there is a lot of bad tea, but the difference is in China, it is very clear what is good and what is bad. Itโs a little muddled hereโwhat it comes down to is taste.
Iโve been told before that “no good teaโ makes its way to North America, and that this continent is a dumping ground for the poorest teas from the cultures that grow and revere them. What is your take on that?
It is true that in North America, you have a wide possibility for marketing and mismarketing tea to a customer base that is fairly unfamiliar with the product. You can put all those connections together, and come up with some not so good activities happening and dubious situations.
But is it hard to get quality tea further away from the source? This is basically an economic issue. Most of the best teas are very expensive and often pre-bought or pre-sold. Thereโs another force at work though, which is the North American and Western tea market buying low-grade tea traditionally and historicallyโthat is very much a true thing. Weโre a culture thatโs been weaned on convenience, which in tea means things like tea bags, and teas that are stronger and harsher so we can add milk or sugar to them to make them taste better. You go to a grocery store, you find tea bags that cost just a few dollars for a pack of 40โthat is very much the vast majority of the current market for tea here. Because of that, thereโs a perception by vendors and sellers at origin that the American palate means Americans want lower-grade teas in the first place. Itโs a chicken or the egg thing and I donโt know what came first. Thereโs also a propensity for American and Western tea buyers to go to places like China and say, โI only want teas at this price pointโโthis also feeds back into the wider issue, and it means now, when I go to China and say โHey, Iโm an American tea buyer,โ they have sort of pre-selected what they think I will want to purchase. They say โHey, Iโve got this for you,โ and itโs rarely what I want.
Last, thereโs an historic inflexibility to dealing with circumstances beyond the tea growers control. Market forces are a real part of buying tea, and circumstances change all the time for tea growers. If you come from North America and demand tea at the same price as last year, or two or three years ago, you can watch those market forces play outโquality can decrease, and quantity might decline.
In coffee itโs common for some importers to set up multi-year contracts with coffee growers. Do you work with this kind of contract structure when youโre buying tea?
Each year, we work with a collection of teasโtypically around 20 or 25 teas, and at most 30. The reason for that is, around 30 or 40 percent of the collection is rotated each year. So I differentiate between โrefresh” and โrotateโ. Rotate means itโs goneโit might come back in a few years, but itโs been removed or replaced with something else. Then thereโs certain teas we refreshโwe have a 2015 Dragonwell tea now, and it will refresh in 2016.
30% of the collection rotates, and that gives us a lot of flexibility. If the spring of 2016 is outrageously overpriced for its quality in China, say, or the overall quality is low for whatever reason, that gives us room to rotate another tea. The idea is to get customers to get used to our collection as something that is always varied. The idea is to not have the same 30 teas from year to year, no matter what, even if the tea is really bad one year or really expensive one year. The concept of rotation says, โHey, this particular tea is not that great this year, letโs do something else.โ The side effect is it makes the whole process really interesting and funโthereโs always new teas to try. When I travel to buy tea, I always find more teas than just the 25 or 30 we have in our collectionโbut I resist the temptation to grow the list. It allows me to fluctuate. Thereโs no long-standing contracts; thereโs a handshake and an agreement that gets communicated. The grower knows Iโll be back next year, and that my company is growing, so I may want to buy a bit more in the next season.
Are all your teas from China?
โChina and Taiwan. In mainland China, regions like Sichuan and Zhejiang produce totally different types and styles of teas. In Taiwan, itโs a very small island, but with many growing areas, and just as many tea makers that produce different teas.
The thing thatโs slightly different between the coffee world and tea world is, in the coffee world, as I understand it, if youโre buying green beans in Kenya and looking at different lots, you might be side by side, traveling with another coffee companyโthe differentiation is that youโre going out there, but amongst the club of coffee roasters who are also traveling to origin to select green beans to be imported on their behalf, youโre sort of pretty much the same in that situation as everyone else. The *real* differentiation is what a coffee company does to a coffee once it comes back to America, or wherever they may be located, which is when they roast it, market and brand it, and oftentimes present the coffee themselves in their own cafes. To compare tea, what I buy for the most part is finished product, and the differentiation is all about being able to find a very good finished product in the first place. That means a different approach to things.
There are, of course, some exceptionsโfor example, three or four of our teas right now are actually roasted, which means I send them to a contract roaster in Taiwan with a very specific profile developed, independent of the growers. That roasting is happening in Taiwan, but to my specifications, which is where Iโm able to influence at least some of our products in a style similar to how a roaster influences coffee.
Talk to me a bit more about growing up around tea in San Francisco, and what led you to start Song.
My family operated an apothecary, a traditional Chinese apothecary, and over the last 30 years they started adding more and more tea to it. So I did grow up with it in some respects, but just because your father is a wine dealer doesnโt mean youโre into itโwhat brought me back was in around 2003, my dad asked me to come back and work on the family business. I would travel with him to China once or twice a year to source and find teas. And in the course of doing that I realized that I had been presented with a very interesting business problemโhow to make this viable. I had been to college already, and before all this I was working as a business consultant and doing strategy consulting, making PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets all day, and then I left consulting to be in the first round of dot coms in the late 1990s-early 2000s, and so when I joined the family business in 2003, I came to it with a business background. It has always intrigued meโI like business, I like thinking and solving problems. I will say that the tea aspect of it, appreciating tea and discovering how interesting it was, really only developed along the way for me as I worked with my parents. Good tea, it turns out, can taste very, very good.
So I helped my parents solve a problem. We rebranded, my parents retired, and I went and started my own thing. Song started selling tea in October of 2013, and I purchased the first tea for Song in the spring of 2013. The collection refreshes each spring, and we are now about to start on our fourth collection.
How often do you travel to Taiwan and China?
When we got started it took a lot of travel and investigation, like 2-3 months in China and Taiwan to get the project launched. Now Iโm there for about a month in the spring harvest and then again in the winter, to have conversations about whatโs coming up, as well as to set up purchasing the handmade teaware and ceramics we sell. All of our pieces are custom made to order. Iโm there about a month and a half each year, but as the business grows and runs well, I hope to eventually be there more like 2, 3, or even 4 months a year, discovering more teas and then coming back to San Francisco to help release and launch those teas.
Talk to me about the relationship between Song Tea and coffee. Where does this connection come from?
Well, thereโs a few perspectives. If you look purely from a business perspective, cafes in America are typically open from 7am to 6pm, or later. which means the hours of service are long. It makes business sense to work with cafes as a tea company. The question is, which cafesโbecause there are thousands of these new cafes out thereโand weโve over time turned down more than weโve signed on, and have been very particular about maintaining quality and ensuring that the people weโve partnered with can serve tea properly. Itโs tough to gauge, but sometimes weโll buy coffee independently from those prospective new accounts, just so that we can try and taste their coffees before making an agreement. But it is not only flavor; the quality character of the partnerships we have is so important as well.
I think ultimately we make the correct assumption that if a coffee bar really takes care of their beans, theyโll take care of our tea, too. Thereโs more range in tea brewing than there is in coffee brewing, but it is perhaps the closest two things I can think of, both so affected by endless variables. Iโm drinking more coffee than ever these days, and as an example, I used to have this burr grinder from like 10 years ago, and it had never been cleaned or anything because I didnโt know better, and I found that when I ground coarser for French press it would taste more bitter, but if I ground smaller for a French press it would taste a bit better, but give me way more sludge. It seemed odd, but it was because I didnโt understand how particle size can effect coffee brewing, and that our crappy unclean grinder was affecting everything. Well, tea leaves are also every conceivable size and shape, and this influences how you brew for an individual teaโฆthat kind of connectivity, not many other beverages can share.
So how did the work with these cafes start?
It started years ago at Ritual Coffee Roasters here in San Francisco. I knew (Ritual founder) Eileen Hassi, so when I launched Song that was one of the very first accounts we started working with. And out of that relationship I met Kevin Bohlin from Saint Frank, and met Ben Kaminsky as well. Ben has been a really great advisor for us, introducing us to different folksโhe helped make Heart happen for us, and then Good Coffee came from Heart, and it starts sort of feeding form itself and building on itself.
The trick is not to overextend yourself or feel like you need to be on every corner. We are very particular about who we work with, and I am proud of that. Still, we could do better, and over the next couple of months weโll add a robust account management program and training program, so we stay on top of things. It takes a lot of effort to make sure itโs going well.
What is the litmus test or set of standards you look for from potential coffee partners?
These are things weโve thought and talked about for so long, theyโve become kind of second nature. Iโm of the thinking that a good introduction is really important. One of the nicest emails Iโve received is from the guys at Good Coffee. It was likeโฆโMy name is this, Iโve been in coffee for this long, weโre doing this nowโฆโโit was this really nice way to say hey, I would love to talk to you, and see if it makes sense to work together.
There isnโt really a litmus testโit comes down to rapport, and if we think itโs someone who can take care of our tea. But we also have termsโwe expect a level of training, and we expect a degree of care. The size of an account is not important to us. We work with, for example, Sump Coffee in St. Louisโthey arenโt a giant company but they are doing wonderful things, and they are so open to working with our teas, and appreciative. When youโre working with someone who is of a like mind, that is so important in a partnership. We also really donโt want to be all over the placeโthat is especially tough for tea, because when you set out to win X number of accounts, you only get one or two chances at actually buying the tea in the first place each year in the year. It means your cash outlay for the year has to assume youโre taking on 20 more accounts, paying for tea ahead of time.
Do you work much with restaurants or bars?
We have a few accounts that are not coffee. We work with Coi, a restaurant in San Franciscoโthey have a very high-end tasting menu, and with a wine pairing, but they also are offering a tea pairing for their menu. Itโs fun; instead of drinking wine, youโre served different tea-based drinks throughout the night. Itโs not just straight tea, eitherโtheyโve cold brewed some of them when appropriate. Itโs so interesting, to have tea in a context thatโs not just your typical โHey, hereโs the dessert menuโ setting.
Little Gem here in San Francisco is also a restaurant and cafe we work with, as well as Paramount Coffee Project in Los Angeles. Whether itโs a restaurant, or food, or cafe, or whatever, they should be fun and interesting, because itโs not just about moving product. If it were just about moving product, I would have taken on 40 accounts in the last few years we chose to politely decline. That might have been great; I certainly would have made more money, and we would be a larger company. but then itโs not cool to our partners to scatter shot our teas all over the place. It devalues what is a really great product. And also, there isnโt all that much of some of these great teas available. We have to negotiate for incremental increases from year to year.
Good teas are spoken for, and in a year where thereโs low rain fall, or labor shortages, thereโs going to be less tea produced overall. There is not an infinite amount of tea that I can buy while maintaining quality; I am not in a position to just grow and grow without any consequences. I just want everything to be measured.
Iโm enjoying drinking tea here with you in this lovely space. Who works here with you?
Thereโs three employees here now, and myself. We have a website, we have retail, and our wholesale operationโall of that is done by just 4 people. I want to grow the company in a way thatโs measuredโฆmaybe because I came from a generation of dot coms where nothing was really measured, and there was money being thrown everywhere.
How did you find this retail space in San Francisco?
Craigslist! (laughs) Back in 2013, I had just left for China, to go do our first round of buying. Things were getting so expensive in San Francisco, with the tech companies really starting to just take over the real estate here. I couldn’t find anything and it was really frustrating, I didnโt want to waste money on a build out, and so I left to go buy tea, and that was the scary partโI was buying product, we knew we would launch the company soon, but we had no space to put it in. Not even a warehouse. So we looked at different spaces, and I worked with a broker to send me a lot of links, and Amanda was working with me part-time at the timeโand nothing looked good . We almost took a space in Jackson Square, in downtown, but it was larger than we wanted and would have taken more work. We almost signed the lease but we thoughtโฆI donโt know, maybe we should share a warehouse somewhereโฆand then one day I was at the base of a mountain called Alishan, about to ascend the mountain the next day, staying in a bed and breakfest with internet access. And as I was browsing Craigslist, Amanda sent me the linkโฆand we moved quickly after that. It was pretty much built out and we moved right in.
Who designed the space? What is the intent behind it?
Thereโs not a designer. Our space happened organically and functionally, to make use of our 1500 square feet. I knew we needed an office and a place to pack tea, and we also wanted a beautiful space to showcase teaware. This is a multi-function spaceโin the front itโs a tasting room / gallery, so customers can taste teas. Similar to a wine tasting context we charge $10 a person for a tasting, and if you buy something, we wave it. We didnโt used to charge at all for tastings, but we found this structure made things much clearer for everyone involved. Itโs simple and casual, no pressure. The idea is to come in, browse teas, browse ceramics, and be able to understand us as a company and how we work. Customers do stroll back to our production area sometimes, and thatโs fine, not a problem at all. Locals come in tooโthe difference between here and Chinatown, or somewhere like Fillmore Street, is that this neighborhood has much less foot traffic. 95% of people who come in are here specifically here because they want to be here. Itโs greatโyou get this mix of people who are really into what youโre doing without the crowds who may not be into what youโre doing. Sure, if you have crowds you will make more money, because thatโs a numbers thing, but here because weโre tucked away weโre able to create these experiences. Itโs a really personal tea selection, and a chance to talk and figure out where these teas come from. and thatโs what this space is about. Thereโs a clarity and simplicity to the space thatโs meant to highlight our productsโboth teas and teawaresโand itโs not kitschy at all. Itโs simple, elegant, and it should reflect in some ways on the character and quality of the teas weโre offering.
What are some of the similarities you see between coffee and tea?
We drink coffee here. We arenโt shy about saying, just because youโre a tea company, the more you drink other beverages the more you develop a wider range and appreciation of flavors and texture and character. In terms of sourcing, you know, the thing with tea that might be different from coffee is, there arenโt large farmsโjust a fewโbut there are so many small producers, producing at various quality levels, and it has a lot to do with what their objective is. Are they in it to make money, or to produce something wonderful and unusual?
For example, this tea came from a mountain called Lishan. Nearly anyone dealing with Taiwanese oolongs will have something from Lishanโsimply having a tea from there is accepted as an indicator of quality, but it is, of course, more nuanced than that. Just because a coffee is from Kenya doesnโt mean itโs good, or well roasted, you know? There are hundreds of individual producers working at different quality levels in a given area, and the goal is to find one or two that areโฆyou know, my goal is to find the teas that are good, but not the norm. I donโt want to have the same list of teas everyone else is having. Look at someone like G&B Coffee in Los Angelesโto their credit, theyโre kind of similar in a way of not wanting to do the same thing, to offer the exact same coffee menu as everywhere else. I think itโs boring to have the same teas and it becomes a marketing thing that is disconnected from product quality.
[Peter begins brewing our last tea together]
This is called Four Seasons Red, and you have not tried this. It is a very common cultivarโFour Seasons Spring is made into greener-style oolongs, which are usually not very expensiveโthis tea maker turned this into a red tea, and has given it a character that is phenomenal, with a deep sweetness and tang that is hard to describe. Smell.
Wow, but how? How does tea become like that?
This is done by taking care of the plant, knowing when to pick, and what to do with it once youโve picked. Length of oxidation, temperature, and humidity are all factors, as well as knowing when to stop the oxidation with heat, and then how to dry it, and maybe bake it or roast it to begin to impart different flavor to itโ thereโs quite a few variables at play that effect the outcome of a tea, and you have a very short time to do this. If you pick a tea leaf too late, two weeks, or too early, it can completely change the character. And after you pick it you have one or two days or even less to make your tea. There isnโt much wiggle room.
This craft is not what I do. Iโm trying to be straightforward about itโI am not a tea grower. I buy what I think tastes good, and is unique and different. Most of the teas we purchase are expensive, or at least I think itโs expensive, but I think it will sell and in terms of what it costs us, I think itโs worth it. Itโs a horrible way of doing things, to go buying with the idea that you can only spend this much money, and if itโs a very low bar, youโre effectively compromising the entire time. I feel all of us here feel very strongly about that. If a tea is good it will reveal itself, and thereโs no amount of shenanigans with pricing and marketing that will cover the quality of a bad tea.
Whatโs your favorite tea youโve ever had? What is your โdesert islandโ tea?
This is an unanswerable question. On a deserted island I would go ahead and bring 6-8 teas, and then I would pick or choose, depending on what I felt like drinking at that moment. The chances of having tea in the first place on a desert island is very unlikely.
Of course I have favoritesโthis Four Seasons Red is one of my favorites. This is not only a serious, intellectual teaโwe have those, tooโbut it is a very drinkable tea. It tastes good.
Iโm watching you brew tea throughout this conversation, and youโre doing it without a scale or a timer, and it all tastes great. How?
Bad tea is extremely difficult to brew well, but good teas are easy to brew! So you can have a range that you brew in and it will turn out good. Secondly, all the wholesale accounts we work with will read this and say, โBut Peter, why should I dose by gram and temperature and worry about steep times, if in this context you arenโt doing the sameโโbut for me, I can kind of just do it. It takes practice. Everyone can brew tea like this, but it takes dedication, brewing over and over so youโre so comfortable with it, and having a knowledge of each of the teas and what they want to be. I cook at home without a clock or a thermometerโitโs kind of like that, although lately I must concede that my pastas improve when I watch a clock while cooking.
Whatโs the big thing you wish more people knew about tea?
I wish people would drink more tea. Not so much because I want to sell more teaโalthough I do!โbut people need to drink a lot of tea, and bad tea, to understand contextually what is good and what is not. If you drink enough wine youโll know, eat enough food youโll knowโbut people tend to fixate on things and think itโs quality or think itโs good but they havenโt fully experienced what good really means. Itโs not specific to teaโitโs generic to food and quality. If you eat and drink the same things over and over you wonโt extend your palate. You could be eating the best stuff, or the worst stuff, but without any context it wonโt matter. I donโt like the ideas of tea masters or โtea sommeliersโโIโm a little more casual about it. If you drink enough of something and have developed a context and a profile, you will know whatโs good and whatโs not. Being able to judge quality is as simple as that. I think titles and this and that, they confuse people and make people assume you have to be mystically good or wonderful to develop a palate. And thatโs not the case. Itโs just practice like anything else.
Jordan Michelman is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge.com. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.ย