Tasting Ceylon Tea: aesthetic judgment beyond “good taste”

ABSTRACT

Tea production comprises concerted acts of discernment—from plucking and processing tealeaves, to tasting, blending, and valuing tea—the outcome of which ranges from the ordinary to the singular. Tracing the tension between the two, this article cast a closer look at how aesthetic judgments are made and shared, and the ways in which they are incorporated into the production of mass market commodities. The aim of this paper is to highlight the nuanced practices of aesthetic judgment, which, no matter how indispensable to the production of an ostensibly ordinary good, are obscured by the widespread association of taste with distinguished consumption—the conflation, in other words, of aesthetic judgment with “good taste.” Based on ethnographic research conducted with producers and professional tea-tasters across the Ceylon Tea industry, it argues for a broader understanding of the judgment of taste as an enactment of sensory labor irreducible to commonly held categories of distinction.

KEYWORDS:

• Taste
• aesthetic judgment
• Sri Lanka
• tea
• distinction
• discernment
• commodities
• production
• anthropology

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude to all those across the Ceylon Tea industry who entertained my presence and ceaseless questioning in the name of participant observation; this paper would not have been possible without their help and the generosity of so many others in Sri Lanka whom, alas, I am not able to name here. I am indebted to Sharika Thiranagama, Katyayani Dalmia, Ana María Ulloa, and Ella Butler for their comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript, as well as the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their comprehensive feedback. I am also grateful to Hugh Raffles and Miriam Ticktin for their advice and support. Last but not least, I would like to thank the editors of this issue, Christy Spackman and Jacob Lahne, for inviting me to join in conversations on all things sensory.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In industry terminology, “estate” refers to a tea plantation.

2. A “lot” is an invoice of tea listed in the catalog of any given auction. It refers to a specified quantity of a single grade of tea from an individual tea estate.

3. See Shapin (2011) for a discussion of the relationship between cognition and the senses in the modern period.

4. As the authors point out, studies of colonial plantation labor form their own distinct scholarly tradition. For instance, studies of labor in tea plantations in former British colonies include Sarah Besky’s own monograph on Darjeeling (2014), Piya Chaterjee (2001), Jayeeta Sharma (2011) and, specifically in Sri Lanka, Daniel Bass (2013), Kumari Jayawardena and Rachel Kurian (2015), and Mythri Jegathesan (2015).

5. Singularization, according to Kopytoff (1986), refers to the process of restricting the circulation and exchangeability of a commodity and maximizing its value; a mass-market commodity lies at the opposite end of the spectrum. The biography of a thing refers to its life history, which may not be exhausted by its commoditization.

6. For a comprehensive history of the Ceylon Tea industry, see Forrest (1967) and Simon (2017), commissioned to commemorate, respectively, the centenary and sesquicentennial anniversary of the industry.

7. In order to protect my informants’ anonymity, I have used pseudonyms when referring to proper names of individuals, tea estates, and companies.

8. After processing, bulk tea is sifted and separated into different grades, classified according to leaf content, size, and shape. The grade nomenclature for Ceylon Tea differs according to growing region and processing style and is considerably extensive.

9. Both Butler (2018) and Ulloa (2018) attest to the sensory complexity of industrial food production. Ulloa provides an account of artificial flavors as nuanced aesthetic artifacts, whereas Butler, observing experiments in distaste in a lab setting, describes an “acutely receptive,” and therefore discerning, consumer sensorium.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this project was assisted at different stages by the Department of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research; the Social Science Research Council’s Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship and International Dissertation Research Fellowship, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant awarded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Furthermore, this publication was made possible by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

Notes on contributors

Alexios Tsigkas

Alexios Tsigkas has a PhD in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York. His research, an ethnography of Ceylon Tea, asks how taste judgments are crafted and shared.