Vietnam's Lotus Tea

Tea has played an important part in Vietnam for thousands of years, similar to our neighbours from China, Japan, and South Korea. If their tea ceremony is an infamous art, our sen (lotus) tea is considered as another one as well. 

Every year when the first sunbeams of summer visit West Lake in Hà Nội, lotus lagoons buzz with human bees in the early morning.

Rowing small bamboo boats, they follow the alluring fragrance of thousands of blooming lotuses (sen in Vietnamese). Deftly dodging thorns, they pluck the flowers one after another.

As the dawn appears, all the boats are brimming with lotuses. These flowers are then carried to teahouses where the next phase will begin: the scenting of the favourite tea of the locals: lotus tea.

From the essence of lotus...

At 7am, all hutches at the lagoons are filled with fragrance that hangs over the pink lotus flowers.

“During the night, lotuses are covered in dew and begin to blossom very early in the morning. Therefore, to ‘seize’ their sweetest fragrance for the best scented tea, these lotuses must be picked very early, around 4-6am,” said Nguyễn Thị Ngô, who started scenting tea by lotus as a child. 

Lotus in Hanoi's largest lake usually lasts for four months, beginning in May and ending in August. “No lotus in the region and surroundings is bigger and more richly scented than that at West Lake, because the mud there is very fertile,” said Hoàng Anh Sướng, the sixth generation owner of Trường Xuân, one of the city’s most renowned teahouses.

Trường Xuân owns two lotus ponds in West Lake, which supply 1,000 lotuses per day. In peak season, they can pluck about 3,000 flowers per day.

After being collected, flowers are quickly separated into different parts. Petals are peeled off, taking yellow filaments of the stamen. Here is what tea makers want, white anthers, the essence of a lotus, which hides the fascinating fragrance of the flower. “From 100 lotus flowers, we can collect around 100 grams of lotus anthers. It takes 140 to 60 lotuses grown in other regions, such as Hưng Yên or Hà Nam, to give us the same quantity of anthers. To make one kilo of dried lotus tea, it takes 1,000 to 1,400 lotus flowers,” said Ngô.

... to unique aromatic tea

According to Sướng there is one particular kind of tea very precious to the Vietnamese people - a lotus scented tea that's made from buds plucked from mature Tuyết Shan trees that grow on high mountains in the Northern province of Hà Giang. covered in dew for the whole year. After being steamed to remove the tannin, the buds are dried in a pan, put into terracotta pots and kept for 3 to 5 years to become spongy and absorbent, before the scenting process can begin. 

Drying and scenting tea is an art. We use wooden barrels (of indeterminate size and kind of wood) in which we place water absorbent paper in the bottom and then over that we put a thin layer of tea, then a thin layer of lotus anther and then another thin layer of tea and continue alternating layers of tea and lotus until the barrel is full. The barrel is then covered and kept air-tight. Every 4-6 hours the barrel is uncovered for some minutes to lower the heat so the lotus anthers do not rot,” revealed Sướng.

The tea is kept in the wooden barrel for up to 24 hours, then the lotus anthers are separated out using a sieve and discarded. The tea is dried, and then the procedure is repeated with that same tea three to five more times using new lotus anthers each time.

The process of making lotus scented tea is about the same now as it was years ago, but most lotus anthers are now used to scent Thái Nguyên tea. Hà Giang lotus scented tea is a rare speciality, shared by tea makers.

The tea brewing process, which refers to the water itself, temperature and time, also remains unchanged.

In modern times, there are a variety of water sources available. When he has the time, Sướng visits old pagodas to ask for rain water and the anceint village of Dường Lâm  to get a container of laterite well water – fresh and very sweet. The type of water used does affect the taste.

esides this sophisticated art, locals also create another simpler and quicker scenting method, that everyone can use, according to Ngô.

At night, Ngô puts tea into lotus flowers which start opening up. Then she ties those lotuses by strings to “force” them not to blossom. Early next morning, she returns and picks the “tea lotuses”, taking the tea to brew immediately.

“During the night, tea absorbs all the fragrance of lotuses to become so sweet in both its aroma and taste. “Tea lotuses” covered in lotus leaves can last a few days in cool conditions, or up to ten days in the fridge,” she said.

As lotus tea is poured from the pot, the steam drifts up, and Shai Chin Lung, a Taiwanese businessman who has lived in Vietnam for seven years is looking forward to his cup.

“Enjoying an early summer cup of tea brewed by the Trường Xuân artisans, I feel like I’m touching heaven. The fragrance of the lotus mixed with the sweet taste of truly first-class Tân Cương tea in a clean tea cup makes me think of hundreds of pink lotuses beginning to open, filling the air with their scent. For me, lotus tea is number one.”

After watching a documentary film about the art of scenting lotus tea narrated by the owners of  Trường Xuân teahouse, professor Shimizu Masaaki, a Vietnamese language teacher at Osaka University in Japan, decided to witness the process in person during a trip to Vietnam.

“I am still amazed at the sophisticated, exquisite and patient work that is required. The fragrance and taste of a lotus tea cup is hard to describe in words, but I can choose one: wonderful. Hà Nội's people can be proud of their second to none scenting tea art of the high quality product,” he said.

While international brands like Lipton and Dilmah have moved into Vietnam over  the past few years, Sướng and his father maintain Trường Xuân Teahouse with three main kinds of tea: original green tea, nutritious tea and nature flower scented tea -lotus, magnolia, jasmine, and shaddock flower. 

The two want to rehabilitate Vietnamese tea, as Vietnamese people not only want to enjoy their own tea but also know about what they are drinking. “Lotus tea is not just a refreshing beverage and good for your health; to Asian people, its most meaningful spirit is to purify the soul,” Sướng said.

Asia Media Centre