Monkey-Picked (sic) Tea with a Side of Stocks

This may be old news to the LTH crowd, but I got a kick out of it.

Last night I was treated to a fine dinner at Green Zebra -- my first visit there. Things went smoothly; the meal and service were excellent. But then we were offered a dessert menu featuring "Monkey-Picked Tea". I freely admit that I ought to be hip to such transparent marketing ploys aimed at the entitled consumer of the finest, rarest, and richest. However, my sensible revulsion at the idea of a $6.00 pot of tea was no match for my delight at the whimsical notion of a tea picked by monkeys. In what Doolittlean parallel universe is this a reality? And the irony of a tea picked by an undoubtedly exploited group of monkeys being hawked at a vegetarian restaurant was delicious in the extreme. So, they had me: my gullible creative side and my inner cynic were both engaged by the prospect of drinking tea made from leaves picked by monkeys.

And the tea, you ask? Perfectly ordinary, nothing to write home about.

Later last evening, a quick Google search yielded a majority of sites such as this one, run by tea merchants that approached the matter with a tabloid "STRANGE-BUT-TRUE" angle:

http://www.firebox.com/?dir=firebox&act ... ct&pid=617

Still, Enquiring minds (and chow-obsessives) want to know. This site (below) seems to have decoded the "monkey-picked" brand story, and uncovered its distant origins in actual events.

http://www.thefragrantleaf.com/mopitea.html

After dreams of wandering thirsty and dissheveled in a strangely familiar landscape with a young, buff Charlton Heston, I awoke to Sunday morning coffee, a bagel, and a Sun Times front page featuring a cebus monkey holding a pencil with the caption: "Your Stock Pick Could Mean Free Vacation: Our Monkey Has Made His Choices. Can You Beat Him?"

Hell no. But I can make him a cup of tea.


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Josephine,

The second link you posted references the allegedly monkey-picked variety of Ti Guan Yi -- Iron Goddess of Mercy.

Years ago, Bill Holland of Todd & Holland Tea told me that he sells a lot of this tea to young women -- he speculated that these customers might have been attracted to the cool sounding and potentially "empowering" name of the product. All of which suggests, not surprisingly, that in the 5,000 years that tea has been consumed on this planet, there's been a lot of time to develop catchy branding strategies.

Hammond

David,
Kind of makes you weepy, thinking about the art of marketing as a 5,000 year old tradition, doesn't it?