Teh — Tea and the Sweet Teas

Tea came to Java as a plantation crop under the Dutch in the nineteenth century, and the highland gardens of West Java, above all in the Priangan, became the heart of the island's tea country. From the estates the leaf passed into the everyday drinking of the whole archipelago, and Indonesia took it sweet, hot or iced, as the common cup of the household, the warung and the roadside. In Central Java the town of Tegal gave its name to teh poci, tea brewed and served in a small clay pot with lumps of rock sugar, while the sweet glass of teh manis is the table drink that accompanies a meal across the island.

Indonesian tea is the leaf of Camellia sinensis, grown in the cool uplands of Java and Sumatra and sold chiefly as black tea, with a smaller trade in green and in jasmine-scented leaf. Teh manis is black tea brewed strong and sweetened in the glass with white sugar, served hot or poured over ice as es teh. Teh poci is brewed in an unglazed or lightly glazed clay pot, the leaf often scented with jasmine, and drunk from small cups with rock sugar or palm sugar. Both are plain infusions, and their character rests on the leaf, the water and the sugar alone.

Hot sweet tea is drunk with fried foods, with steamed and fried snacks such as pisang goreng and tempe mendoan, and with the rice table at the end of a meal. The structural reason is the tannin and the sugar together: the astringency of the leaf cuts the oil of frying and the sugar rounds the heat of chilli. Iced es teh is the usual drink beside spicy and fried dishes in the warung.