August 31st, 2010
Much has been written on tobacco notes in young pu-erh teas. Because of this, some local Chicago tea friends and I decided to take this idea for a spin and spend a day at Iwan Ries with Certified Tobacconist Ron Carroll. Ron wanted to learn more about pu-erh and we wanted to compare the subtle complexities of pipe-tobacco with the nuances of pu-erh tea. Instead of immersing ourselves in not-taking and in-depth comparisons, we just enjoyed ourselves and let the conversation flow. Thomas Conner of TeaSquared elaborated on the day: http://teasquared.blogspot.com/2010/05/tea-and-tobacco-smokin.html
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Tags: pu-erh, tea, tobacco
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August 24th, 2010
On July 31st, I held my first Chicago Tea Meetup @ Todd and Holland in Forest Park, IL. Meetup Groups are a great way to meet people in your area with similar interests. The Chicago Tea Lovers group has around 250 members (As of August 2010) and has held 56 meetups in the Chicago area since 2006, so I am very excited to head up this group. Seven members came out to Todd and Holland, a tea shop owned by Janet and Bill Todd that has been in the Chicago area for over 15 years. Bill frequently travels to tea origins and buys direct from farmers, which as you know is right up my alley! Janet asked what type of teas we’d like to taste for our private tasting, I suggested Japanese teas – not having enough time to consult the group. Everyone was happy with my choice nonetheless, we started with a Japanese Black Tea – an unusual offering from Japan called “Shizuika Kohcha” it reminded me of a nutty Yunnan black with less maltiness. We also tried their Yame Sencha, Kukicha Supreme, and Gyokuro Imperial. Bill taught us all proper cupping techniques, so loud slurps were heard throughout the shop. Todd and Holland is a great local Chicago tea shop and their online shop is great as well, I recommend checking them out!
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August 1st, 2010
This year, I was lucky enough to go to the World Tea Expo in Vegas. It was a great chance to meet a lot of tea friends that I’ve been talking to online since the birth of this website over a year ago. This year many authors spoke, many tea growers has booths, it was a great way to see the directions the industry is going. I saw many more tea growers than I saw middle-men importers – this really excited me as I believe the future of our industry lies in buying tea directly from farmers in tea producing countries. New Zealand tea and Hawaii grown tea were also represented — a sure sign that our usual handful of “tea producing countries” are growing. The expo held an outdoor soirée at the Hilton pool where we were all able to mingle and meet over drinks and without the hindrance of festival booths. James Norwood Pratt officially released his highly acclaimed “Tea Dictionary” which he spent years making for the industry. He wrote this book with Devan Shah of ITI Importers and Chen Zongmao from China’s Tea Research Institute. Many of the definitions within have never been translated to English, so this is a great resource for the industry. There were also many seminars at the expo, I attended Social Media 101, a talk given by Digg’s Kevin Rose.
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Tags: las vegas, tea
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March 2nd, 2010
I am proud to announce that our company, Chicago Tea Garden is finally open for business. We have 9 teas from David Lee Hoffman’s Phoenix Collection to start and some local tea-ware from Chicago Potter — Chris Chaney. Lainie Petersen has written a wonderful article on us as the Chicago Tea Examiner, see it here. The Little Yellow Teapot also wrote an article about our opening: here.
I chose to sell David Lee Hoffman’s teas to start for a few reasons… the man is a pioneer in the tea industry. He has relationships with farmers all over China and has been granted unprecedented access to some of the finest teas to reach our shores. Second, most of the pu-erh he has was obtained years before the pu-erh craze — and since then it has been aging in man-made pu-erh caves that he has created here in the United States. So not only is his pu-erh old, but it is authentic and has been stored properly for years. It is hard to buy pu-erh from China these days without having doubts towards its authenticity.
We are also working with tea farmers in India, Japan, and Hawaii as well — we just wanted to see how things go at first with our offering of 9 teas… no use jumping the gun here. But as I sip my last bit of tea for the day — I am thankful for everyone that pushed me to reach this goal – especially Erin — without her support this wouldn’t have happened. It was an exciting day today – I launched the site at noon and I sent out an email to the 77 people that had signed up for the newsletter, I notified my facebook friends, and tweeted. I’m pretty sure my host hates me because as the tweets started to flow, the site went down a few times and things moved at a general snail’s pace. At one point so many people were on the site at one time that I couldn’t even access the admin panel to view orders so I just left the house and went for a walk hoping to return to a working site. I can’t believe the support everyone gave me on twitter — I want to thank each and every one of you for helping me spread the word, that I am finally a tea merchant. A dream I joked about several years ago. Thanks also to everyone that blogged about our teas so far. Every time I find a review on one of our teas, I will link to the review on the product page.
Thanks again! Now that the site is up, I can get back to the normal World of Tea routine — sorry it has been so long.
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Tags: chicago, tea
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October 30th, 2009
I had a few friends over recently. They had never “experienced” tea. So I decided to give them a bit of a tasting, but I also wanted to have several courses of food to pair with the tea. After much deliberation, this is how it went down…
We started with Silver Needle white tea and shortbread. We then moved up to several oolongs Gonfu-style paired with sliced pork tenderloin which I prepared with only sea salt and black pepper. As we moved on to darker teas (blacks and Puerhs) we moved onto the third course… pears poached in white wine, vanilla beans, cloves, cinnamon, and of course sugar. We finished the night off with some Masala tea that I blended along-side bits of coffeecake.
Brian Pfeifer from the Tea Traveler [http://www.sabletower.com/tea/] also added:
“The more brisk or bitter the tea, the sweeter the food should be. The sweeter the tea, the saltier the food should be. Also don’t let the food overpower the tea.”
Overall, the night was a complete success; we sampled around 15 teas and I was happy to have shown my friends a new experience. Feel free to share with me your tea-tasting experiences. I’d love to hear them!
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Tags: food pairing, tea, tea and food, tea tasting
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August 10th, 2009
We agree, twitter is great, but it has one problem. When topics that are important to a community are discussed, we need them to be saved, and to be accessible by all. Twitter is a great place for us to meet new people, but The Tea Round Table [http://www.tearoundtable.com] is a great place for us to discuss the world of tea long term. The vision behind the Tea Round Table is to bring people together to network on a smaller scale, collaborate, and learn. By providing an online meeting place, the goal of The Tea Round Table is to create a closer-knit community you can come back to with questions, ideas, and even off-topic discussion with people who all share a love for tea.
Today is the first time the Round Table is open to the general public, so feel free to look around and sign up! As today is the first day, we have a special prize in store for a special member, thanks to Billy Shall of Narien Teas [http://narien.com/], the first member of the forum to contribute 25 topics to the forums will receive a one year’s supply of tea. In order for these topics to be considered valid they must be meaningful and be spread across multiple forum categories (moderators and administrators have discretion over this). Best of luck members and new members to be! If you don’t win this time around, don’t worry – there will be more contests down the line. Please share this new community with your friends!
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August 3rd, 2009
Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting with Steve Knoerr [http://39steeps.blogspot.com/] and Lainie Petersen [http://www.lainiesips.com/]. We spent most of the day drinking our favorite teas and talking about the current state of the world of tea. This is what its all about folks — community, friendship. Tea brings people together. Make sure you hop on over to Steve’s blog and check out his post chronicalling the event: http://39steeps.blogspot.com/2009/08/chicago-tea-writers.html
If you also live in the Chicago area and would like to participate in one of these meetups, let us know: http://twitter.com/WorldofTea
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July 16th, 2009
I just received word from the Fowler Museum at UCLA about an exciting Tea Event:
Steeped in History: The Art of Tea
Click here to see the press release.
Fowler Museum at UCLA
Box 951549
LA CA 90095-1549
fowler.ucla.edu
Find Fowler on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FowlerMuseum
Follow Fowler on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/FowlerMuseum
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The Best Tea ever.
Hi,
I am interested in your tea to buy. I like the
idea you buy directly from the estates. I have a tea business and would like to try yours. Could you please tell me how I can get some!
Thank you, Maureen