While I was in San Francisco in June, just before my visit to Hawaii and World Tea Expo, I fitted in a couple of other tea visits around town to recently opened tea places.  I went first to Samovar’s fabulous restaurant/tearoom at Yerba Buena Gardens and then, the next day, I spent time with Pauline and Keith Mai at their amazingly pretty, brand new DarTealing Lounge on Third Street.  This blog is about Samovar, the next one will be about Dartealing.

Samovar now has three stores in San Fran (I discovered the first up in Castro when I was in the city a few years ago) and each one manages to combine the art and Zen connections of Asian artisan teas with a very attractive, modern cosmopolitan lifestyle that appeals to all ages and all cultures.  There’s The Castro at 498 Sanchez Street, Zen Valley at 297 Page Street, and - the one we visited  - Yerba Buena Gardens at 730 Howard Street.

The personality and philosophy of owner Jesse Jacobs (pictured right with Jane) shines through – in the design of the stores, in the contents and style of the menu, in the approach and knowledge of the waiting staff, and in the underlying sense of peace, harmony and happiness that customers relish during their visits. 

Jesse grew up in Boston where he was influenced by myriad Asian connections;  then he spent time in Denmark where the ritual of gathering friends together around the warm flickering light of a candle to drink comforting beverages taught him how important such harmonious moments are in our lives.  So, after giving up the corporate life in the late 1990s, he decided to create a tea business that brought peace and communication to other people’s lives. 

Jesse says himself in the shop’s Samovar magazine, “we’re in the business of creating peaceful living through everything we do: serving tea and food, and making people happy……Sip by sip, drinking tea is a practice that spreads far and wide to friends, family, neighbors, strangers … the world!”  How apt that is for tea in general and about Samovar in particular.

The menu includes some totally wonderful teas – Four Seasons Oolong with its deliciously delicate buttery taste and aroma that breathes hints of Gardenia; Ancient Gold, a rich, malty organic Yunnan that suggests chocolate and plump raisins; Nishi Sencha (pictured below), a fragrant Japanese First Flush that has a wonderfully clean aroma and taste reminiscent of the seaside and rock pools; herbals such as Moorish Mint, Orange Ginger and Earl Red, a bergamot-flaoured rooibos blend; and several puerhs. 

Different teas are brewed at the table in appropriate brewing vessels – in yixing pots, clear glass pots and jugs, Japanese tetsubins etc.  And drinking bowls vary too – from tall pottery mugs to tiny porcelain or elegant glass bowls.  Everything is designed to please the eye, the touch, the taste, and to create a sense of harmony and balance.

After reading through the fascinating menu – which is presented on a beautiful sheet of burnished copper that is embellished with the image of a tea plant (see above), I chose a very unusual mandarin puerh that was packed inside a little shrivelled mandarin that had aged with the tea (here it is below).  When it was brought to my table, the waiter prised the tea out of the mandarin skin into the brewing pot with a little knife and on the second steeping, tore a few pieces of the fruit skin into the pot to infuse a little of its favour into the tea liquor.  It drank beautifully with my lunch of salmon Caesar salad with wasabi dressing.  It was so good!

The tea was wonderful – not too earthy, just gently mellow and with the slightest hint of citrus notes from the little mandarin orange.  I asked Jesse how he came by this unusual puerh and he told me he was visiting a tea farmer in Yunnan province who showed him these little dried fruits and Jesse bought all 500 that the farmer had made. 

Jesse’s team are all extremely knowledgeable about the teas, where they come from, which foods they marry well with, how they should be served and enjoyed.  They are so kind and helpful, take plenty of time at each table to explain, help brew, answer questions and generally pass on their valuable understanding of tea and everything it means.  They are really important ambassadors for both the company and for tea and it’s clear that they love working here.  Everyone becomes a friend – which is, after all, what tea is all about!

San Fran is so lucky to have Samovar – if I lived there I would make sure I went for lunch or a snack at least once a week, not just to enjoy the atmosphere but to choose different treats from the impressive menu – which offers suggestions as to which tea to drink with which foods.  For example, try one of the puerhs with Chinese stir-fried Duck and squash dumplings, or Ryokucha Brown Rice tea with Japanese maki bowl with tofu or salmon.  And there’s a long list of brunch items, sandwiches, salads and sweet indulgences.  Fabulous!

If you would like to know more, have a look at Samovar’s website at www.samovarlife.com and follow Jesse on twitter.com @JesseTea 

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Before arriving in Las Vegas yesterday ready for World Tea Expo New Business Boot Camp (which has just started as I write), I was really lucky to have the opportunity to spend some time on Hawaii’s Big Island to meet the new tea farmers there and learn more about what they are doing.  My visit was organised by Eva Lee who grows tea, is on the Board of the island’s Tea Society and is also the Chair of Propagation.   I met Eva at World Tea Expo last year and I’m so pleased to have had the chance to find out all about this exciting venture.  We had a great time together and I am totally in awe of how much she and the other new growers have achieved - here we are tasting teas at the Mealani Research Station.

Eva is a choreographer and dancer and her husband Chiu is a potter and photographer and, like other artists who live close to the Kilauea volcano, they are influenced and inspired by the creative energy that is felt so powerfully in this area of the island.  With a few other dedicated growers and researchers, they are true tea pioneers and are encouraging, teaching, sharing and supporting the new community of Big Island tea farmers.  Despite the surprisingly wide variety of micro-climates (from rain forest to desert and everything in between), altitudes, soil types and depths, the tea plants seems to love the environment here and are growing really well.      

The cultivation of tea in Hawaii started about 15 years ago with plants being brought in from Taiwan by Francis Zee, who works for the US Development Agricultural Research Service.  When he suggested that tea might grow well in Hawaii, a few people were willing to have a go at cultivating the bushes and to start experimenting with the manufacture of greens, oolongs and black teas.  They (and now others too) are processing the leaf from different cultivars to make different categories and as I went around the island tasting and chatting to the growers, it was fascinating to learn about their experiments, their techniques, their successes and disappointments, and about the first pieces of machinery now being built or brought in from Japan, China and Taiwan.

Francis Zee no longer works on the tea project but his early investigations into the possibility of tea growing have led to a full scale research programme and the members of the team (Ching Yuan Hu, Associate Dean and Associate Director of Research at the University of Hawaii at Manoa - above left in green shirt, Milton Yamasaki, Field Manager of Mealani Research Station Manager - above right in red shirt, Stuart Nakamoto, Professor and Extension Economist, and Randy Hamusaki, Researcher) are based at various facilities that are part of the University of Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources (CTAHR).

But a lot of valuable information and experience also comes from the people who have been growing for several years and really know what they’re doing in terms of irrigation, feeding the soil, choosing the cultivars that suit what they’re manufacturing.  John Cross, Manager for one of biggest farming landowners on the Big Island, was once in charge of trying to find a crop to replace sugar cane when the Hawaii sugar industry folded in the 1980s.  His garden (on the slopes of the now-dormant Mauna Kea Volcano is located at 900 feet above sea level and has the rich turquoise blue of the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop - see the photo at the top of the page) is filled with plants that he ran trials with – lychees, mangoustines, asparagus, kava and of course tea. 

Today he doesn’t have time to harvest the leaf from the one acre plot so Eva and Chiu drive over on a regular basis to pick the leaf and take it home for processing.  The varietals that grow on John’s farm are mainly Cambodian and Assamica so are best suited to the manufacture of black teas.  The finished tea made by Eva and Chiu from John’s harvest is neatly twisted, large leaves that give a sweetness and nuttiness that is delicious – an all day drinker that doesn’t need milk or sugar.

Mike Riley, a carpenter who makes wonderful furniture from locally grown Koa wood, has an extensive tea plantation over the road from his workshop and makes very impressive oolongs from various varietals.  The bushes here are growing at 3600 feet (above left) and the teas have a wonderful fresh character with hints of fruits such as papaya and apple, are sweet and suggest hints of fresh mown hay – they’re actually very similar in character to the best of Taiwan’s oolongs

Eva and Chiu, whose teas grow under shade in the forest around their home at 4000 feet (above left and right), make some amazing white teas that have the floral character of summer roses layered with subtle citrus hints of tangerines and comforting smooth suggestions of warm toast – fascinating and excellent; they also make a black and an oolong that are now selling at Samovar in San Francisco.  Eva is bringing a small delegation and a selection of Hawaii grown teas to World Tea Expo and is bound to find new customers, so who knows where you will be able to buy these teas in a few months’ time. 

Eva and Chiu live tea to the full!  As you arrive at the magical wood-built house, Chiu’s pots are placed around the garden, by the pond, under the trees and around the house. A tea bush greets you on the front porch and there are gongs to announce your arrival.  Inside the house, Chiu’s porcelain drinking bowls and pots are displayed on window sills and shelves and are in use every day in the kitchen.  I’ll write more next time about Eva and Chiu’s propagation programme, about the work of the research team, about the delicious dinner cooked with tea that we enjoyed at a local restaurant, and about the restaurant in Volcano Village that serves Eva’s Hawaii grown teas.

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I’m on my way to World Tea Expo in Las Vegas (from 11^th-13^th June) by a rather round-about route – via San Francisco and Hawaii to meet up with tea friends and give a few presentations.  My first stop is San Fran and as I emerged from passport control and baggage reclaim (a little bleary after leaving home 13 hours earlier) on Monday 31^st May, there to greet me was Amy Dean – owner of the city’s prettiest and most quirkily British tea room Crown & Crumpet (in the picture to the right) – and her gorgeous daughter, four and a half year old Daisy, who brightened up the entire arrivals hall in her vivid summery yellow frock and pink cardy (here she is with her Dad).

After depositing my suitcase, off we went to Ghiradelli Square, the chic and busy shopping mall created out of Ghirardelli’s refurbished chocolate factory and other historic industrial buildings, for me to experience Crown & Crumpet’s special atmosphere and delicious afternoon tea.  Since the square is close to the waterfront in the popular Fisherman’s Wharf area and offers an attractive selection of stylish and individual retail outlets, it buzzes with activity.  And of course the eye-catching colourful Crown & Crumpet tearoom is like a honeypot to tea-lovers.  They swarm here to gaze in through the door, to pop in for a packet of tea, a tea book or a tea-related gift, or to take a seat and tuck into an excellent pot of tea and a treat from the very tempting menu.

Crown & Crumpet is unlike any other tearoom I have ever visited – it’s cheeky, bursting with personality and humour, filled with bright colours and playful images and very very English  - just not at all in a stuffy traditional way.  It’s as if all our favourite British themes – royalty, afternoon tea, favourite memories from the nursery, eccentric theatricality – have been given a thorough spring-clean and a fresh coat of paint in bright pastel ice-cream colours.  It is, in the words of Amy and Chris Dean who created it, not a tea room but “A room with tea and wit”.

Amy is American but has lived and studied in the UK, and Chris, her husband is British and was once an antique dealer in Kensington, London.   They both have a flair for finding interesting ephemera, antiques, and decorative things that speak to you of bygone days of childhood innocence and the comfort of family.  There’s a painting of Chris’s aunt and uncle as children in the 1930s hanging over the fireplace, cushions that sport the Union Flag, the latest flowered fabrics from popular designer Cath Kidston, three-tiered cake stands laden with finger sandwiches, scones and buttered crumpets, and a model of Her Majesty in blue coat and pearls and with one of her elegantly white-gloved hands ready to wave to you as soon as the sun’s rays warm the little sensor in her handbag (photo below right)!

Taking tea here is fun but the tea list is serious!  It offers a really good choice – from single origin Assam, Darjeeling, Sencha, Pai Mu Tan, and Puerh to an intriguing selection of flavoured blacks, greens and whites (Merry Mango, Daisy’s Blend, Paris, Minted Green, Jasmine Fancy, Strawberry Fields, Fig de Blanc) and plenty of herbal infusions.  If in festive mood, add a little light-headed merriment with a glass of sherry, port, madeira or sparkling white or rose wine.  And if you’re craving a traditional English breakfast, elevenses or afternoon tidbit, it’s really hard to decide between boiled or poached eggs, sausage rolls, quiche of the day, cinnamon toast, warm scones, toasted crumpets with various toppings, set Afternoon Tea, Nursery Tea, and Trolley Dolly Tea with everything you would expect, or just a simple slice of Victoria sponge.   Something for everyone’s taste!

As I sat watching the little clusters of young people enjoying their Crown & Crumpet specials (groups of young Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians and Japanese come regularly), Daisy was busy running in and out of the office at the back, offering chef Caroline advice as to which cakes she should be baking, drawing us each a picture to take home, amusing us with her comments on the crumpets and scones, and generally adding her beauty and charm to the occasion. 

When Amy and Daisy delivered me to my suite at The Metropolitan Club in downtown San Francisco, Daisy insisted that I should close my eyes before I stepped into the room as she and her mum had prepared some little surprises for me – so I did as I was told and she led me by the hand to the dressing table.  She told me “You can look now!” and there ready for me was a Crown & Crumpet teapot, a packet of Crown & Crumpet Private Blend tea, a cup and saucer, a tea strainer and a generous pack of huge chocolate chip cookies. 

  This was a very special afternoon - I had stepped off the plane tired and time-confused and badly in need of a cup of tea, and a few hours (and several cups of Assam) later, I was utterly refreshed and had made a whole bunch of new friends - Saulene (the manager of Crown & Crumpet pictured right), Beth (one of the tearoom’s ‘Trolley Dollys pictured further up the page with a cake stand of goodies), Tiffany (Crown & Crumpet’s party planner) and of course Amy, Chris and Daisy.  What a delight!

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I never cease to be amazed and impressed by the many and varied ways in which tea businesses style their shops and tearooms and by the inspirational connections that tea makes to so many different aspects of our lives. Yesterday I went on a journey of discovery to a new store in one of the most fashionable parts of London - the King’s Road in Chelsea - and found a little touch of magic mingled with some amazing teas.

Opened in March this year, Bellocq’s new London boutique is the first of the company’s planned ‘tea atelier’s’.  I discovered, chatting to Michael Shannon (pictured above in the shop) who was in sole command of the shop when I called in, that Bellocq is a New York based housewares and tea company, and that Michael and one of his co-founders, Heidi Johannsen Stewart, both worked for Martha Stewart  - Michael as product designer and Heidi as editor, stylist and columnist at Stewart’s Living magazine.  Scott Stewart, the third member of the team is also a designer and, in the past, has created for such prestigious companies as Anthropologie and Barneys in New York. 

The group’s sense of style, colour, harmony and balance is wonderfully and immediately evident as soon as you step through the door from the noisy, busy street into this calm space – so rich in links to plants, gardens, rituals and relaxation.  For the theme here is simplicity, a closeness to the charm and appeal of nature’s gifts, and the loveliness of favourite flowers and plants.

Bellocq’s watchword is ‘quality over quantity’ and a desire to preserve traditional craft techniques.  They are aware of and wish to honour the relationship between the grower and the customer, between nature and the enjoyment it offers, and every aspect of their product, style, packaging and presentation speaks of the care with which they have brought this new concept to London.

In the press release that accompanied the launch earlier this year, Michael explained that these three friends are “loving every minute of it and feeling inspired by the wonderful people we’ve met along the way.  We’ve been fortunate to be part of an exceptional creative community and wish to share our knowledge and inspiration with each and every customer.”  I watched as he served a visitor yesterday and the atmosphere here is all absolutely about that sharing, about friendly companionable chats, about becoming excited together about the appearance of the very pretty tea leaves and the fragrances that waft headily from the generous, bright yellow tins that hold the different blends.

The blends have been created by Heidi and Ravi Kroeser and, as Michel explained to me, “The process by which they select the pure teas and create the blends is very involved and incredibly passionate.  It takes a very long time and the tasting of hundreds of teas to edit down to what we think is a well-curated selection. The shop is ever evolving. Heidi is refining a new selection of blends as we speak’.

The flavoured teas mingle unusual flowers and herbs with high quality leaves and the menu is fascinating, seductive and enticing. Noble Savage mixes strong Indian and Chinese teas with juniper berries, douglas fir tips and wild flowers (pictured nearer the top of the page); Afghani Chai (my breakfast tea this morning and here left in the photo) is a visual delight and a taste bud treat made up of Indian black tea with cardamoms, cloves, black pepper, ginger, star anise, red poppy flowers and marigold petals; The White Duke adds a twist to Earl Grey by balancing a beautiful Silver Needle white tea with natural oil of bergamot grown in Sicily; and Kikuya flavours organic Japanese Sencha with Bulgarian rose and strews rose petals amongst the tea.

And then there are all the more classic teas - Bellocq Breakfast is a ‘toasty full-bodied blend of organic India, Chinese and Ceylon black teas’; Royal Golden Yunnan breathes honey and sweet forest richness; Dragonwell has a wonderful chestnut mellowness; Ali Shan oolong, a tightly rolled balled oolong yields all the orchid and honey notes one anticipates from these gorgeous high mountain Taiwanese teas; and various puerhs – both loose and compressed – will satisfy customers who have recently developed a taste for these special Yunnan aged teas.  Large-leafed herbal infusions include Le Hammeau - a beautiful and heady blend of lemongrass, camomile, mint, sage and roses - Yerba Mate, Mulberry leaf and Rooibos

This evening, Bellocq are holding an event that strengthens the connection between these beautiful teas and special gardens and the flowers that grow in them.  In Sussex in the south of England stands a house called Charleston - once the home of artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell and a meeting place for the painters, writers, poets and intellectuals that made up the Bloomsbury Group. 

The garden is a favourite haunt for visitors who love the gentle beauty of this country home and through the different seasons it is filled with spring daffodils and narcissus, summer poppies, aquilegias, the berried branches of autumn trees, elegant statuary, ponds and benches on which to rest.  When I lived nearby in Sussex in the 1970s, I admired the harmony and peace of the setting and the house - although it wasn’t open to the public in those days.  The event today at Potterton Books is to launch a new book of photographs of the Charleston garden by Sue Snell, and the Bellocq team has created a special Charleston Blend (of Ceylon tea, camomile, linden flowers, rose geranium, lavender and poppies) in honour of the house and of its famous past residents and visitors. I am delighted to have been invited!

Thursday evening - The book launch was a great success - the bookshop was packed and Vanessa Bell’s granddaughter Henrietta talked of her memories of the house and garden. Here are a couple of photos

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I’ve enjoyed a week of tasting some really amazing teas!  Various friends have given me samples of unusual and rather special leaves to try and I wanted to share the experience of tasting them with you all.  My friend Sayaka Nakanoji, who has a tea business called Silver Pot in Tokyo and who I first met at Bagdogra Airport when we were both on our way up to Darjeeling a few years ago, was in London and brought me some delicious Nilgiri Frost from Glendale Estate.  If you’ve never tried the winter teas from southern India, this is one of the best I’ve ever tried. 

The teas produced in Nilgiri (images of the area above and right) around the year are good but fairly neutral in character.  But when the sun loses some of its strength in December, January and February and the air develops a crisp chill that lasts through till Spring, the tea bushes grow much more slowly and so the flavour of the tea changes markedly. 

Frost teas are noted for their sweet intense fruitiness that is reminiscent of the muscatel notes of the best First Flush Darjeelings.  The Glendale tea that Sayaka gave me displays an intensely peachy quality with the hint of ripe sweet grapes that we look for in a top-quality Formosa Oriental Beauty. 

The dry leaves are long, fine and neatly twisted, rich chocolate brown scattered with silvery tips and a few tiny oaky brown and bright green baby leaves – enticingly pretty! The wet leaves are perfect, unbroken, plump shoots of two leaves and a bud with the most beautiful tawny and green shades and an aroma that is as jammy and sweet as peach preserve – the sort that is packed with fat juicy chunks of fruit!  The liquor is wonderful – amber, sweet, smooth and fruity. 

Glendale feels the cold most intensely in January and February and when the six-day-old leaves are plucked, withered, lightly rolled and oxidized, the tea develops a character that is much more exotic and floral than teas made during the warmer months.  Truly delicious!

My second treat of the week was Kamairi-cha which Tim d’Offay of Postcard Teas gave me to try.  Kamairi-cha is an unusual Japanese green tea – unusual because it’s pan-fried in the traditional Chinese style  - just as all green teas were manufactured in Japan before the steaming process was introduced in the 18^th century.  The freshly harvested leaves are withered briefly before being moved vigorously around in hot pans to de-enzyme the leaf and fix the green. 

Just as in China, the way that the leaf is rolled gives each Kamairi-cha a different appearance – some may be pelleted like a gunpowder, or may consist of roughly broken pieces of leaf and stalk, like the one I tried.  My sample from Postcard Teas was made by Mr Kumamoto who learnt his skill from traditional experienced hand-firers and makes his teas from the leaves of 90-year old tea trees in very small quantities each year.

These panned green teas are still popular in Kyushu in the south of Japan but it’s very unusual to find Kamairi-cha outside Japan so I was really excited to try my sample.

The dry leaf (above the left) is an interesting mixture of broken leaf and stalk and the pale greeny-yellow liquor was like any well-made Chinese green tea - smooth, mellow and mild, very easy on the palate with no hint of bitterness or atringency.

Just as all this year’s First Flush Darjeelings (a Darjeeling garden pictured right) are arriving, I was given a packet of Singbulli Estate’s wonderfully fruity tea (dry leaf above left, liquor left and wet leaf right).  Singbulli makes consistently high quality First Flush teas – despite the difficult weather and late spring that have hampered production for the last three years.

As I opened the packet, an intensely sweet, heady aroma filled the air – reminiscent of just-mown summer grass after the rain.  The dry leaves are tiny, extremely tippy and downy, dark green buds – rather like a neat, early, pre-rains Mao Jian – and they brewed the most delicious rich amber liquor that carried hints of pineapple and other citrus fruits. This is a very sophisticated tea with elegance, a fine balanced flavour and an intriguing, very slightly dry aftertaste.  The aroma of the wet leaf reminded me of sugary crystallised pineapple.

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The fashion for enjoying cakes with comforting cups of tea to raise funds for charity is spreading fast.  After the success of the London Cake Committee (see my earlier blog, 9^th September 2009), new ‘Slices’ of the Cake movement have opened in Knysna, South Africa and will go live in Maine and New York in May.  And then who knows where next!

The London ‘branch’ has now held four Sunday afternoon Committees (at the third in December, Tim d’Offay and I gave a couple of mini tea classes as well as finding time to tuck into all the seasonal and Christmas cakes) and the funds raised have amounted to an impressive £3000 which gets divided between five charities - Help for Heros, Sea Shepherd, Kids Company, Kagyu Samye Dzong, London, and Shuktara.

The colourful, sociable, calorie-ridden, tea-drenched occasions have attracted a good deal of interest and articles have recently appeared in The Saturday Times Magazine, The Times Online, a number of blogs and the Japanese magazine, Tabi – which devoted 2 full pages to cake baking/eating addiction and indulgence.

So, when Committee Chair-persons Peter Ting and Brian Kennedy visited South Africa in November last year to visit florist friends DP Ferreira and Hannes Standes, they took with them the idea of the fund-raiser Cake Committee tea events and were present at the first meeting of the Knysna Slice.  Knysna is on South Africa’s beautiful Garden Route and local individuals kindly offer the use of their houses and gardens for the Committee meetings.  The first gathering was hosted at The Ferry Lodge (a historic building that in Victorian times was a hotel) and raised 10,000 Rand.

The second event in March was held at Pezula Private Estate and attracted 80 people who munched their way through 20 delicious cakes (see some of the photos – mmmm, yum! Don’t you just wish you’d been there!) and raised a further 8000 Rand by selling slices of amazingly mouth-watering creations such  Strawberry Yogurt Cake with Butter Cream Icing and White Chocolate Collar, Pistachio Cake with Orange honey Syrup, Humming Bird Cake, Fig Walnut Cake, Almond Clementine Cake and Coffee and Pecan Victoria Sponge. 

Some of the 18,000 Rand raised has been donated to an animal welfare charity but the majority of the money is funding the local ‘Feed the Workers’ scheme which, every morning, takes fresh bread, wholesome stews and other nourishing foods to a car park in town where migrant workers gather to seek work.  Because these people are never paid until they have finished work at the end of the day, they have no money to buy food and even of they did, there are no shops or cafes open at 6 o’clock in the morning when they start arriving. 

Everyone loves these cake events – they feel they are really raising money for good causes but the gatherings are also really good fun. For any children present, the afternoon turns into a sort of non-stop party and allows for complete abandon, lots of finger-licking and smeary, chocolaty mouths.  Adults tend to follow the same trend but also indulge in vocab-fests in search of enough vivid words to describe all the wonderful aromas, tastes and textures.

After a New Yorker friend visited one of the London events, Peter and Brian are now helping to set up a Slice there too (more news in due course). Tea may not be the chosen beverage here (although there are plenty of tea lovers in New York these days) and coffee may take precedence, so it’ll be interesting to see which brew wins out – let’s hope it’s tea!.  The new Maine Slice will meet for the first time from 3pm-5pm on Sunday 2^nd May at May View Hall, Brooklin.

More info at  

 www.thecakecommittee.com

www.facebook.com/pages/The-Cake-Committee/127227392025?v=info

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While I was in Cape Town last month, I was lucky enough to spend some time with my new tea friend Hajira Khalfe who owns the city’s first speciality tea room, Tea Emporium.  With a background in health and nutrition, Hajira has cleverly taken the theme of tea, wellbeing and healthy eating to create a tearoom that is attracting a wide variety of new customers.  She really is the city’s tea pioneer and is already having an influence and raising awareness all over town (top right photo - me in Long Street central Cape Town and top left, me and Hajira and a couple of very happy customers at Tea Emporium).

Hajira and I actually met in London about 2 years ago when she was first thinking of opening a tea business in South Africa and her dreams and plans have all come to fruition in a really successful way.  She had come across flavoured and speciality teas by chance during a visit to Brisbane and recognized that tea has a colourful culture and history that appeals to so many people.  She realised that almost anything is possible with tea and so started thinking and planning.

Her decision to launch a tea business back home in Cape Town was a brave step because South Africans are not the world’s biggest speciality tea drinkers but tend to choose everyday teabag tea, rooibos or coffee instead.  However, in much the same way as is happening all around the world at the moment, once Hajira’s consumers become more aware of the different tea options and discover how much more exciting and higher quality loose leaf teas are, they soon set out on the journey of exploration that so many of us have taken over the years.

The design of the store is really beautiful – very calm, light, airy, inviting, modern and appealing to all age groups and all types – and a major feature is the ‘sniffing bar’ where over 50 different tea blends are displayed in glass jars (see left).  Visitors are inevitably drawn to the warmly-lit display area, take off the little lids and breath in the wonderful smells.  They are fascinated and enticed by the variety, the flavours, the unusual mixtures of tea and rooibos with flowers, fruits, herbs and spices and are eager to try them all.  The range includes single origin teas such as Darjeeling 2^nd Flush, Assam 2^nd Flush, Keemun, Ceylon, Gunpowder, China Oolong and Kenya white teas as well as flavoured blends such as Moroccan Mint, Kyoto Cherry Rose, Cape Town Nights (a blend of black tea with flowers and spices) and China Rose (China black tea mingled with rose petals) and there are also fruit and herbal infusions and benefit blends that Hajira calls Tea Tonics.

The food menu is designed to offer something for everyone – even those with food allergies and special dietary requirements.  Customers can sink their teeth into really delicious blueberry and polenta muffins (my choice and absolutely yummy!), or nibble on a vanilla cupcake or a flourless chocolate almond cookie.  At lunchtime there are organic salads with seductive mixtures of quinoa, fruit, butternut squash, smoked salmon; wheat-free pies filled with fresh and tasty vegetables, lentils and chicken; quiches and sandwiches, wheat-free waffles and fish patés.

The store is in the very stylish Cavendish Square mall in Claremont where shoppers browse an attractive selection of houseware, jewellery, fashion and design stores.  On their wanderings they come across Tea Emporium and often pause to gather new energy over a refreshing cup of tea.  As they sit and sip, they can enjoy the carefully chosen artwork on the walls and a very attractive selection of tea accessories – pretty tetsubin and glass teapots, brightly-coloured caddies, timers filled with coloured sand and gift boxes with tea bowls and packs of tea.  Hajira also plans to add a small floristry section so that shoppers can also buy beautiful fresh flowers while in the store.

Interest is growing fast – helped by publicity on the local radio station (we did a live on-air interview together while I was in Cape Town) and local press coverage.  Hajira holds regular talks, tasting events and mini-masterclasses and, as always, journalists love to be invited and then help to spread the word.   If you find yourself in Cape Town, don’t miss this truly lovely shop at Shop 21, Lower Ground, Cavendish Square, Claremont

 7708.  Tel: 021 674 6066

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After our few days in Clanwilliam learning about the cultivation of rooibos, Arend Redelinghuys of Rooibos Ltd drove Pearl Dexter and myself right across the southern tip of the country to the Cape Mountains that stretch across the border between the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape province. 

We travelled for 2 days along from Paarl to Oudtshoorn, pausing at times to enjoy the scenery, taste the local wines, learn how Klipdrift brandy is made, and to watch the ostriches that are farmed in this area trotting about in the fields – they’re such odd-looking creatures and seem to love company for as soon as we walked up to the fence of their enclosure, they all headed straight over towards us, their necks straining upwards, straight as periscopes to allow them to scan the horizon.  

On the third day we reached the farm near Joubertina where Johann Kritzinger processes honeybush.  Johann is a fruit farmer, growing peaches, nectarines, apples, plums and pears – some of which reach us here in the UK – but he has also been very closely involved in developing the production of honeybush.

Like rooibos, the honeybush plant is a member of the ‘fynbos’ or ‘fine bush’ family.  It looks very like the broom bushes we grow in our gardens and has beautiful bright yellow flowers.  Also like rooibos, it is very choosy about where it will grow - it’s happy here on the dry, rocky slopes of the Cape Mountains but refuses to set down its roots anywhere else.  It’s much more difficult to cultivate and harvest on a commercial basis than rooibos and needs a lot more care in terms of weeding, watering and protecting from other plants. 

Here are some of the workers on the fruit farm enjoying their lunch break in a shady spot outside the honeybush factory.

Whereas rooibos bushes give a good harvest for several years before they need to be replaced with new plants, the honeybush plants tends to die back soon after the first harvest. The farmers are experimenting with 4 or 5 different varietals carefully selected from 24 or more possibles in order to establish a successful industry here.  At the moment honeybush is still a rare herbal infusion and will remain so until the farmers work out how to cultivate it more easily and successfully.  On the right is a photo of Johann’s experimental plantings with three different varietals.

Because the plant is so hard to cultivate on a formal basis, most of the processed honeybush that reaches us consumers is made from the stems and leaves of wild plants that grow amongst the heathers, proteas and other fynbos  up on the hillsides.  Local people gather what they can but if they cut off the branches more often than every two years, the plants die so they have to be very selective and very controlled.  We drove up into the steep wildness of the mountain slopes and learnt to recognise the honeybush from amongst so many similar plants.

When the local workers have gathered bundles of wild honeybush, the crop is delivered to Johann’s factory where it goes through similar processing to rooibos.  The stems and leaves are milled to break them down and the mass of small particles is then put into long tanks filled with very hot water.  This steaming, fermentation part of the process lasts for 24 hours and as we walked through the factory, the air was rich with a wonderfully sweet, malty aroma that reminded us of fresh-baked fruit cakes and Assam tea.  

Next, the wet mush travels along a conveyor belt to the dryer and from there it goes into a series of sifters and secondary cutters that break down any pieces of stem and bark that are too rough and tough.  What Johann ends up with is bagfuls of different sized particles – all of them rusty red and sweetly aromatic.

As well as finding out about the actual processing of honeybush, we also asked about honeybush’s health benefits.  I knew that indigenous groups had drunk honeybush for hundreds of years as a tonic brew but I didn’t know why and we learned that it’s caffeine-free, full of anti-oxidants and that, like rooibos, it seems to have a calming, anti-spasmodic effect.  It’s also thought to be very effective against breathing problems, coughs and respiratory infections.  When we tasted it in the factory, we really liked its gentle smooth taste.  It’s light, sweet and very refreshing.

From the factory, we walked down to the newly planted baby bushes that Johann is nurturing.  We also stopped to look at a new gym that is being built with Fairtrade money that has been paid back to the farm.  As well as the gym itself, there is to be a rugby and football field, netball facilities, a playroom, a crèche and refreshments.  Great to see the money being used so well.

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I am just back from a learning trip that, for a change, taught me about an important herbal infusion rather than about tea.  My 10 day trip took me up into the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa to find out more about rooibos, the red bush herbal that is becoming so popular in the US and Europe. 

I was invited by Arend Redelinghuys of Rooibos Ltd, the most important of the rooibos processing companies.  My travelling companion was my American friend Pearl Dexter (on the right with me and the company’s Technical Manager Johan Brand) who publishes Tea A Magazine - the magazine will carry her story of our visit.  We were treated like stars and learnt so much about South Africa, about its culture and agriculture, and about its people and its way of life.  Arend drove us hundreds of kilometres to show us not just the rooibos farms but the area where honeybush, another South African herb that is just beginning to be popular, is gathered from wild bushes that grow high up on craggy mountain slopes in the Eastern Cape Province.

We started our rooibos adventure in Clanwilliam, a small historic town that lies about 140 miles north east of Cape Town.  On the horizon runs the impressive ridge of mountains that are named after the endangered Cedar trees that are only found high up on the most remote upper slopes.   The sandstone rock is iron red, fossils of very ancient primitive fish have been found amongst the shale and fascinating bushmen rock paintings show boats and animals that might be horses or bison.

Clanwilliam is one of South Africa’s oldest ten towns and is at the very heart of rooibos cultivation and processing.  The Rooibos Ltd factory lies close to the centre of town where the main street is home to just a few shops, a very pretty church, an old hotel which is now a restaurant and Nancy’s Tea Room where we enjoyed delicious salad lunches and drank rooibos  cappuccinos – a first for me. 

We spent 2 nights at the most comfortable Bed & Breakfast I think I’ve ever stayed at.  Ndedema Lodge on Park Street is a gracious Victorian home with bedrooms off both sides of the open front porch and a colourful garden at the back with a shady patio and a pool where Koi swim.  The beds were four posters and breakfast was a wonderful feast of mango, papaya and passion fruit from the garden and several cups of good tea (I couldn’t quite adjust to the local habit of rooibos for breakfast and stuck instead to my referred black tea!)

On the first day, we headed out into the fields around Clanwilliam to see the rooibos being harvested.  The bush is a ‘legume’ plant rather like broom (see below), has long needle like leaves, pretty yellow flowers and produces very hard, gritty seeds in a small pod.  (On the right is a photo of Pearl and I learning more from Johan).  The botanical name for the plant is Aspalathus linearis and its common name, rooibos or rooibosch, is Afrikaans for red bush.  The brew is often called ‘red tea’ or ‘redbush tea’ but as the plant is not a camellia sinensis, it should be referred to as rooibos infusion or simply ‘rooibos’.

When the bush is ready for harvest from January through to April, the workers sweep through one field at a time using narrow, sharp scythes to slice off the upper section of the branches.  We tried it and it was hard work – I totally failed to make a clean cut through the tough woody stems, but had to keep tugging at the handfuls of branches I had taken hold of until eventually I managed to hack them off! (A triumphant photo is at the top of the page).  But the practiced men and women we stood watching sliced off bunches as if cutting through butter.

After harvesting, the bundles of branches, stems and leaves are weighed - so that each worker gets paid the correct amount - and are then loaded onto a trailer and taken to the factory for processing.  Inside the huge processing shed the stems are put through a chopping machine that reduces them to a rough mixture of quite large woody pieces of twig and pulped leaves and bark.  This mass is then spread out in a vast open yard to the side of the factory, sprayed with water, rotorvated and left in the scorching sun to oxidise to a rich rusty red colour.  Then it goes to the drying yard for about 8 hours and is finally hoovered up by vacuum brushing machines and taken into the factory again for sorting.

Everyone in South Africa drinks rooibos – it’s their national brew and is drunk as a tea-like liquor, as concentrated espressos, milky cappuccinos, frothy lattes and refreshing, iced thirst-quenchers.  And Rooibos Ltd have just published a beautiful rooibos cook book with sumptuous recipes from 14 of the country’s top chefs (title = A Touch of Rooibos).  There are delicious ideas for soups (Butternut Squash, Chilled Tomato), meat and fish dishes (Pan-fried Chicken Breasts with Noodles,  Seared Tuna with Wilted Greens and Mushrooms), puds (Chocolate Chip, Apple and Rooibos Soufflé, Baklava with Rooibos Syrup), and cocktails (Rooibos Martini, Ruby Grapefruit and Rooibos Daiquiri) – all deliciously and subtly flavoured  with rooibos.  

For more information, go to www.rooibosltd.co.za

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With snow and ice covering all of Britain this week, I’m not travelling anywhere so, instead, I thought this was the ideal time to catch up with tea shops and tea rooms around the country and find out how they fared during the festive Christmas period in terms of sales and customer choices. I asked a few of my tea friends if sales in December 2009 were up or down on the previous year and in every case, it was really good news.  

Raschid at Ismail in Tunbridge Wells in Kent (here’s the Ismail team in the photo on the right) said business was “significantly better”. We promoted Winter Fireside in store as our Christmas tea and it sold well as a beverage but also sold well at the retail counter for home and presents - it’s a mixture of black tea with cinnamon bark, apple, almonds and vanilla - satisfying and warming!” 

Marianna, owner of Orange Pekoe in Barnes (pictured above), told me that “2009 was a much better year than 2008.  Retail sales were even better and people were buying a lot of tea gifts and tea caddies for Christmas which was lovely to see. 2009 Afternoon Tea sales were definitely higher than 2008 with most weekends being fully booked for Afternoon Tea”. 

Anne at Attic Teas in Bristol (pictured right) was ecstatic and emailed that, “Our tea sales were utterly incredible this year, both through our shop and our internet site”. 

And at Postcard Teas, Tim (in the photo below) told me the shop “had a better Christmas this year than 2008 – it’s the time of year when tea connoisseurs treat themselves to something special so we sold many Jin Damo Pu-Erh cakes, and lots of our specialist teas made by named master makers from Japan, Taiwan, and China”.

Jennifer at Canton Tea Company told me that her sales “grew by 400% last year. We have seen a steady rise in sales in line with the growth of the premium tea market and by endorsement of places such as Petersham Nurseries, now serving and selling Canton Teas”. 

And Sonja at Char Chars in Dorchester (the photo on the right shows Sonja behind the counter at the store) wrote news that “2009 sales were better for us, up 44% and Christmas alone saw a 20% increase in sales.  We received many Christmas cards from customers, for the first time this year - which indicates they’re pleased with what we are doing.  Comments in the cards were things like ‘don’t stop what you’re doing’,  ‘thank you for making a difference to Dorchester”!  Such great news all around the country!

I wondered what the best selling lines were and it seems that people are buying lots of tea makers and pots as well as guality loose leaf teas.  Attic Teas found that “We couldn’t keep our tea makers on the shelf and everyone went wild for the new pouches of our 6 favourite teas (one for each tea category- silver needle, dragonwell, iron goddess of mercy, tippy yunnan, jasmine phoenix pearl, pu-erh tuo cha). Surprisingly, the favourite was the pu-erh cakes, closely followed by the green tea!”  The photo at the bottom of the page shows one if Attic Tea’s tea selection presentation boxes that sit on the tables for customers to see and enjoy. 

Ed Eisler of Jing Tea told me that his business was up 80% on 2008 and that Jing’s best sellers have been Jasmine Pearls (everyone seems to love the shape, the aroma, the wonderfully exotic character of these), Jing Assam Breakfast, Earl Grey, Dragon Well and Silver Needle.”  And Jing have also been selling a lot of one cup teapots and tea-ieres.

Ismail’s biggest seller was Tippy Assam, closely followed by “a Kenya Blend Tea which 10 weeks before being on sale at Ismail was still a leaf on the bush, seriously fresh, sourced direct by a friend who was MD of Overseas Tea Merchants!”  Other best sellers at Ismail were White Needles, Gunpowder Pearls, Phoenix Oolong, Jasmine Pearls and record numbers of glass teapots and caddies.

Tim d’Offay of Postcard Teas reported that “In this year’s show named after my recently published book ‘A Perfect Cup of Tea’, the bestsellers were the Yixing potter He Jian’s slab built Zisha pots, Mr Sasaki’s hand cast tetsubin kettles, hand made tea ware by Keiko Hasegawa and, as ever, Kaikado’s caddies (pictured right). With loose leaf tea sales, we sold lots of traditional black teas like Jungpana Second Flush Darjeeling as well as our house blends to people who were buying them as stocking fillers”

December saw the launch of Char Char’s “own tea blend - Hardy’s Tea – named for novelist Thomas Hardy who lived in Dorset.  It went down a storm, selling our entire First Edition stock (100 tins) within a few weeks!”   As at Ismail, their spicy winter tea also did very well and Sonja told me “the Christmas Spice Tea was the best selling Xmas tea.  It’s a china black tea with orange peel, cinnamon and vanilla.  And our best selling item remains our single estate Assam which we offer as our House breakfast tea.”  This photo shows the upstairs room at Char Chars

At Orange Pekoe, “The best selling tea lines are always the classics – Earl Grey, English breakfast, afternoon tea, lapsang, peppermint, chamomile. Although more and more consumers experiment and buy alternative blends and the rarer teas without a doubt.  Customers were also buying our tea equipage – teacups, teapots, strainers etc.”

And Canton Tea Company told me that “The Guild of Fine Food Taste Awards helped focus attention on our 3 star-winning Jasmine Pearls which have been a big success.  We are becoming known for our Puerh, and the Pouchong is still a strong seller.  Sales of Piao i tea infusers (see the photos right and below) continue to do well.  Loose, whole leaf tea is so easy once people get their head around brewing it! Small, quality Yixing teapots are popular among people who have been to China and appreciate the traditional gongfu style of tea preparation.”

What’s the secret behind all this success and how do these speciality tea dealers view the coming year.  At Char Chars, Sonja says” Our feeling is that there is definitely interest in good quality tea out there, it’s just capturing it and maintaining it!  We hosted a Christmas afternoon tea party for 18 which was a first for us too - it almost turned into a private tea tasting party as they showed so much interest in what we’re offering.”

In Barnes, Marianna thinks that giving plenty of information helps increase sales and said that with a new, more detailed menu this year, “we’ll see even more of the rarer teas selling.”  And because of excellent customer care, Canton Tea Company have seen a similar growth in business.  Jennifer told me that “personal customer care is key. We’ve had many thank yous for prompt service, answers to enquiries and surprise in free tasters. Many delighted to have happened on us, bringing huge percentage of repeat business.”       

Char Chars too said “we’ve noticed that people are starting to ask for teas by their region as opposed to by their category, eg an Assam or Ceylon or China green as opposed to just breakfast or afternoon tea.  This is quite a shift from when we first opened in Dorchester and reflects the growing level of knowledge in the market.

So, despite the recession and despite bad weather just before Christmas, tea sales are on the rise and we’re all very optimistic about the next 12 months.   Great news for tea and for tea shops, tea rooms and tea lounges around Britain.

www.attictea.co.uk

www.postcardteas.com

www.ismailcoffee.com

www.jingtea.com

www.char-chars.co.uk

www.orangepekoeteas.com

www.cantonteaco.com

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