World of Tea

Open for business: Chicago Tea Garden…

2010-03-03T04:58:40Z

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.

Bookmark to:

Kenya Tea Strike is Over [via: Businessweek]

2010-02-17T14:48:08Z

Kenyan Tea workers went on strike from Feb 8 to Feb 12 — happily they have reached a resolution in the matter:

“The strike started after some workers were paid below the minimum recommended wage, George Nesbitt, director of Tea Warehouses Ltd., said by phone from Mombasa”

Read the whole thing here: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-17/kenya-tea-workers-strike-over-wages-disrupt-shipping-update1-.html

Bookmark to:

Fresh Darjeeling Tea – Rare Pearls Rohini Estate

2010-02-14T16:38:33Z

Just before Christmas I received a beautiful package from India (it had a bit of a tough time in the mail as evidence by the dents in the box, but the tea was safe) from my good friend Sonam of “Fresh Darjeeling Tea.”

Inside were 3 beautifully packaged fresh teas from Darjeeling — the likes of which I’ve never seen. Sonam has done a wonderful job sourcing rare and amazing Darjeelings — a quick browse through the image-slider on his homepage can show you this. He has found wonderful full-leaf oolong and pearls – teas not generally renowned in Darjeeling. His selection showed that Darjeeling will continue to be a key player in the specialty tea industry and that great strides are being made in creating superb teas.

Darjeeling Pearls – Rohini Estate:

Peculiar show of engineering, so fruity and sweet that you can imagine of a distant orchard of peach and plum, in a dream galaxy. To romance with the pearls use a glass pot to see the leaves unfurl and remind you of the days gone by.
Harvest of : October 20-2009

These pearls get me through my work week. I start in the morning and they are tightly rolled and steep my last cup around 4pm (steeping 6) and the leaves have completely unfurled. Check them out here: http://www.freshdarjeelingtea.com/products-page/oolong-teas/rare-pearls-rohini-estate/

Bookmark to:

Tea Science [via: The Malaysian Star]

2010-02-01T16:03:08Z

The Malaysian Star posted quite a lengthy article on their fortnightly column “Nutri-Science” by Dr. Tee Siong — its a great summation of all of the tea health stories we’ve been hearing of late. I invite you to give it a read: http://thestar.com.my/health/story.asp?file=/2010/1/31/health/5568096&sec=health

Bookmark to:

A Long Time Coming…

2010-01-26T05:26:32Z

Its been a long time coming, but I am finally starting my own tea company. Things are in the late stages, teas have been sourced, packaging is finalized. I’m just working on the web site at this time, so if there is anything that annoys you about tea shop sites, please let me know asap! I’m a web developer by trade, so I’m developing the site myself. It should be up soon. Thats all I can say, soon. This idea started in 2006 with a trip to China. My partner, Erin Murphy and I are excited to get things up and running! The website is: http://www.chicagoteagarden.com you can sign up there to receive an email when the shop opens. We hope to open a brick and mortar shop in Chicago within 5 years. Chicago needs good tea. Tea shops here are few and far between. World of Tea will remain in its current format — nothing will change here, this will not become a marketing engine — I will still review any teas and any tea-ware and I will still write about tea culture here. I’ve met too many great people through this site to ever shut it down. I am thinking about shutting down The Tea Roundtable though [http://www.tearoundtable.com] it has been overtaken by spam and I just don’t have the time to maintain it. If anyone would like to take over ownership of it, please let me know. I want to thank everyone for supporting my dream. Erin and I are very excited to start this up! Here are some sneak-peek photos:

If you’d like you can sign up right here to get an email when we go live with the online store:

Bookmark to:

Sri Lanka to donate $25000 (1000kg) of tea to Haiti earthquake victims.

2010-01-24T16:40:23Z

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has pledged $25000 in tea as well as $25000 in show of support for Haiti. While many countries cannot afford to send millions in support, its great to see them doing what they can. Read the press release at the Sri Lanka Government Web Site: http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20100124_02

Bookmark to:

Tea scams brewing in city’s largest marketplace [via: China Daily]

2010-01-20T04:41:54Z

Well isn’t this disheartening, a study by the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference found that many tea vendors in China are making their money selling “substandard” tea. Give this one a read: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/metro/2010-01/19/content_9341940.htm

Bookmark to:

State of the tea industry 2010…

2010-01-19T15:31:27Z

There have been many changes in our industry of late, and as it grows — we must be sure to be mindful of our actions as consumers in this growing industry — demanding only the best, honest, fair goods. A store can only sell things if we buy them. The power is in our hands, especially as this industry takes off. Let me start by introducing three societal “movements” from where many of my ideas and opinions are sourced:

1. Slow Food
2. Free Knowledge
3. The end of mass-marketing

The slow food movement was started 20 years ago and is gaining ground in America fast. The slow food movement believes that food should be “good, clean and fair,” and strives to counteract people’s “dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes, and how our food choices affect the rest of the world” [http://www.slowfood.com/].

The free knowledge movement is being made possible by the internet, with projects like Wikipedia that exist to “to bring [free] knowledge to everyone who seeks it” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About]– and with MIT recently opening up their online courses to the general public [http://ocw.mit.edu/] free of cost and without registration.

The end of mass-marketing is near, as Seth Godin writes: “You can no longer market to the anonymous masses. They’re not anonymous and they’re not masses. You can only market to people who are willing participants” [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/first-ten-.html]. The internet has provided homes to many niche markets — these niche markets continue to grow, the concept of “long-tail” marketing (if you can even still call it marketing) will become more prevalent.

I’m willing to bet that there are more tea retailers in America than there are tea wholesalers selling to America. Undoubtedly there are two retailers out there selling the same tea under their own names. Just how prevalent is this?

As review blogs become stuffed with countless reviews, they will begin to lose meaning. Those writing for free tea as a hobby will fade from view, those writing with real rating “systems” and usable web interfaces in place will rise.

As for tea retailers, the days of rebranding for small retailers are coming to an end. Small retailers need to begin a policy of transparency, developing their brands around the companies, farms, and families that actually produce the tea that they sell. If many small tea retailers become transparent this may result in a price war with others that have, but in the end, both consumer and retailer will benefit.

On knowledge: many more projects will pop up selling tea courses or certifications which will mostly be touting regurgitated information we already have freely available. I’d like to see new information from tea producing regions — I’d like to see our available information of tea be expanded instead of being re-written and sold.

Bookmark to:

Want a job in the tea industry? Move to India.

2010-01-18T15:01:07Z

This informative article from DNA India has some interesting insight to tea industry jobs in India … see the full post here:

“There are a variety of jobs one can specialise in, within the tea industry. Tea tasting is one of the highly specialised areas of work. Research, plantation management, tea brokerage and consultancy are some of the other areas which can be specialized. One can work as a factory manager. The work involves supervision of all plantation work right from planting, plucking, processing to packing and transport of tea to auction houses. Beginners are given the position of assistants and with hands on experience they can get the job of manager. As a tea taster one has to differentiate between various flavours of tea to classify the samples according to their quality. Another work area in the tea management is research. Research is an integral part of the industry. The research is conducted by botanists, biotechnologists and other scientists.They study methods of producing disease-resistant andhigh yielding varieties of tea.

The Tea Research Association at Jorhat, Assam is a premier organisation in the field of research. Researchers are mostly employed by research associations and tea plantation owners. One can also work as a tea broker. There are brokerage houses in the country where the brokers test the various tea samples that come from the different tea gardens.”

See the rest at DNA India.

Bookmark to:

A month off, a new year.

2010-01-18T04:28:07Z

Its been a little under a month since I’ve written an article. But we all need a bit of a break here and there. It was a wonderful 2009 and I’m excited as the tea industry continues to blossom in America — to see what it brings. More and more of my close friends have been getting into tea, its very exciting to hear how they started, what teas they like, and where they are getting their tea from. This year I’m going to try to be more conscious of where the tea I buy comes from. I guess you can say that’s my new year’s resolution. Cheers to a new year, and more content coming soon!

-Tony

Bookmark to: