Tea Stuff Round-Up: Teacup Fun and Fruity Tea

I just LOVE these beautiful light fittings, made from upcycled teacups, which I saw in a post on the Frivoli-Tea blog. Aren't they amazing:

 

Images from Domestic Construction, via Frivoli-Tea

Here's a delicious idea: infuse your fruit with tea and your tea with fruit, simultaneously! Check out this post on T Ching for more details. Basically all you need to do is to gently simmer the fruit with the tea that you have brewed and strained and sweetened to taste, and then you have some tea-flavoured fruit to eat and fruit-flavoured tea to drink.

I have read about tea-poached pears on the Tea Spot NYC blog before, but never tried them; I think I will have to. And imagine how tasty tea-poached peaches or nectarines would be once summer comes round. I can't wait!

And guess what! For those of you who love tea-themed art* like I do, you can enter a giveaway at 74 Lime Lane to win one of Ruby Victoria's beautiful letterpress teacup prints, like this one (I so hope I win!):

*ok, tea-themed EVERYTHING. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Tea Stuff Roundup - Tea Spaces, Tasting and Economics

I have just discovered the Bon Teavant blog and was so inspired by this post describing the creation of 'tea spaces' in Taiwan:

The "tea room" designs created by the students under the direction of Ms. Li are sometimes very contemporary and at the same time in rhythm with centuries of traditional tea cultures found in Asia. Ming Dynasty tea bowls sit on brightly colored modern textiles laid on the ground as a tea "tableau" rather than a traditional tea table. Dramatic overhead lighting is screened through trees brought in to throw shadows on the scene and highlight the drama of the tea ware.  Dancers spin through the empty space like human mobiles or constellations in a dark and open sky.

How awesome would that be... I would love to see something similar in Melbourne!

An interesting post from Alex Zorach about whether tasting tea affects your palate, and vice versa... and some more about tea-tasting on the Leafbox Tea forum. I've been thinking about this, as I've been re-reading some bits of The Harney and Sons Guide to Tea and trying to pay more attention to the flavours in my tea. Is it all too subjective though? What do you think?

And, on a more serious note, the ever-thought-provoking Corax from CHA DAO writes on the economics of tea: is tea an affordable luxury? Is the tea industry in danger? Should we develop our own 'tea stimulus packages' (I certainly do my best)? I don't understand a great deal about economics, but it seems to me that this might be another argument for purchasing tea as close to the source as possible, cutting out the middlemen and helping the manufacturers of high quality tea to make as much profit as possible from their extraordinary skills. What's your opinion?

Tea Stuff Roundup

I have read a few interesting tea blog articles over the last few days and thought some of them worth sharing.

This article 'Whose Tea Is That?' by Michael J Coffey of 'Tea Geek' has been getting quite a bit of kudos in my Twitter stream - deservedly so. Michael points out that most of the time we just don't know where our tea is coming from - and what's more, can you really say that one company's tea is better than another if they originally came from the same source? What is there to like about one, but not the other, in this case?

The issue is not just confined to single-origin unblended teas, either; in fact perhaps it's even more problematic in the case of flavoured teas. Take this quote from Charles Cain, who writes a fascinating blog about the process of opening a bricks and mortar tea store for a large US tea company, Adagio:

The supply chain for most teas sold in the US is ridiculously incestuous. Half of wholesalers buy from other wholesalers. It's not uncommon to find the same flavored tea, blended by the same large wholesaler, sold at dramatically different price points under the names of quite a few smaller wholesalers. Many independent retailers pride themselves on choosing only the finest teas for their collection. As proof of this, they buy from many different tea wholesalers. I've heard shop owners boast of having more than 30 tea vendors. The incredible irony is that I've also heard tea wholesalers boast of selling to the same shop owner under the name of a half dozen different companies. 

Read the rest of Charles' article here. Kind of depressing, isn't it. I suspect that things are not that different in Australia, although perhaps on a smaller scale; I know that in most retail tea shops I see a whole bunch of very similar blends, sometimes under slightly different names (think Monk Pear-type blends, French Earl Grey variants, Blue Mountain blends etc etc) that almost have to be imported from a bulk tea supplier somewhere in the world. They're just too similar to be individually made by each of the shops concerned. I'm not saying that these shops have NO originality because most of them probably do in some areas. I've just always found it a bit disappointing I suppose when I find that something I thought was unique actually isn't.

On the plus side it does mean you can shop around til you find the tea you like at the best price! Cloud, silver lining, etc.

Enough with the grumping, I didn't mean for this to be a depressing entry. Let's cheer ourselves up with a post from the awesome Stephane at Tea Masters (if you can't read the French, he does post a lot in English, and his photos are always worth a look). In this one he brews up a low-mountain oolong from Zu Shan and explains how important it is when starting out with tea to really get a feel for it. It can be so tempting to get a lot of small amounts of different teas and not really learn how all the variables (water, temperature, amount of leaf, even time of day) affect a single tea and your enjoyment of it. This is really sound advice and something I am going to pay more attention to.

Behind the Cup... with Eric from Tea Finely Brewed

I can think of few better ways to kick off the week than with an interview with Eric Daams, the tea aficionado behind Tea Finely Brewed. I was lucky enough to meet fellow-Melbournite Eric in person a couple of months ago (over some tea of course) and it was great to hear about his experiences with tea, blogging and family life. Tea Finely Brewed encompasses a tea blog, a tea marketplace which allows you to compare similar offerings from different tea companies, and a 'beginner's guide to tea' with much useful information.

How did you become enthused about tea and what is it that you like most about it?

I think the thing that most excites me about tea today is the breadth of variety. You could try a new tea every week for a year and you'd still be scratching the surface. 

To begin with though, I think my motivation for liking tea had something to do with that dark force of the hot beverage world: coffee. I'm someone who likes to do things differently to those around me, so as the youngest boy growing up in a family of coffee drinkers, I decided to become a tea drinker. After years of tea bags in which I slowly exhausted the supermarket choices, I started venturing into loose leaf teas a few years ago. Once you start on loose leaf tea, the world (of tea) opens up to you. 

How would you define Australian ‘tea culture’ based on your experience and observations? Have you noticed any changes over time (including your own tea preferences) and what do you think has driven these changes?

For a country with such a vibrant coffee culture, it's sad to see how the Australian tea experience languishes behind. It never ceases to confound me how a café serving amazing coffee can serve their tea-drinking patrons Lipton or Twinings tea bags -- while charging us $3.50 it! 

The emergence of T2 and other Australian-based loose leaf tea brands seems to be a sign of change. I'm not crash hot on T2 — I think they're overpriced and capitalizing on a market that is barely aware of quality tea — but I do believe that they're a harbinger of better things to come. 

Any thoughts on the direction that tea is headed?

I think tea culture is going to boom in much the same way that coffee culture has boomed in Australia. At the moment, I can think of a handful of restaurants where I could go to have quality tea with my lunch -- they're all Asian restaurants, of course. With time, I believe we'll see that spread into more and more places. 

When I was in New Zealand about a year and half ago, I noticed that quite a few of the cafés offered a great range of teas. How often do you go to an Australian café where they offer sencha, dragonwell and gunpowder green tea? Give it ten years, and I think we'll have more places like that around. 

What do you think the greatest challenges are for Australian tea consumers and/or businesses? e.g. is it easy for you to find the kinds of teas you enjoy in Australia or do you mostly purchase from vendors in other countries?

One of the perks of blogging about tea is that a lot of companies send me their tea, free of charge. I'm thankful for that, because if I didn't have companies sending me their teas, I would be severely limited by what is available on the market here. I've shopped at Tea Leaves, Lupicia and T2 (among many others), but the choice of high quality specialty tea is invariably limited. Shops cater to what the majority are looking for, which seems to be flavoured teas and herbal blends. Single-estate Darjeelings, first flush Japanese greens and quality aged pu-erh -- these kinds of teas aren't big priorities. That said, I'm pleased to see Santion catering to the discerning tea crowd that knows their Keemun from their Yunnan.   

Any other tea musings you would like to share.

Champagne is the Darjeeling of wine.

Heh. Thank you Eric for putting the proper relationship between tea and wine in perspective. I am in awe of the amount of work you have put into your tea marketplace - it will be extremely useful for all the tea purchasers out there when they are looking for the pick of the crop!

Upcoming Feature - Behind the Cup

As I wander around the internet tea world I notice that a lot of tea blogs and sites are based in the US (and a few in the UK). There is a wealth of valuable knowledge available about the tea industry, as well as customs and trends - but is it relevant to me?

Living Down Under as I do, I can't help wondering about tea culture and the industry in Australia: where it's at, where it's going, the challenges that tea businesses face. I have my own ideas, of course, but in the interest of exploring some of these issues more broadly, I'm going to start up a series of 'Behind the Cup' interviews with some of my fellow Australian tea bloggers, lovers and entrepreneurs. The first one should be up soon!

I'm hoping to get a wide range of views from both large and small Australian players. Would you like to be involved? Contact me at joiedetea [!at] gmail [dot] com - I'd love to hear from you!

Had to have a giggle...

...the other day when I was reading a special report on social networking in my husband's copy of The Economist. At one point in the article it said something along the lines of 'If you listen to proponents of social networking, you would be forgiven for expecting your teapot to start twittering about what you had for breakfast.'

This made me smile because I actually know one Little Yellow Teapot - a very vocal and cheeky teapot too - with its own Twitter account and a blog to boot. Now if only my teapots would get their act together and get tweeting, it would save me a lot of time and effort ;)

Speaking of tea social networks, those of you who know me on Twitter or Facebook will have noticed my increasingly regular use of Steepster - fast becoming my latest tea-related addiction. Steepster is a community of tea fans of all kinds and a great place to source reviews of teas you are thinking of buying or trying, and the discussion boards are good too - check out this thread on cooking with tea for a bit of kitchen inspiration!

I shall be posting the winner of my giveaway a little later today, thanks to all who entered!

Pride, Prejudice, Tea

My husband and I managed to watch our way through the entirety of the BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series (1995) last week. Amazingly, neither of us saw it when it was on TV (though I recall my friends and sister being very keen on it), and the last time I read P&P was so many years ago that I couldn’t remember the plot in any detail. Consequently each episode saw us agog to know what happened next.

And not only agog about the unfolding story either – well, at least not in my case. While I readily admit to swooning over Mr Darcy by the end (sigh!!), I also became – quite naturally, I would argue - rather obsessed with checking out the teawares that featured in different scenes. So many gorgeous patterns – and honestly, just as swoon-worthy as Mr Darcy from my perspective (although I am willing to recognise that not everyone may share this point of view).

Where else to start my search but with the omniscient Google – but even I was surprised how quickly a search for ‘china pattern bbc pride and prejudice’ returned me exactly the results I was looking for. Check out this article about the china pattern used at Longbourn, and this one about the ones at Netherfield and elsewhere – both from the highly informative Jane Austen’s World blog.

How I would love to have a single teacup – an entire set would definitely be too much to hope for – in the Cornelia Green pattern by Mottahedeh as used at Longbourn! Well, perhaps I can always keep an eye on eBay.

But what kind of tea would Jane Austen – and her characters – be drinking? That early in the 19th century it would almost certainly have been China tea – tea gardens did not really get underway in Assam, India, until after 1825, so The Story of Tea informs me. During Austen’s period, tea was generally drunk after dinner (which was usually served around 3 or 4 pm), and not as ‘afternoon tea’ – that only became popular a little later in the 1800s.

There is a great deal of helpful background on daily life in England during the 19th century (from servants, to ‘the season’, to food, clothing and social calls) in the entertaining book by Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, which I recently acquired from the library. Alas, it contains nowhere near as much detail as I would like about tea; I shall have to explore its extensive bibliography to find out more. Indeed, I am not sure how I shall resist reference works with such arresting titles as this: Movable Feasts: A reconnaissance of the origins and consequences of fluctuations in meal-times, with special attention to the introduction of luncheon and afternoon tea, by Arnold Palmer, 1952. Looks like the kind of thing I could really snuggle up with – so long as I also had a cup of tea, of course.

Another couple of random tea notes...

Oh dear – another couple of weeks have crept by with no blog update… things have been so frantically busy both inside and outside of work that it’s been difficult to find the time to sit down and write calmly… in fact a couple of days have gone by when I have not even had the time to make a pot of tea at work! Dark times indeed. Possibly the Apocalypse approaches.

I discovered last night that Teas.com.au has gone live with a new, updated version of their website – check it out here. It looks lovely and I just adore the little row of teapots at the top… hover your mouse over them and the lid tilts up and bubbles move up through the pot! To celebrate the release of the new site they are offering some specials on orders for the next little while… I’m feeling very tempted to get one of their Wulong (oolong) samplers and some Lung Ching Dragonswell also… but I’ll do another stocktake of my tea cupboard first. I really am trying not to have too many open packets of tea on hand at one time…

I have had some marvellous teas from Teas.com.au, actually – their bouquet teas are lovely, particularly the ‘Spring blossom’, which has white tea, lily and osmanthus – it’s sweet and has a taste rather like cinnamon, though there’s no cinnamon in it. I also really love some of their herbal blends – the ‘Cherish’ blend is particularly tasty and beautiful to look at too, with the rose petals and rooibos and chamomile.

I was also excited to discover last night, when I opened up Gmail, that you can now set a ‘theme’ to customise the background and colours of your email inbox, etc. Fantastic – even more so when I found out that one of the themes was ‘teahouse’… a little Japanesey tea house set in a garden of blossom trees. Too cute! Needless to say that was the one that I chose…

What’s in my cup today? So far this morning I have had some rooibos tea (at breakfast time with my lovely husband) and a pot of genmaicha (Japanese green tea with roasted rice). Who knows what else the day will hold?

Tea discussions online

Today’s focus is on flora (well, foliage, anyway) and fora – over the last couple of weeks I’ve managed to find a number of interesting places to chat with like-minded people about the joys of tea.

Firstly there is the forum available through Felicitea (click the link on the right hand side to enter the forum). This is a fledgling forum at present, but with luck it will grow. Summer Plum at Felicitea also has a blog and she makes and sells loads of interesting products, including tea cups with hand-written haikus on them (why didn’t I think of that, it’s a brilliant idea). I would love to try some of her teas, they look delicious.

Then there is the rather better-established TeaChat which is run by the people at Adagio Teas. They cover a very broad range of topics from the teas made by Adagio (which all sound delightful and I wish they shipped to Australia), to tea-room planning and management, to tea recipes and much more. I’m looking forward to reading more of this one!

TeaMail is another of the hardcore sites. This is one you have to sign up to through Yahoo! Groups, which is a little bit of a pain, but on the other hand there appear to be a lot of very knowledgeable and passionate people who are part of it. The public homepage also contains a number of interesting and useful links on the left-hand side - including a page which gives you all the references to tea in Sherlock Holmes (how I’ve managed this long without knowing, I have no idea), how to fold an origami teapot, a guide to tea rooms around the world, and a link to the Tea Entrepreneurs Association. Handy!

For all your tea-and-biscuit discussion needs (mainly British ones, but Tim Tams get a mention every now and then too) check out Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down… now these are people who take their tea and biscuits very seriously. Make sure to take a look at the polls which they have running, as these are invariably hilarious… I am longing to get my hands on a copy of their book and have been dropping some not so subtle hints to my husband about it which will hopefully bear fruit in the not too distant future, heh.

(With any luck he’ll be reading this now and will know that the entire internet is now expecting him to purchase it for me, thus hopefully increasing his sense of obligation to do so.)

And finally, if you are hanging about on Facebook wondering what to do with yourself (aren’t we all), there is the abundantly enthusiastic group A Cup of Tea Solves Everything – lots of friendly tea banter to be had there, indeed.

Enjoy!!