Month: October 2016

  • Dark Tea from Burma/Myanmar

    No one likes to talking about Burma . . . or Myanmar . . . or whatever it’s calling itself, now. Even the name of the country is a hotly contested issue. At college parties, whenever some Eastern Philosophy major brought up Buddhism as an example of a nonviolent religion, all someone had to do…

  • My Detox Horror Story

    Over the last year or so, I’ve expressed my . . . displeasure with detox culture. I particularly took issue with the belief that someone could eliminate “toxins” from their body by ingesting weird herbs and other unlikely ingredients (like literal silver and gold). When talk of these practices spilled over into my tea life…

  • Dong Ding Near-Death Experiences

    In 2009, Shiuwen Tai—the plucky owner of Floating Leaves Tea in Seattle—made her first trip to Dong Ding Mountain in Taiwan . . . . . . And almost died.

  • Mengku Puerh Plastered

    A couple of weeks ago, while attending the Northwest Tea Festival in Seattle, a few tea connoisseurs hosted . . . after tea parties. Basically tea parties removed from the regular events of the festival. One such small partyholder-to-be was my ol’ Agarwood puerh dealer, Jeffrey McIntosh. He planned to host two puerh tastings—one that…

  • Tea and Bullshit with Rajah Banerjee

    Two weeks ago, I attended the Northwest Tea Festival. For both days, even! It was an epic time of tea drunkenness and cuppa camaraderie. But when the time came to actually write about the two-day tea-stravaganza . . . I had nothing to say. Sure, I drank a lot of tea, met new people, reunited…

  • My 40th Un-Birthday Mad Hatter Tea Party

    Back in June, my friend Aaron asked me, “Why haven’t you ever thrown a tea party?” To which I responded with, “Huh . . . why haven’t I thrown a tea party?!” Then the ol’ mental gears started a-turnin’. In a few short months, my 40th birthday was coming up. I didn’t drink alcohol anymore,…

  • A Tiny Bit of Canadian Oolong in a Tiny Gaiwan

    In 2003, husband and wife team—Victor Vesely and Margit Nelleman—purchased an old cattle and horse farm near the small town of Westholme. It was located in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Their first inspiration was to create an “Artfarm”, where they could grow herbs and produce, as well as sell…