Category: Tea Features
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Russian Tea Garden Profile: Solohaul
A few months ago – as some of you have undoubtedly seen – I received samples from What-Cha. Many of them were from Russian tea estates in Krasnodar krai, specifically the Dagomys region near Sochi City. Yeah, the place where the Winter Olympics were held two years ago. I’ve written about Russian teas rather extensively…
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A Kickstarted Kumaon White Tea Story
A little over a year ago I made the acquaintance of Raj Vable of Young Mountain Tea. We met up for lattes at Tea Bar PDX (where the above picture was taken), and he passed some samples on to me. Including an interesting Nilgiri black tea that I took a liking to. But that wasn’t…
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Several Cups of Kamairicha
Kamairicha literally means “pan-fired tea” in Japanese. I first tried it a year ago, and I dug it. I even wrote a poem about it. The less spoken about that, the better. Moving on . . .
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Tea Grown in Guatemala
Before I get to rambling about black tea from Guatemala, I’m going to do something a little different to start this off. I’m going to turn the introduction over to my blogger friend, Chris “Tea-Guy” Giddings, since he’s the one who introduced me to the tea I’m about to discuss. Take it away, Chris: “It…
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Dark Tea from Thailand
Well over a year ago, Tony “World of Tea” Gebely posted a photo of a dark tea on Instagram. It was an aged moacha (i.e. the rough stuff used to make puerh cakes) . . . but it was from – of all places – Thailand. For obvious reasons, it grabbed my attention.
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Tan Yang Gong Fu Tea Achievement: Unlocked
The term “gong fu” translates to “achievement through great effort”. It’s the same word as “kung fu”, but spelled differently . . . because English translations suck that way. Gong fu also refers to a method of brewing tea, signified by the use of short, successive steeps to bring out a given tea’s extra dimensions.…
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The Green Teas of Nepal
I’ve confessed (here and there) to turning into a bit of a Nepalese tea fanboy lately. I may have even made a lofty claim that whatever it is they’re doing may very well be a possible future for the tea industry. (But that’s a whole ‘nother article.) While I’m not going to retract that statement,…
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A Sidrapong Heritage Story
The Arya tea estate has a fascinating history, even among the many that dot the Darjeeling region, especially because of its original name – Sidrapong. According to legend, the original site was home to Buddhist monks on an unknown pilgrimage in the mid-to-late 1700s. They were looking for a place to build a new monastery…
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Scottish Tea to Silence my Snark
I’ll confess that sometimes I can be a snarky bastard. Many of those times, some of that snark bleeds through onto this blog, or into other parts of my life where it’s not entirely welcome. Case in point: Social media. If ever there was a platform where my snarky nature can’t help but thrive, it’s…
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Slaying a Grey Dragon Tea
I think I may be the Leeroy Jenkins of my tandem tea tasting group. Don’t get the reference? I’ll explain . . .