Steep Stories

Tag: Russia

  • A Year of Weird and Wonderful White Teas

    Toward the end of any year, content creators, influencers, media pundits (social or otherwise) are encouraged to create look-backs or listicles of the year-that-was. Throughout my long and industrious “career” as a tea blogger, I’ve made such reflections in the past. Usually commenting on how weird the year was, or how wonderful some aspect of…

  • An Ivan Chai Diary

    At the beginning of May (of 2020), I received a box from Moychay . . . A blogger friend saw the write-up I did on Ivan Chai a couple of months prior, and recommended I get in contact with this Russian-based vendor. Apparently, they had a whole slew of Ivan Chai products, highlighting the many…

  • Revisiting Russian Tea Gardens

    I’ve written a lot about Russian tea gardens over the last couple of years. But I didn’t think, for one second (at the time), that I was one of the only English language sources on the subject. That is, until I got a message from Thomas Tomporowski of Tea in the City, a vendor op located…

  • Russian Tea Garden Profile: Host

    Well over a year ago, I tried a green tea from a Russian tea garden that just . . . blew my mind. The garden—according to the vendor, What-Cha—was called “the Host tea estate”. I corresponded with the company owner for some time, and he informed me that he could find no information on the…

  • 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…

  • Russian Green Tea Roulette

    Full circle, man. Let me explain. About a year and a half ago, I did a write-up on Russian grown tea, specifically a black tea from the Krasnodarskiy brand. My verdict was, “Eh.” However, I didn’t disregard the Dagomys region of Krasnodar completely. According to some sources, the tea gardens in the region were stepping…