The Chicago, Illinois, area seems to be awash with tea vendors. We received a couple of samples from a new one just recently:
The Royal Tea Co.
In the firm belief that it is good to know with whom one is doing business, I went looking for info on the company Website and beyond, and present my findings here for your benefit.
The company founder is Alex Timchenko, a native of the Ukraine and graduate of Moskovskij Gosudarstvennyj Tehnologiceskij Universitet (Stankin) [a technology university in Moscow, Russia]. Like so many around the world, Alex made his way to this country and now pursues his dreams and a career. His passion for tea, according to the company Website, grew from his desire to find an alternative to coffee. A lot of tea drinkers do that. They find the caffeine levels too high in coffee and so turn to tea. (See my posts on caffeine:
Part I and
Part II)
A few issues with the company:
- The Website is one of those Flash things where pages “slide” into view, slick looking but not very user friendly, especially if you want to save the steeping instructions for the teas. Unfortunately, this style of site design is becoming more common.
- The Website also makes health claims about teas without linking to supporting studies or documentation. Annoying but certainly not unique. Many tea vendors are doing this, jumping on the “tea is healthy” bandwagon.
- The company sells these wonderful loose, broken and full leaf teas, yet sells a teapot with an infuser basket. Yuck! Get the best from these teas by steeping them loose.
The
company blogsite is in its infancy, but I suspect it will blossom nicely. Unfortunately, the blog also makes health claims without citing any studies or other supporting documentation. I encourage them to change this and be a cut above their competitors in that area.
Alex’s wife, Ashleigh, is a Tennessee native now living in Chicago. She has her own
business designing greeting cards that have a definite style and shows some Eastern European flair (some even feature matruskas, those cute stacking dolls popular there — I included one of my own, with the dolls unstacked, in the photo with one of the tea samples) and a
blog, focused on the latest fashion sightings. She’s also a menswear buyer but has quite an eye for women’s fashion that is young, chic, and unmainstream.
Now that you know who is behind the company name, don’t miss the reviews of The Royal Tea Co. samples on
Little Yellow Teapot Tea Reviews.
As a side note, tea growing in the Ukraine was attempted in the early 1950s to make the USSR “tea independent” (they were getting most of their tea from China). In mid-1958, the Soviets harvested a crop using a mechanized tea plucker, which at the time was thought to be impossible in terms of producing a good crop. The tea proved to be of sufficiently good quality and paved the way for other tea growers in India, Sri Lanka, and even China to implement some mechanized harvesting. The USSR never achieved its desired “tea independence,” though. (
Source)
There’s no wonder that at this time of year, people across the country are exuding harvest time hurrahs. Harvest is an important time in the lives of mankind. It means food, drink, clothing (cotton, etc.), and just about everything around us.
The world keeps spinning and for many of us the seasons keep changing, making for great tea party times. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the chemistry of the flora around us, especially trees, is cycling back to that Autumn procedure of beginning to shut down and prep for Winter dormancy. In other words, the leaves are changing colors.
Many tea drinkers throughout the world consider milk an essential part of their tea enjoyment. Others wouldn’t let that white liquid near their teacups. To each his own. One thing is for sure: bad milk in your tea is a total bummer.
Generally speaking, we tea lovers in the U.S. have Europeans to thank. Specifically, the Dutch. Holland was thriving, with great artists like Rembrandt, a rich culture and traditions, and strong ties to areas of the world such as the Far East that supplied much sought after goods like tea. That tea was the catalyst for the development of a host of traditions.
Steeping tea is not exact science, even though there is a lot of science to it. There are so many different ways that tea leaves are processed, resulting in so many different kinds of teas, that it’s easy to do something wrong.
My buddy, Little Yellow Teapot, has so much fun tweeting with all you great humans on Twitter. One of his bestest buddies is Gingham Girl, who makes wonderful tea cozies, aprons that any hostess would be proud to wear while serving her guests tea and cakes, and even craft accessories.
A pot of hot tea, some treats so yummy, a loving hubby, and tea time with me! That means it’s time to break out the Scrabble® game.
Nothing says Halloween like a spooky teatime, and nothing makes teatime spooky like “spooky” teawares. Of course, creepy decorations and eerie music help out a bit, too.
You can get some surprising results when you understeep your tea. A lot is made of timing your tea, but how critical is it really? Will you get a better taste with a shorter or longer steep? Recently, I got a surprise by…
All this talk about how tea gets decaffeinated got me to wondering what all the flap was about. In Part I, I looked at methods people recommend for removing caffeine from tea. Now, let’s look at why anyone might…
No one who visits our house could ever doubt that we love tea! The signs are everywhere you look.
Posts
