Embracing Tea Myths, Legends, and Stories

Tea history is full of myths, legends, and stories, enough to keep the Brothers Grimm, were they alive today, busy for years writing them all down. These tales enrich our tea experience as long as we remember they are not necessarily fact. Who among us really expects a cabin in the woods inhabited by three bears who walk upright, wear clothing, talk, sleep in beds, have self-awareness, and eat porridge? Well, actually, that part about the porridge eating sounds pretty plausible.

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

Tea Kettle Philosophy — Flexibility and Tea

Hubby and I drink tea every day, cupful after cupful — that’s a lot! It gives us a great deal of “kettle sitting” time wherein we ponder the mysteries of the universe, or more often just think about silly stuff. This time it was flexibility and tea. Seemed a natural.

Flexibility is the ability to see things from all kinds of angles and, when encountering an angle that makes more sense…

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Tea Guys Abound Online

There’s a rumor going around that tea is basically a feminine beverage, that frilly tea times with teeny sandwiches and dainty teapots and cups are du rigueur. So, why are there so many “Tea Guys” out there on the Internet?

There are, really!

First, there’s Tea Guys, an online tea vendor founded in 2005 by Oliver Rich, who is currently the company’s President and Owner. Based in Hatfield, Massachusetts, the staff of 5 blends, bags, and labels their unique teas, sell those teas directly to tea lovers around the world. Rich has an education in biology and marketing that are put to good use in this company.

Another “tea guy” is Matt Greenwood, the Bell Tea Guy, a tea blog (started Sep. 2, 2007) of the Bell Tea Company in New Zealand. Greenwood is a Master Tea Blender who started to be known among his colleagues as the “Tea Guy,” a nickname that stuck.

We musn’t overlook “The Tea Guy” otherwise known as Bill Waddington, the owner of TeaSource. This is not only an online source for fine teas but is also a teashop located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that was voted best teashop in that city in 2010. He has spent the last 20 years getting serious about tea and teaches courses on the tea business.

Last but not least is “Tea Guy Speaks” who is freelance journalist William I. Lengeman III. His articles about tea are well-read online. He also writes about a variety of topics and was previously in the music business.

As one of many “Tea Ladies” out there, I thought it only fitting to give the guys a bit of coverage, too. Hope this assures you guys out there that tea isn’t just for us females. Now, go grab a cuppa!

© 2011 A.C. Cargill photos and text
All photos in this article © 2011 their respective owners

Over 200 (correction: 300!) Years of Twinings Tea

One of the more established tea companies around is Twinings. Since 1706 when the company opened a warehouse in London, they have been wowing their customers with such classics as English Breakfast. In the mid-1800s they created a tea flavored with oil of bergamot and named it after the 2nd Earl Grey, Prime Minister from 1830 to 1834 to King William IV. Today, their line-up spans…

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

The Earl Grey is one I featured in my article Citrus and Tea.

Getting Great “After Season” Tea Time Deals

Bargain shoppers, rejoice! Tea and teaware deals abound, especially for “after season” items. Being a bargain hunter in the extreme, I wait anxiously for special dates and occasions to pass just as avidly as others prepare for their occurring. When it comes to tea, this is especially true.

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

Now is also a great time to stack up — uh, I mean stock up on those Peeps!

My Lovely New Mother’s Day Tea Mug

Mother’s Day is May 8th. Be sure to get something lovely for yours!

No, I’m not a mother, but even those of us who are not of that class of honored women can enjoy the lovely items that fill store shelves this time of year. Having a strong interest in tea, I was naturally attracted when, at the local Barnes and Noble, helpful salesperson Caroline showed me a display of some gorgeous tea items just for moms, all in a matching butterfly design.

There was a nice tea-for-one set so moms could have a private cuppa tea when the day’s activities had come to a bit of a lull. There was a set of fragrant soaps, not overpowering florals as I had expected, but lovely fruity aromas, perfect for a teatime in the tub. The best item was a lidded tea mug with a generously proportioned stainless steel infuser basket and a lovely box holding it all. The item had immediate appeal to my inner tea lover and soon came home with me, even though my strong preference is to steep my teas loose in a teapot and then strain into my cup (meaning that the infuser basket seemed a bit unneeded, but you never know, it may show up in a later article here).

Once home, I immediately took the mug, lid and infuser basket out of the sturdy matching box and cleaned them lightly. They were then ready for great tea adventures to come, with the mug lid keeping the heat in and thus serving both to help the tea steep and maintain its warmth after steeping between sips. All in all, a most lovely and worthwhile purchase!

© 2011 A.C. Cargill photos and text

“I Hate Green Tea”

Have you ever heard someone declare “I hate green tea”? To some of us diehard tea drinkers, this is like saying “I hate air” or “I hate sunshine”. That’s because we know how intricate and rewarding the flavors of a properly steeped green tea can be. We also know that the person making this declaration very likely had some poorly prepared green tea as an early experience and has never…

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

A Cheesy Tea Time

Something is cheesy at tea time. More and more, people are pairing cheeses with their teas for a truly harmonious taste experience. Time to join in the fun!

Cheese and wine are a well-known combination. In some people’s minds, they are as natural together as apple pie and ice cream, hot dogs and baseball games, or even…

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My review of the Arya Estate Darjeeling 2009 Autumn Flush in the photo above.

Tea and the Robin’s Nest

Birdies are great critters to learn from and are a constant source of entertainment, especially when observed through my kitchen window while I sip a fresh cuppa tea! Our kitchen window has a great view of the rose trellis put up against the side of the house perpendicular to our kitchen wall (the one with the window in it). We get to watch the roses bloom and various comings and goings of various critters who can brave the thorny rose canes.

One day, hubby noticed a nest being built and called me over to the window for a look. Sure enough a robin was flying up to the trellis with twigs and other materials used in nest-building. Over the next few days the nest was built and Mama Robin ensconced on her new home.

Now it seems that the eggs have hatched since she spends more time off the nest and sits on its edge when she returns. Sadly, the nest is up too high for us to see in it, but we were able to take this shot:

Not the neatest nest in the world, but that is a fairly tricky nesting spot.

We’ll continue watching and sipping our tea to see what new developments take place!

Roses in Your Teacup, Pt. II

In Part I, I showed the role of roses in romance and your teacup. They also play a role in the décor of the teacups themselves. Don’t forget the teapots, sugar bowls, cream pitchers, and other accoutrements for a rosy tea time!

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Roses in Your Teacup, Pt. I

Roses remain a favorite way to say “I love you,” both in a romantic setting and in your teacup. In the romantic setting, the color or the roses conveys different meanings, with yellow indicating warmth and happiness, pink conveying grace and elegance, and the dark red indicating love and romance. In the teacup, the flavor and aroma are the keys attributes sending a message to your senses when your loved one passes that cupful to you.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Some more rose-flavored teas and herbals hubby and I have tried:

Zhi Tea’s White Pomegranate Tea (shown at right)

The English Tea Store’s Mercedes Apple Spice Herbal

Indie Tea Lovers Lane

Tahitian Breeze from Set to a Tea

Tea and Nature — The “Tea Kettle” Bird

Tea has influenced the lives of men and women for many centuries. It has brought them together over the kettle of water as it was heating, drawn them into convivial camaraderie as the leaves infused in the gaiwan, teapot, or kyusu, and moistened their laughter with its range of flavors from the bitter, to the richly malty, to the floral, to the sublime.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

British Breakfast Cereals

Britain is big on tradition, from the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (I can still remember seeing the soldiers going through the same carefully laid-out movements that they had done for decades) to their breakfast. Cereals play a big part, as they have for about as long as those guards have been changing.

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

When a Breakfast Tea Isn't

There are quite a few “breakfast blends” out there. These are teas that have been blended to “pack a punch” to help you start your day. However, some of these excel in flavor while remaining mild to such an extent that they go beyond breakfast.

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

Tea Time Horrors

Tea time can be full of horrors even if you have been drinking tea for years. Remember the classic monster and horror movies from the 1950s, the days of such classics as The Mummy, Dracula, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Frankenstein? Well, tea time horrors can range from that level of spine-tingling shivers to the more modern (and sadly graphic) horror films like the Alien series.

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

Tea Veterans — James Norwood Pratt

Time to visit with another person who has been in the “tea trenches” for many years. Another dedicatee to the Camellia Sinensis plant (the tea bush) and to processing it for a variety of tastes. Someone who contributes daily to the enjoyment of tea by people the world over. Another unsung hero, a veteran in the world of tea: James Norwood Pratt.

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

More on Tea Sample Packaging

In January, I posted my thoughts on the packaging of samples received from various tea vendors so far. Since then I have received additional samples and just did a review of one whose packaging prompted this addendum to my original article.

Tea tins are starting to irritate me. Now, that is meant as a personal observation only and in no way intended as a definitive statement on what is and is not proper tea packaging. So, why do they irritate me? Good question.

Tea tins are cute, sturdy, and keep out light and moisture. They can stack — well, sort of — and you can collect them for displaying on your favorite knickknack shelf. So far, so good. Now for the part that irritates me: lack of airtightness. Not all of them have airtight seams nor lids that block air out, and when you use the tea, the tins can’t be rolled down like a pouch can be. Airtight tea storage is important if you care about freshness, which I do.

There is one more big beef I have with tins: most of those on the market now are cylindrical vs. box-shaped. That means they take up about as much room on your tea pantry shelf but hold less. Case in point is the tea I tried recently from Hampstead Tea.

Compared to a similar tea that came in a tin (Ahmad Tea’s Darjeeling — review), the Hampstead Tea tin holds exactly half as much tea by weight and takes up close to the same space on the shelf. It is also not as stackable as the Ahmad tin. The price is comparable, though:

• Ahmad Darjeeling – 200 grams, 7.05 oz., $9.99 + sales tax
• Hampstead Darjeeling – 100 grams, 3.53 oz., $4.90 (₤2.99) + shipping and possibly sales tax

More details on Hampstead’s tin:

1. A shows the intact tin.
2. B shows that the tin has an inner lid that is a bleeping nuisance to pull off. During our tasting, hubby had to pry it off about 3 or 4 times and struggled each time. This inner lid is meant to help keep out air, but really doesn’t since, as you use the tea, air is still trapped inside the tin.
3. C shows that the tea is in a plastic bag in the tin. This helps keep the tea fresh until it gets to you and you open that bag. Unfortunately, the bag is not resealable, so once you open it, you need a clip or tape or something to reseal it.
4. D shows another tea tin (on the left) with an inner lid, also. As you can see, this tin designer had the wherewithal to include a well-attached handle. No struggle removing this lid.

Overall, this packaging seems contrary to the company’s extreme focus on Organic. It seems to be designed to create a particular image in the minds of potential customers, one that tries to convey sophistication and high quality. A pretty normal thing for a business to do, but not in line with their statements about caring for the planet, etc. Regardless of my views on such matters, I tend to prefer consistency. Plus, this image is not lived up to by the tea inside, as you can see in my review.

See also my article Ins and Outs of Tea Storage Containers.

Collectible Byrd Teawares and Pottery

Tea lovers can go a bit ga-ga over collectible teawares. Sometimes they even go trolling the antique stores, garage sales, and flea markets, hoping to find that special something such as a Wedgwood cup and saucer. Not that I’ve ever done that, nope, not me, uh-uh, well maybe once … or twice … or every Saturday afternoon I could manage.

 

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

 

Some facts about the company:

• The pottery was made from east Texas riverbank clay.
• On their first day of sales in 1932 they made $26.
• Maude Byrd made 85 1-gallon pitchers daily and took care of her 2 sons while running the retail store. She is considered the most prolific potter in the country.
• They made small blue lidded jars, filled them with perfumed rose petals, and gave them to ladies in waiting at the annual Rose Festival.
• Styles include the peak/blue bonnet design, “squatchy color,” brown, and brown stipple, white, and all blue (cobalt). There were also white pieces with roses painted on them, bean pots with a brown glaze, and the very rare cobalt glazed bank (only 2 known in world).
• The Tyler hospital commissioned vases for their flower shop, and the design became known as the “hospital vase.”
• The Byrd family was quite modest and never imagined that there would someday be a collectors craze for their simple pottery.
• Robert Fleet authored the definitive collector’s guide and became the company’s unofficial historian. The Byrds being modest, didn’t want the attention and wouldn’t let him photograph them.
• Gary Fleet, Sports Coach at Tyler Robert E. Lee High School and Robert Fleet’s son, and his wife give collectors this advice: Act casual when you find a piece, pick it up but keep your expression neutral and continue looking at other pieces. Then, be prepared to deal.

All in all, the Byrd family epitomizes integrity, hard work, and discipline.

Going “High Tea” Tech with the Tea App for Your iPhone

UPDATE: Get the latest updates and info on this app at their blog.

Special applications (“apps”) for iPhones abound. Some are useful while others are frivolous, but none did a good enough job of combining both something useful with something that a growing segment of the U.S. population has a passion about: Tea! Until now, that is.

Thanks to Sam Iglesias, an iPhone Developer and tea drinker, and Mac Tyler, a User Interface (UI) Designer, there is now such an app, very appropriately named simply “Tea.” It was released on April 7th and is available from Apple’s iTunes App Store. For a limited time you can also get a coupon for 10% off purchases of Adagio Teas.

As with all applications, it’s starting out with the basics with room to add on. Who knows? Someday it might steep your tea for you and compost the leaves. Well, maybe not.

Starting with a mere 700 tea names and 15 tea types, the Tea app is off to a healthy start. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of other teas exist. Not to mention non-teas such as Rooibos, Honeybush, Guayusa, Yerba Maté, and various herbals. Then, there are the flavored teas with flowers, fruits, spices, etc., added to the Camellia Sinensis leaves.

Teas are presented along with the company selling them. For example, there is a Golden Bi Luo from Chicago Tea Garden, but it is also available from other vendors. So the tea will be listed multiple times, once for each vendor. Many vendors carry such classics as Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Gunpowder, Silver Needle, etc. The app will show these teas and the companies selling them along with the steeping recommendations each provides. (While some vendors provide both Asian and European directions, the app will show only the European for now.)

Pick a tea (from a particular company), get the steeping time and water temperature, time your steep, make notes of the results to reference later, share this with Facebook and Twitter, and track your tea inventory. All that in one app.

Don’t have an iPhone? Me neither, but maybe something like this will be developed for us. For those of you with an iPhone, this app is worth giving a try.

Contact Information:

Tea for iPhone
http://www.teaapp.com/
http://www.facebook.com/teaapp
@teaapp

Samuel Iglesias

Tea for iPhone, Developer

sam@teaapp.com

@siglesias

Mac Tyler
Tea for iPhone, Designer
desk@mactyler.com
@mactyler

Check out this article by Tony Gebely of World of Tea and Chicago Tea Garden.

Dressing for Tea

Flowing dresses, wide-brimmed straw hats with silk flowers and brightly colored ribbons, and even wrist-length white cotton gloves are signs that women dressing for tea is back in style. Men are even getting into the act, wearing suits and ties. What’s this all about?

One thing that might be influencing teatime apparel is…

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

Being a Tea Geek

Tea geeks, stand up and be proud. There is a lot to know about tea, and those of you who have achieved geek status must surely have spent a lot of time and effort scaling those heights of tea factdom. So, what is a geek?

One dictionary defines a geek as…

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

Hanging Out with Hampstead Tea

Sometimes it starts with an exchange of tweets on Twitter. Sometimes with an email in my Inbox. Whatever the case, it can be the start of a horror show or a grand tea adventure. In the case of Hampstead Tea, I’m thinking the latter.

Recently, several tea samples arrived and are patiently waiting their turn to be reviewed. Meanwhile, I took a look at who the folks at Hampstead Tea are.

Let’s start with the founder of the company: Kiran Tawadey. Her goal in starting a tea company wasn’t tea. It was to engage in promoting various trendy ideas going around now. I’m not going into them here. They’re too distressing. Suffice it to say that most of their teas come from the Makaibari tea estate in the Darjeeling region of India.

So much for who is Hampstead Tea. Now, for the “what.”

Their teas cover quite a range, including some Assams and green teas whose origins aren’t specified. They have flavored and unflavored teas, tea blends, and straight Darjeeling. They also call herbal infusions “teas” and make unsubstantiated health claims on their About Us page. Also, despite the claim on their site that their teas are not dust in bags, they seem to carry a lot of bagged teas. Hm…

We shall be trying the samples on their own merits, not as a way to promote Ms. Tawadey’s various causes. We embrace free choice, so she is entitled to follow whatever trends she wants.

Toasting Tea Time

Want something a bit different at tea time? One very traditional treat in the U.K. and elsewhere is toast with butter and jams or preserves. Nothing unusual there. But if you cut those pieces of toast into shapes using various cookie cutters, you’ll turn ordinary into fanciful. Even just plain toast with the right toppings can be real treats.

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

A “Peeps” Tea Party

Unless you have been living in the remote reaches of some very unenlightened corner of the planet, such as, oh, Siberia, you have probably heard of “Peeps.” In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the folks in Siberia did know about these sweet little treats. They certainly know about tea and keep their samovars fired up all day long in case the stray wanderer or horde of relatives stops by unannounced.

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

Some more peeps facts:

They travel in gangs of 10.

You can attract these gangs of peeps to your home by setting out a little bowl of tea (in this case, a nice Darjeeling from the Margaret’s Hope Estate and available from The English Tea Store).

They live in colorful packages that have all the pertinent info on them that you, the peeps gobbler, need to know.

The packages (i.e., the peeps’ home) are stackable, sort of like an apartment high-rise building.

We invited a couple of peeps to tea. They were a little leery of the fork, but we said it was just decoration. Then, after snapping the photo, we speared them with the fork and — chomp! chomp! — there were two fewer peeps out there in the world and two more inside us where they belonged!

Tea Info Access

The other day, an issue came up related to having access to tea info online. Someone was challenging a tea vendor’s claim that a particular tea garden was actually in the Darjeeling area of India and therefore able to claim legitimately that their teas were in the Darjeeling category of Indian teas. I innocently asked that the person making this challenge furnish a link to the information he was using to justify it. He responded that the information sat on his site and that it required people to sign in.

Something seems amiss when someone posts a comment online challenging a tea company’s honesty but the “proof” is hidden and to see it you have to register your email address with the site it’s on. Not quite “kosher,” as the saying goes.

It brings to mind the following questions: How accessible should tea information be online? That is, should you have to sign in to a site to see the information? Tricky questions. I am all for free choice. If someone wants to set up his site so people have to sign in, fine. But don’t use the information to attack a tea vendor, since the proof of the assertion is not available to all.

I responded to him by furnishing several links showing that the tea garden was indeed in Darjeeling. His reply was caustic and boiled down to sneeringly accusing me of simply going to Wikipedia and pulling off some links. (So, he wasn’t just someone who was hiding information from people, he was a bit elitist as well.) As for Wikipedia, it has a very damaged reputation, with numerous instances of people purposely posting the information they want there and removing anything they want hidden. So I almost never link to them as a source of information.

This person was trying to redirect attention away from his actions while still using “hidden” information to challenge that tea vendor’s veracity. Again, not “kosher.” Sigh!

As for the tea vendor in question, I know he is honest and that if he says a tea garden is in Darjeeling, I believe him or know that his mistake (should it prove to be that) is an honest one. (He lives there, so I am even more sure that he knows which tea gardens are true Darjeeling and which are not.)

As for the person making the challenge, I say that he should provide open access to the data used to support it.

Meanwhile, back to tea, listening to hubby on the piano, and a peaceful existence.

The Story of Bewley's, an Irish Fave Tea

There was a time when tea was unknown on the “Emerald Isle” that we call Ireland. And then came people with entrepreneurial spirit who thought, “Hey, I think some tea would go over big here.” One of these people was Samuel Bewley, founder of what is now a top tea brand in not just Ireland but throughout the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, and Japan (hey, they go nuts for Enya, so why not Bewley’s?).

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

20 Reasons to Drink Tea in April

Just as in March, there are tons of days in April to celebrate with a cuppa tea. I have focused on 20 of these dates to get you started and skipped some obvious dates, like Easter on the 24th and Tax Day on the 15th. The point is to bring some lesser known dates to your attention and show how they are great reasons to enjoy tea while steering clear of anything too serious, for the most part.

On to those 20 very special reasons to…

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

Tea vs. Colas

Considering that one of the main colas on the market, Coca-Cola, is having an anniversary this month, it seems fitting to take a look at how tea and colas compare. The official date for the invention of Coca-Cola was March 29, 1886, making it a much newer beverage in mankind’s thirst-quenching arsenal compared to tea.

One tale of the first consumption of hot water with some leaves of…

Read the rest of the article on The English Tea Store Blog.

Joy’s Teaspoon Celebrates Their First Year

The month of April has many special dates in it. I just learned of another: the first anniversary of Joy’s Teaspoon, the dream-come-true for tea lover Naomi Rosen in Las Vegas, Nevada, and proud new mom to Gavin.

During the month of April, Joy’s Teaspoon will be having special offers and other treats for you. Check out the company’s website so you don’t miss out.

My hubby and I have been honored to try some of their teas:

Review: Joy’s Teaspoon Winter Wonderland Tea
Review: Joy’s Teaspoon All That Jazz-mine Tea
Review: Joy’s Teaspoon Eternal Sunshine Tea
Review: Joy’s Teaspoon Summer Sunrise Tea
Review: Joy’s Teaspoon Margaret’s Hope Darjeeling Tea

For more information, see my article An Oasis of Tea: Joy’s Teaspoon.