Guru of Tea

You know the drill, after a small dry snack (pretzel anyone?), sad looking sandwich or - if you are lucky(?)- a half decent meal if flying longer, the drinks trolley comes trundling down or a hostess appears with two equally ominous silver-grey pots. “Tea or coffee?” they ask. What to do? After many experiences and [...]

A senior delegation representing trading interests of the Yunnan province (China) Tea & coffee industries asked the Guru to talk to them about the current state of the UK tea and coffee industry and what issues are most important to the UK consumer. Other presenters included delegate leaders, Bruce Ginsberg of Dragon Fly Tea, Cassandre [...]

Fermentation, oxidation or aeration - confused? You won’t be!
I have been asked to further describe these three words in relation to the manufacture of black and oolong teas. I am not surprised that there is confusion and this is a mixture of historical (mis)understanding and modern pragmatism in relation to tea.
We must remember that when [...]

The Las Vegas Tea expo was smaller than last year but in some ways more focused on the business in hand…promoting tea! The executive program was attended by a small number of interested parties and the open educational forum by many more with the focused tastings being especially well attended. Jen Pettigrew’s (http://www.janepettigrew.com/) tasting on [...]

The 2009 World Tea expo started well in Las Vegas on Saturday with an informative day of seminars and an expo floor with something for everyone! Presentations covered world and US markets for tea, basic introductions to areas such as teas carbon footprint, tea shop related topics such as cashless transactions as well as focused [...]

Tea is an evergreen shrub Camellia sinensis. Originally it was thought that green and black tea came from different bushes - Thea viridis being green tea and Thea bohea being black tea. Now we know that this is not the case but there are two different subspecies the so called Assam-type Camellia sinensis assamica (named [...]

In Kenya, some tea is still plucked by hand. Although there are moves towards mechanical harvesting.