Second Annual International Tea Trade Convention in London

London bound for the Convention

Last year we had the First Annual International Tea Trade Convention in Munich when the founders and administrators of the site visited me, while on a whirlwind tour through Germany. Xavier also met us, as well as his girlfriend who we met for the first time (and really liked).

So, although the founders can't be there, I'll be visiting Robert Godden in London next weekend, and we've decided to hold the 2nd Annual International Tea Trade Convention. Might sound like we're blowing a small gathering out of proportion and making it sound much more important than it really is.

Who? Us?

Like Robert and I'd ever do such a thing. I'm almost offended at the very thought.

Here's the thing, my little tea drinking friends: we need a venue. Like, desperately. Robert has some favourite tea salons in England's capital, and I know some quirky cafés that may or may not serve decent tea. Those aren't nearly good enough for such an event. Hardly.

We need a place with wifi, so we can have a bit of virtual tea drankin' with whomever shows the slightest interest in taking part in such an astoundingly important event. And it'd be nice if the place actually served tea.

However, now that I think about it I realise The Devotea and I probably carry around enough tea that we could have our convention anywhere that'd let us plug in our travel kettle and give us space enough to brew up. My taste buds are perking up at the very thought.

You're probably asking yourself, 'How might one take part in the virtual tea drankin' and more importantly will there be teablogging of the 2nd Annual International Tea Trade Convention?'

For the former, contact Robert or me on twitter or Feckbook. And the answer to the latter is, 'Most definitely yes! There will be teablogging.'

It has been decreed.

Teai Boynoy? Huh?

Teai Boynoy? What's that?

First of all, it's been just a bit hectic here. There was a time when I posted something on the teablog everyday because I read somewhere that if you want to build readership, you should consistently have new content. Although I enjoyed doing it, the result was that I wrote a lot about tea, but I incorporated things going on in my life and how they (often tangentially) related to tea. If at all.

Then there was a time when I posted every second or third day, and that's actually more my goal. The last post about predicting someone's taste in tea based upon their other tastes is going to be a recurring theme. It's something that interesting to a lot of people and that hopefully will create a bit of dialogue.

After writing it, I realised that tea sellers must do this sort of thing all the time. Someone wanders into the shop, says that he's curious about tea, and the tea seller has to decide what might be the best option for this stranger. What does one do in that situation?

So because I write quite a bit about luring people over to the leaf-side here, and because I talk with quite a few non-tea people over on twitter, I get a lot of questions. For example, at the weekend there was an urgent message from a blogger I know called Jim. It read, 'quick! At the store...Name a couple of good commercially available teas for a tea virgin to try.'

I asked him my questions about how he took his coffee and whether he liked spicy food, and he responded with, 'coffee bold/rich cream and a bit of sugar, food spicy'. Now we were getting somewhere. He gave me a list of what was available, and I told him the brand I knew best.

But in the process I mentioned it on twitter, and of course there were people who responded to my query with pleas that Jim not go the way of teabags. That he wouldn't get the full experience and that it'd turn him off of tea entirely.

But there was Jim, standing in the aisle, not knowing where the tea filters were, or if there even were any, and not much more time to bother with hunting for tea. I'd gone to the website of the brand I knew best, and recommended the nicest loose-leaf teas I could imagine from their selection, but ultimately it was just too much. A package of English Breakfast blend was chosen, and I think it was the right choice.

My position on all of this is that the less fussy we are at the outset, the more an individual can develop his own tastes. I've suggested Jim try a sip or two of the tea before he adds any cream or sugar, but I actually think that drinking his English Breakfast blend with a bit of cream and sugar will slowly get him used to the taste of tea.

Why do I think that? Well, that's how I got into tea. I didn't start out by walking into a specialty tea shop and walk straight over to the High Mountain Oolong. Not sure how I would've responded to all that in the early days, anyway.

So the photo up above is something I've written about briefly in you needn't climb a mountain. It's not Teai Boynoy in English...that's actually Greek Mountain Tea. I'm rarely ever ill, but I've had a light cold and held onto this package for just such a situation. Unlike Geoff Norman (@lazy_literatus), who drinks his with proper Greek honey, I've had to settle for good old German honey. With a bit of Vitamin C powder for good measure.

Here's the package turned round to display the script you can likely more easily read:

getting into tea in Tucson

Have met quite a few tea people only virtually, whether it be by watching tea videos and then interacting with them on twitter or even using skype for an online tea party. Robert Godden set up one of those several weeks ago and it was a pleasure to hear the voices of people with whom I'd had very limited contact. Whether it be reading teablogs they write or their brilliance on twitter.

Then there are some tea people I've even met as a result of this teablogging lark. Haven't been creeped out by any of those new tea friends I initially met online. Not yet anyway. That's not an invitation for freaky tea drinkers to contact me. Just saying that this has been a very positive social experience with people I'd never have otherwise met.

There are some tea drinkers I know in my daily life. Whether they were already sipping from the dark brown liqueur or I lured them over to the leaf-side, it's nice to have personal contact with others who enjoy tea.

And there's a third category I hadn't thought of until recently. People I've known for a long time who I didn't even know were into tea. You know someone a long time, you get together or see each other at some function and the last thing you think to bring up is your tea obsession. My Aunt Elise found my tea blog over at teatra.de, and told me in the comments over there that she was enjoying reading. That they were 'getting into tea in Tucson'.

In another conversation she talked about a tea I hadn't hear of called Sakurambo Vert. The only tea I found with this name was from the tea company Lupicia, and although I'm not normally a big fan of tea with fruit in it, I'd like to try this one out.

Here's what steepster.com had to say about it: Sakurambo Vert.

Any of you tried this? One person says it's bitter. Another seems to say the opposite. Any thoughts?

Black Dragon love

The more I look at the traffic on this blog, the more fascinated I am at what generates more eyeballs. I know some people are much more professional about this. Up until now attracting readers has been a very unscientific endeavour for me.

I write long-winded descriptions of tea shops in obscure places and get little or no response, but then I write a quick post about masculine tea drinking and get more attention than ever before. The search results that bring people here alternate between obvious and obscure. I'll go into more detail on that another time.

But the thing that's been fascinating me lately is what other sites send me traffic. People come here from twitter, and quite a few read my mirror blog over at teatra.de and then click through to here to see this site, as well. But almost twice as much traffic as anywhere else comes from one source. It's Black Dragon Tea Bar out in Seattle.

Once I started looking at this data, it was clear I should show my gratitude. So in my own small way I'd like to send a bit of traffic back his direction. I could go into painstaking detail about the things I learned about Brett (Black Dragon's proprietor) while looking at all the nooks and crannies of his blog, but I'll let you do it on your own. It just so happens that his latest blogpost is a very nuanced and interesting take on organic and sustainable tea. Don't take my word for it, have a gander:

My Thoughts on Organic Tea

It really is interesting, isn't it? Read more about Brett and what he's doing with tea. He's clearly one of the good guys.

planning to host fellow tea obsessives

This week I found out that a fellow tea obsessive that I met through twitter will be visiting Munich this summer. Actually a couple of tea obesessives. Should be quite the experience. Am already pondering where to take them for tea.

I go on and on about the meagre opportunities for decent tea drinking here in this city, but we do have tea shops/tearooms and I honestly can't wait to show these places off.

My visitors are already very familiar with the city of Munich, but in Southern Germany the people are much better known for their Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake) than they are for their knowledge of tea and tea drinking. This is slowly changing. We have a budding tea culture.



There's the Tushita Teehaus, which I wrote about in a general sense of well-being, and then even closer is the Laifufu Teesalon, which I wrote about in Oolong Nirvana in the Next Street Over. (pictured on the left)






There's a very British place, which I'll talk about another time, where we could have cream tea, and if we're really ready to throw caution to the wind, there's always Afternoon Tea at Die Vierjahreszeiten (The Four Seasons).



So there's no reason for me to get overly excited just yet. Still have to wait several months for the opening ceremonies, but just going through our options for tea in Munich is making me thirsty.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours

What an enjoyable afternoon Neil of Neil's Yard and I had trying a variety of tea. Am going to briefly go over the highlights, and possibly come back and go into more detail if there's more to cover.

I wanted to see what he thought of the Darjeeling I have from Darjeeling Tea Express, so I started with a Goomtea Pre Autumnal Black. You can read about it here: Darjeeling Pre Autumnal. This is a tea I like, but Neil was immediately smitten. He loved it. Couldn't help but taste the muscatel, he said. He could clearly see why I was so excited to share this tea with him.



Then I tried his Everyday Kenya from leaf. (leaf. tea), and I was similarly impressed. I've not had much Kenyan tea, but this was delicious. It smelled smoky like a good Yunnan, but was so smooth and spicy. Here's how the leaves looked before adding boiling water (Very dark brown with yellow tips):




Although many Darjeeling lovers wax rhapsodic about first flush tea, I've always liked the stronger second flushes. So I was excited to brew a bit of Gopaldhara 2nd flush (again from Darjeeling Tea Express Gopaldhara 2nd flush). Although he liked it, it didn't make nearly the same impression that the Pre Autumnal did.

This is one of the things I love about tea. Not just the variety of flavours, but the incredibly subjective response that can result from two different tea drinkers.

After we got the black tea sorted, we spent the remainder of our time on multiple infusions of something called Organic Blue Tea (again from leaf.). According to their website, Oolong is sometimes called Blue tea because it's somewhere between black and green. Had never heard that description, but why not? Here's how they describe it: Organic Oolong 'Blue' tea, and it's stated, 'this oolong tea is a Qi Lan from the province of Guang Dong in China.'

From both appearance and taste, this is clearly a highly-oxidised Oolong. Like many first infusions, the smell was more pronounced than the taste. Nevertheless, you could tell what an enjoyable tea drinking session was in store based simply upon this smell.




Sure enough as we drank multiple infusions, the taste of the tea developed. How I ever brewed one single infusion of a decent Oolong still makes me shudder. It was at this point that we sat down and looked at twitter. I think Neil was a bit impressed, as well as intrigued, that the tea companies he'd been in contact with were so easily accessible on Web 2.0. So often, twitter makes no sense until one can see it in action.

There you have it. A wonderful tea tasting experience, and the more he talks about it, I can't wait to see how Neil's Yard turns out. Stay tuned.

Neil's Yard

My friend Ruth married a guy named Neil, which means I got a new friend in the process. A while back, I saw them at some function, and they informed me they were packing up and moving to Newfoundland (and Labrador), where he'll have a little cafe/shop and serve tea. That's right tea!

The plan back then was to sell/serve tea from teabags. I thought that maybe my short-term goal was to bring him over to the leaf-side, but he seems to have made it over here on his own already. Thankfully.

Nevertheless, he wants to show me the teas he already has, and I want to introduce him to the Darjeeling from Darjeeling Tea Express that I served at the tea tasting I did a while back.

I'm also going to show him the basics of twitter, and extoll the virtues of meeting/communicating with tea people there. Should be fun. Will definitely be reporting here on the whole ordeal, but I wanted to start out by introducing Neil and his soon-to-be-opened cafe/shop. It's called Neil's Yard, and here's the website:

Neil's Yard

Go have a look.

More soon on an impromptu tea tasting and a welcome newcomer to the online tea community. You can't wait, can you?