I was aided in my reading by this book being one of my first on my iPad which I picked up in an attempt to help me move my library from being physical and heavy to even more extensive and no heavier than my reading device!

I was amazed at the amount of detail which was presented in this book. I was treated to a realist view of how the tea plant came to be so widely appreciated by the western world. Its instrumental pieces, discoveries and inventions necessary even for simply transport are astounding! 

Our story starts with basic coverage of the botanical revolution taking place in England in the early 1800′s. Prior to this point, few people kept gardens or had plants of any sort growing in their homes. Generally, even the rich didn’t have much more than shrubs or trees and almost all of those tended to be domestic plants. Nothing of foreign growth such as lilacs, bonsai or bamboo.

It’s easy to get lost with this beautiful story of industrial and economic espionage. You’d be remiss if you didn’t ask yourself whether this was a work of fiction. It certainly reads like one. Only, it isn’t.

A rather interesting plan was concocted to dress Robert Fortune in traditional clothing of a wealthy Mandarin and travel the whole of China for the purpose of collecting tea plants and production methods and send them to India for cultivation. The plan worked!

Robert Fortune shrewdly worked out the international ownership rights to any and all plants not used for tea production. When this whole thing started, it was a generally accepted assumption that teas came from different plants. Black from one, green from another, etc. Robert Fortune helped to dispell this myth which he had initially subscribed to, but which the Chinese helped show him was wrong.

True to what we may understand of Chinese erroneous production methods for other products today, it turned out the Chinese had been including harmful chemical dyes with the green tea they shipped because the western world wanted their green teas to actually be green. A practice thank goodness which is no longer followed.

It was the botanical revolution and tea which helped to inspire and encourage the early use of an item called a wardian case which was used to transport plant seeds safely across the seas. Without these cases the salt in the air alone would destroy the virility of the seeds making them unusable once they reached their destination.

The invention of greenhouses was also early in this period and without them, trasport of the live plants from China to India and other locales would not have been possible.

I hope you are as captivated and enthralled by this book as I was. Sarah Rose has really put together a very special work which doesn’t feel like a dry history book at all. Instead it reads very much like a novel, and it engages every facet of the imagination as you read through it.

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Most tea books have similar approaches. You can categorize them as tomes of knowledge, training books or even a tasting guide. 

What this book by Chris Cason is not… is any of those.

Billed as a travel companion ofr tea drinkers, the book succinctly walks you through many of teas basics without being intellectually demeaning and providing some humor along the way.

Like most tea related books, a little history is present. Some discussion is offered on the creation of tea bags, the proliferation of tea into Japan, and the advent of British colonial tea production.

What I find most intriguing about this book is its simplistic focus on what most avid tea drinkers often miss. Tea is fun, relaxing and pensive all at once. A beverage you can drink as quickly or slowly as you like. To share or not to share moments with others is up to the drinker. Tea is different for everyone.

I hope you’ll share some of your moments with me. But while you’re at it, feel free to drop a line to Chris Cason over at Tavalon, or pick up a copy of this fine book from Adagio Tea.

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It is for this purpose that beginning in August, accessory and product reviews will be swapping with news, culture and history.

You can thus expect to see the following items reviewed on Thursdays moving forward:

• Books
• Software
• Infusers
• Kettles
• Water Warmers
• Cozies
• Tea Houses/Tea Rooms
• Tea Storage containers

Moving forward you can expect the following to appear on Mondays

• News
• Culture
• History
• Event coverage
• Announcements
• Updates
• New feature introductions
• Interviews with tea industry experts and entrepreneurs.

I believe this new schedule will jive better with you as my audience and certainly hope it will help drive traffic in a more predicatable manner.

Help a good cause: CharityWater.org

The questions I have been asking myself for the past six months are:

• Is advertising inherently evil?
• Does it constitute a waste of visual space?
• Does it distract from my content?

After quite a lot of thought on these and other worries I have finally decided that some visual advertising may actually be helpful for this site. My primary mission is to expose visitors such as yourself to more tea and tea flavors and brands than they may have had access to before.

The visual space usage doesn’t have to be all that great to help expose you to new teas, and hopefully… help offset some of the costs of running this site.

You will find adverts on the following page types:

• Tea Reviews
• News, Culture & History posts
• Accessory, Books and Software Reviews

You will NOT see advertisements on these page types:

• Static pages (such as the Tea Info pages)
• Brand Pages
• Feature Announcements

As I move forward with integrating the advertisements I’d like to make this process as transparent as possible. To ensure I’m not taking large kickbacks, you should know I have chosen to use an affiliate link service called LinkShare.

Different advertisers contribute in different ways, and I only apply for affiliate participation with companies or services which have something to offer the modern tea drinker.

So far these are affiliates I have signed up with:

• Adagio Teas, purveyors of some mighty fine teas. Some of which I have already reviewed.
  
• Amanzi Tea, a tea company I have yet to review.
  
• Alessi, an accessory maker with some neat contemporary products.
  
• Tea Forte’, another tea company with unique packaging whom I have yet to review.
  

I hope this level of transparency will help make the ensuing advertising more palatable. You won’t see the adverts everywhere and they won’t be like paint splatter on the pages where they do exist. They’ll only be for companies which have something topical to offer you. All proceeds will go to keeping this site going as costs continue to rise with increased traffic and posts while introducing new features!

Thanks for understanding this need. I’m excited to see how this goes and if enough funding offset begins coming through these affiliates, you could see more in-depth writings showing up as I can fund some extra research time!

Help a good cause: CharityWater.org

Monday is Teahouse/Tea Room, Accessory and Brand Review Day!

It’s been a week since the end of the World Tea Expo in Las Vegas and I’m still a little heady from the experience. Here’s a recap of my time at the Expo and my takeaway from the event.

Like most people, I don’t work in the tea industry. I make my living doing something else. For me it’s in technology in one form or another (I get around). For others it might be banking or retail work. Regardless of our backgrounds we all have limits on the time we can spend away from the office. You can imagine the general level trepidation I had in spending half my yearly vacation allotment (not to mention the monetary costs) to attend this industry only event almost an entire continent away!

Let me start by stating that Las Vegas has never been my kind of town. No offense to those who enjoy it. I’m not one for gambling, unless I’m starting a business… which is a gamble all its own. And while I can certainly get into pretty lights… all the sex advertising is overkill for me. So Vegas is clearly a bit absurd for me. But I follow the tea… and there the tea went.

Although the expo started on Saturday, I spent Thursday travelling to Vegas. This would give me time to rest up before the expo and explore the town a bit more than I’d had on my only previous visit to Vegas. I spent Friday walking up and down the strip photographing the architecture and window shopping in the stores. There’s plenty to see, even if you’re not out for the gambling or the gratuitous nudity everywhere.

Friday night I picked up my badge and packet for the expo to avoid the morning lines. I missed the opening ceremonies Saturday morning… something I’ve never really enjoyed much at other gatherings. I hear there was a very good breakfast there, and that would have been appreciated versus the $9.70 I ended up paying for a bowl of fruit and some yogurt at the Red White & Blue restaurant in the Mandalay Bay hotel where the expo was held.

Right off the bat I had a session Saturday morning. The first was held by James Norwood Pratt on the Myths & Legends of Tea. Of the six sessions I had at this year’s expo this was probably my favorite. Mr. Norwood clearly and entertainingly discussed the real world drawbacks of concentrating too heavily on the oft complicated and confusing (not to mention long and growing) list of health benefits of tea. Also covering modern societies’ general loss of the ability to tell and listen to stories, Mr. Pratt was captivating and educating all at once. If you have the opportunity to read one of his myriad of books, I highly recommend it.

Also on Saturday I had a panel called “Educating Your Customer,” hosted by Michael Harney of Harney & Sons. If you frequent this site you’ll note a number of Harney & Sons reviews here for both hot and iced teas. After Mr. Pratt’s amazing presentation I had very high standards for this followup. However, as much as I admire Mr. Harney and what he and his family’s company have done for the industry over the years, he needs some improvement in the presentation skills arena. Looking past lots of “umms” and “ahhs” flowing through the presentation, Michael Harney gave a good presentation discussing the intricacies of staff training and engaging customers in their education process.

I hit the show floor after this and spent a whole lot of time (6+ hours) networking and meeting people. I’m a bit of a talker, so I got stuck at several booths discussing their teas, company histories and other things along the way. You would think so much time would have allowed me to meet lots of people, but I don’t think I even finished a full row of booths on Saturday out of the seven or eight total rows.

I ended up visiting with ITI (International Tea Importers) right through the door, then moving on to the Harney & Sons booth and speaking with both Michael and John Harney. Both gentlement are uniquely and fantastically knowledgeable about tea and I had been very much looking forward to interacting with them. I also ran into Tea Escapade, another blogger, while at this booth.

I also met with Rona Tison of ITO EN and learned they have been recycling their used plastic bottles and used tea leaves to make other goods. While I found making their business cards of these materials to be a natural extension of things… they also fashion pens, park benches and vending machines out of the plastics and tea leaves! Completely fascinating!

Saturday evening brought the World Tea Championships out. Far and away Rishi Tea took the most awards… walking away with NINE (9) first place wins and numerous runner up positions across multiple categories. I was most excited to see a relative newcommer with Puripan taking away a win. I’ve long been upset at the seemingly clear bias against Korean teas in the industry. I’m very excited to these teas to receive recognition!

Saturday brought many new relationships into my life… but Sunday and Monday were yet to come. Visit back next Monday for a recap of the final two days of my time at the World Tea Expo (WTE).

Help a good cause: CharityWater.org