It’s time to step things up a bit. My commitment to you may seem to have waned with less frequent posts. Let me assure you, this is not the case. If anything it pains me to not have had the opportunity to engage with you as I would have liked.

I started Tea-Guy as an experiment. An expedition of discovery looking to find valuable business opportunities in the tea industry and chances to mix and mingle with my fellow tea lovers. I have done this. I’ve become addicted to it!

I’ve received praise for my content and writing style. I’ve received praise for my methodology when reviewing teas. I’ve even received praise for some of my tea travels reviews (which I love to do by the way.) Just about the only thing I haven’t received some level of acclaim for is the design of the blog itself.

But today is a new day. This week is a new week. The world we live in won’t stop or slow down, it moves faster every day, and within it we all individually can take an opportunity to reflect. Some of us use tea as our excuse to do just that.

The start of next week marks the beginning of a new era with Tea-Guy. A completely new design with more readable layout and design and more modern amenities will welcome you. I couldn’t be more pleased with the design and implementation put together by my team of tea drinking monkeys.

This redesign comes in no small part by the constant lack of traffic to deeper areas of the site. I’ve written articles on a myriad of topics which simply haven’t been viewed by you. I’m not sure if this is more because of the theme or because I haven’t chosen to highlight it at times. But I refuse to believe those articles are of no interest to you as readers.

When the changes go live next week, please take the opportunity to critique the design and let me know how you feel about it and what your thoughts and recommendations are. We’ve worked hard to improve your experience, and I’d really like to focus on that.

If you are a fan on Facebook or you follow me on Twitter you may have seen a sneak peek of this new design already. If not, you’re in for a treat.

Keep Steepin’,
Tea-Guy

Check out my coverage of both Day 1 and Day 2 of the 2011 World Tea Expo.

The World Tea Expo is such a fantastic event that even after only a few times through I can’t imagine not attending every year. I spark wonderful conversations with people, make new friends and contacts and come out knowing more than ever about tea in all its forms. This year really was no different in this respect. From a Tea Anthropologist I met at breakfast on Day 2 to time spent hanging out with my new buddy Ankit Lochan of Lochan Tea (we went to the Hoover Dam) I really had a great time this year.

But, without further ado…

Day 2

I spent some quality time with a few of the larger brands on Sunday. A wonderful but short visit over to the Harney & Sons booth showed Michael Harney’s lighter side and let me reconnect with the brand which first exposed me to loose tea. I always enjoy speaking with the Harney’s. They have great business sense to be sure, and they know their teas but they’re also great to talk with and learn from. You should drop in on their SoHo store if you’re in Manhattan.

Michael Harney & I

Michael Harney's Lighter Side

Moving along, I spent some time with some new friends with World Tea Media, purveyors of the World Tea News (WTN) industry publication and the World Tea and World Tea East expos. George and Kim Jage started the expo some number of years ago and it’s really grown into something wonderful! Dan Bolton, editor of the WTN articles and I had a nice long chat as well. It was a pretty awesome chance to connect with some of the larger names in the industry at the moment.

Some Tea from Rishi Tea

International Tea Importers is one of the larger wholesale groups around and they have some mighty fine product. They had a couple of the more unique items I was able to check out this year. Amongst my favorite activities at the expo are speaking with ITI’s purveyor, Mr. Devan Shah as well as venerable Tea Luminary Mr. James Norwood Pratt (to whom I always wish to bestow the title of Sir.) I hope next year I’ll have the opportunity to share a meal with these gentlemen.

Sir James Norwood Pratt and I

A stop over to Teas Etc yielded a great opportunity to chat up Beth Johnston and new friend Sherri Miller of Moonrise Tea Garden out of Hawaii. I reviewed Sherri’s crop from last year if you care to check it out. I also had a chance to speak with Newman Johnston and am always super excited after talking tea, business and happy things with these folks. There’s so much to go over and one expo isn’t nearly enough time, let alone a short conversation within an expo!

Beth Johnston, Myself and Sherri Miller

Newman Johnston and I

Another group from Hawaii whom I didn’t get the chance to review but did say hi to last year was Naliko Tea Gerden, now known as Tea Hawaii. It seems like Liam Ball of Naliko hooked up with a neat crowd. Tea Hawaii offers some neat products, an interesting brewing method where water is poured over the leaves and sifted into a drinking vessel. They also offer custom made tea cups made of clay which are all unique. The uniqueness is by virtue of a ‘slap’ to the clay as the potter is finishing spinning it which gives the cup its unique ‘wobble.’

Tea Hawaii Brewing to a Vessel

Another stop was made to a standby of mine. You can find Stash Tea products in nearly every grocery store in the United States. They’re a HUGE brand. However, they’re mostly known for their bagged teas. This is mighty unfortunate because their loose tea quality is actually pretty high. I always enjoy good conversation with Stash. I hope to cover more of their loose teas soon.

Stash Tea Products

I did also run into Wendy Weir of Libre Tea whose brewing vessel I reviewed some time ago and pit against other tea mugs in a showdown last year. This was her first World Tea Expo exhibiting. Honorable mention to my friends at Honey Stix whose products I hope to review soon. A shout to my buddies at Eastrise Trading who handle distribution for Foojoy in North America. Another honorable mention for the folks at Nucha, and David over at Gorreana Portuguese Teas.

I was disappointed not to see some of my favorite exhibitors from the past two years. Notable absences included Puripan Tea Garden, TeaGschwendner, PeLi Teas, Tavalon Tea, Village Tea Company, SAFA Himalaya and Catalyst Tea Enhancers. I missed you guys!

That’s pretty much it for Day 3. Feel free to go back and check out Day 1 and Day 2 of my 2011 World Tea Expo coverage.

Eastrise Trading Company

Check out my coverage of both Day 1 and Day 3 of the 2011 World Tea Expo.

Day two of the 2011 World Tea Expo was spectacular! A couple presentations, a number of formal tastings, a private tasting and dinner with the Nepali delegation, Thomas Shu’s traditional Taiwanese Hakka Tea Songs and more! All packed into one wonderful day!

As fast as the day went for me, a lot happened this day between 10AM and 5:30PM. So let’s get started!

Day 2

Saturday morning I arrived a bit early for the show. I tend to do this each year. You never know who you’ll end up meeting at the Starbucks at the convention center over breakfast! I had a very nice chat with one of the new girls over at Runa. Runa makes and wholesales the wonderful Guayusa (why-you-suh) product I reviewed a couple flavors for last fall. It’s an exciting tisane I really enjoy. After she had to get to the booth though, I took the chance to chat with a lady sitting behind me. Her name was Sharon Misdea and she’s a cultural anthropologist with a concentration on beverage history! How fascinating is that! My mind is still full of all kinds of questions to ask of her. I hope to do an interview to share with everyone here in a month or so!

After the breakfast chats were over, I headed out to the show floor. With the press badges you get in a bit early so I was able to squeeze through just a tad before the doors opened to everyone.

I was able to make a b-line for my friends over at QTrade Teas & Herbs who co-exhibit with my friends at Kopius Teas at the expo. These are some fantastic people who custom blend for all sorts of brands. If you have a chance to check out Infusions of Tea, it’s a brand run by Ron Eng and Emilie Yanagi of Kopius Teas and they have some very nice, high quality stuff!

Sungarden Teas

Elmwood Inn across the way was next. They’re more ‘local’ to me, being right across the river in Kentucky so I thought I’d say hello. I had a nice conversation, contemplated snagging a couple books including a beautiful copy of their illustrated version of Okakura Kakuzo’s “The Book of Tea,” and headed on down the isle.

Next, I made a stop over at Art of Tea. These guys are really some master blenders. Some of their teas are really inventive. Just after the show I’d requested a blend with Kiwi for kicks, and they blended a new Watermelon Kiwi Black Tea I am hoping to review here soon!

I didn’t spend a lot of time back in the China part of aisle 3. There was some stuff there which looked and smelled nice, but I had the urge to check out the Taiwan Tea Association booth where a lot of activity seemed to be centered. Here I found the venerable Thomas Shu singing some of his renowned Hakka Tea Songs. These were pretty engaging and fun to learn, though I really don’t remember them at the moment (BAD Tea-Guy!). They had a beautiful booth and I took the time to sit in on a presentation on traceability with Taiwanese teas and on a couple cuppings of Taiwanese teas which were both very engaging and fun!

Thomas Shu, Steven Huang and I

From the Taiwan tea booth, I made my way to a nearby booth from CTC Inc, distributors of the Bret brewing device and of Zealong, the New Zealand Oolong tea introduced at last year’s show. I snagged a Brewt unit I’ll be pitting against Adagio Teas’ ingenuiTEA and Teavana’s PerfecTEA Maker II in a couple weeks.

The Taiwan Tea crew and a buyer

The Taiwan Tea crew and I

I also made my way to the booth for Royal Tea of Kenya who had some unworldly spectacular orthodox black, green and white teas. What’s special about this is that Kenya isn’t really known for their quality, primarily their quantity. They’re the single largest producer of black teas in the world. Kenya produces more than China and India and Sri Lanka. It’s unbelievable. What’s great about this is that we’re now seeing some really good quality stuff coming from a region which needs the agricultural income and the exposure. I’m very happy to see this quality increase from Kenyan teas, and  to see much needed attention on a region which could use it.

Royal Tea of Kenya

A stop over to Octavia Tea yielded some new friends as well. Some of their blends were pretty interesting, and I look forward to reviewing some of them soon.

The Octavia Tea crew and I

On the side opposite CTC was the ItoEn booth. ItoEn makes more bottled ices teas than anybody. They literally invented the modern game of bottling teas for consumer consumption. It’s a really great story, I hope to transcribe at some point. I’ve become annual friends with Rona Tison, their VP of marketing for North America over the years. She’s pretty fantastic, so if you ever have the chance to say hi, you should do so!

They have some really great new bottled teas out now too. Their Crisp Apple Iced Tea and their Mango Iced Tea taste fantastic! I’m set to receive some samples of ItoEn’s loose leaf teas as well and hope to review some of them soon.

Rona Tison of ItoEn and I

An aisle over and further back was The Tao of Tea (Tao is pronounced like dow.) This company has a single premise. Never compromise quality while protecting our people and resources. I am in love with this group and look forward to reviewing some of their teas.

Tao of Tea has a pretty large amount of shelf-space at a local international food market in my area called Jungle Jims. If you’re ever in the Cincinnati area, you should really check the place out. They have acres and acres of floorspace inside devoted to foods from around the world!

A buddy from Tao of Tea and I

Tao of Tea

I dropped by a booth for Harshita Designs, a wonderful Indian fashion designer who often incorporates tea related aspects into her work. Mr. James Norwood Pratt had his mug emblazoned on a poster celebrating some form of anniversary wearing one of the purveyor’s ties, so I obviously had to have one as well! I snagged a nice red tie with blue circles encompassing a pretty two-leaves-and-a-bud motif. It’s a pretty nice tie actually.

I moved on to the Joyce Chen booth where they had some nice teapots and other paraphernalia.

Harshita Designs

Joyce Chen

My friends over at Eastrise Trading Corp. always have great stuff. They’re the North American distributor for the Chinese brand called Foojoy. I know and like a number of Foojoy blends and am always impressed with their loose tea quality. Above all else though, I really love chatting with these folks. They’re a lot of fun, and I always learn something new.

From Eastrise I moved on to some adventurism! I took a trip to the last aisle and stopped by a neat little booth for a company called Indie Tea. This little brand has some interesting blends. At the show I was a fan of their “Dirty Bird” and “Masquerade” blends. I hope to give them a fair shake with some reviews down the line. India Tea donates a whopping 5% of their sales to charity. We as consumers might not tack that as a lot… but really, it is. It’s 1 of every twenty dollars the company doesn’t get to use for its own growth. CHeck them out if you can.

The Yedi Houseware booth was colorful and fun looking. I dropped by for a gander, but didn’t get to try anything out.

Yedi Housewares

The Yamashiro Busan Company of Japan has a neat product out this year as well. They’ve developed a cold-brew green tea powder which is actually very good. To brew, you take one of their pouches and insert it into a bottled water (after either draining or drinking a bit.) Then you put the cap back on and shake vigorously for a few moments. All the sudden, you have a fine tasting ices green tea in a bottle! FOr those familiar with the crystal light-to-go- packets, this is similar. However, you’re inserting a packet into the bottle, and not dumping a powder in directly. The idea is so new from the company, they don’t have a US facing site in English yet.

I hope to give these a review down the line as well.

To finish my day I headed upstairs to a private tasting of the Nepalese teas for this year. Here I met some wonderful industry luminaries such as Bill Waddington of TeaSource and NPR Tea Time fame. I also met  Martin Kushner and Chandra Bhushan Subba. The presentation given was very nice. They walked us through the history and culture of the relatively young Nepalese tea industry, some production processes and a tasting of some of their latest productions.

To say they had splendid teas would be benign. To be honest, one of their teas was just okay. Several were pretty good and two were downright spectacular. In particular I was impressed by an extra curled black tea produced by Bushan’s factory. For such a young industry, they’ve matured quite a bit in a very short period of time and are offering teas with a remarkable amount of differentiation in palate texture and flavor profiles on top of visual appeal. This is a country to watch!

Chandra Bhushan and I

This is coverage of Day 1 of the 2011 World Tea Expo. Please also check out coverage of Day 2 and Day 3.

While the World Tea Expo remains an industry only event, there’s much going on here which is indicative of progress and growth beyond the tea industry itself. My trip out this year was for more than just keeping you and I up to date on the happenings within the tea industry.

From news and concern of radiation seepage in Japanese teas to judging the quality of this year’s first flush Darjeeling’s after a labor crises led to later than normal picks, there’s much to understand for this year’s crop. Floods AND droughts in China have impacted crops there as well.

Mix in a little business with my blogging pleasure. I’m working on a tea related startup I’ve been needing to drum up some support for. I’m very excited for its future and overwhelmingly positive feedback from the market I feel will continue to lead to great things to share with you in the future.

But enough about me, let’s move on to Day 1 of the 2011 World Tea Expo!

Day 1

A trip down Aisle 1 instantly yielded a chat with the girls from The Tea Spot. Last year they’d provided me with a sample unit of a little steeping tool called a Tuffy Steeper. This year they’ve a little gadget called Brewlux which is supposed to be used for brewing loose leaves in a cardboard/paper cup you may get from a coffee shop or some such. This little item is actually really neat. Biodegradable and compostable it reacts to bacteria or chemical breakdown assistants. Without those assistants though, this item can be used, reused, re-reused, placed in a dishwasher for cleaning (top rack only) and used again. If you drink loose on the go and often find yourself in need of a method to keep the loose leave separated from the water while drinking on the go from an average vessel… this little diddy is for you!

The Tea Spot

A trip slightly further down the aisle led me to an interesting booth from… Portugal? Gorreana has grown tea for mass consumption in Portugal for more than a century. Now they’re looking to expand into the US market. The tea provided appears primarily CTC style black in different grades of fineness. The flavor is there, but seems like it doesn’t quite match with what I’ve come to expect from more notable growers.

Further down Aisle 1 I paid a visit to my buddy Ankit Lochan from Lochan Tea Estates. Ankit is from Darjeeling India and produces some very wonderful teas. You won’t find Ankit’s teas on the shelves though, he sells to companies and wholesalers, not to retailers. Look for products from Teas Etc., Tea Source, Adagio and others to try teas produced by the Lochan plantations.

Ankit Lochan of Lochan Tea and I.

The back end of Aisle 1 was primarily filled with companies producing products used to manufacture tea bags )not the tea inside). I skipped this part because I didn’t see it as added value for the blog coverage. (If you’d like me to cover these companies and their equipment next year, let me know.

Aisle 2 held a collection of Sri Lankan and Indian tea growers. A number of American firms too. Some of my usual friends weren’t present this year which I found unfortunate, but new companies took their place nonetheless as the expo expanded its exhibitor list.

The heart of Aisle 2 held Adagio Teas. Adagio remains one of the best selling online tea brands in the United States. During the past year though, they’ve opened two brand new sparkling pretty new stores I hope to drop in on one of these days. Ilya, Cynthia and Charles have all become great contacts these past few tea filled years! I remain excited to see what Adagio has in store!

Ilya, Cynthia and Charles of Adagio Teas posing for a shot with me.

Day 1 coverage was fairly light. I have much more for Day 2 and Day 3. Come back tomorrow for more!

A pretty tea display.

A pretty tea display from QTrade Teas & Herbs.

Earlier this month the delicious duo announced the availability of their blends at Bigg’s stores, Jungle Jim’s and the Keller’s IGA locations in the greater Cincinnati area.

That just happens to be my neck of the woods! I took a trip around the corner to my local Bigg’s right after receiving the good news from the sisters’ marketing agent and what did I find? Fantastic placement of their teas on a short shelf (harder to get lost on than taller shelves)!

From the press release:

Fully Loaded Tea continues US expansion into “The Buckeye State”

Gourmet tea blends now available in select Ohio locations

Mississauga, ON – Fully Loaded Tea (FLT) is proud to announce its first distribution partnerships with Ohio retailers.  Starting in Early October, select bigg’s hypermarkets and Jungle Jim’s International Market will join the growing number of key locations throughout the country carrying FLT’s distinctly different product.  This continued expansion ensures that residents of Cincinnati and Fairfield will now be able to enjoy the bold and opinionated blends, already extremely popular with young professionals and celebrities.   

Katya Popoff, co-founder of FLT explained: “We are extremely pleased to be working with bigg’s and Jungle Jim’s International Market.  Bigg’s has been a supporter of Fully Loaded Tea since our inception, so we are particularly delighted as this distribution partnership confirms our immense progress, and gives us further momentum going forward. We continue to be overwhelmed by the support received from retailers such as bigg’s and Jungle Jim’s International Market – our blends are popping up on shelves throughout the US, and this is certainly a most rewarding feeling.”

The brainchild of sister-duo Katya Popoff and Olga Lenova, since the company’s launch in 2007 FLT has experienced unprecedented success and momentum with an increase in sales by more than 400 percent in 2008. The unique combination of berries and tea blends results in bold, opinionated flavors rich with vitamins and antioxidants.

FLT’s distinct blends continue to garner invitations to participate in high-profiled, celebrity events, including the Primetime Emmy Awards, SXSW Film Festival, and the Much Music Video Awards.

Ohio gourmands can look forward to purchasing Fully Loaded Tea blends at:

bigg’s hypermarket located at 5218 Beechmont Avenue and 5022 Delhi Road in    Cincinnati, and Jungle Jim’s International Market at         5440 Dixie Hwy in  Fairfield.

For more information about FLT, to purchase the blends online, or to find locations around the country where FLT is available, please visit www.fullyloadedtea.com.