Talking Tea

Today on Talking Tea we're doing something a little different from our usual format. A few weeks back we were invited by the folks at Tea Dealers and the 29b Tea House (featured in our prior episode Ambassadors of Tea) to join them in conversation at an evening of tea and alcohol experiments they were planning and record the event for Talking Tea. We did just that, and we're pleased to bring you the event as a Talking Tea episode. We join Andreas Vagelatos and Graham Pirtle of Tea Dealers, Jesse Ferguson of Interboro Spirits & Ales and a crowd of about 30 guests at New York's Hotel on Rivington for this evening exploring new approaches to tea and mixology.  Graham, along with Stefen Ramirez of Tea Dealers, had come up with three innovative cocktails for this event, and Graham chats with us about their unique approach to tea in mixology, borrowing pairing ideas from the culinary world, and the challenges of leveraging the flavors and textures of the teas and the other ingredients in the drinks. We also cha

Today on Talking Tea we're witnessing tea history brought into the present at the serenely beautiful Floating Mountain teahouse in New York City, where ongoing programs on tea history and tea meditation are opening fresh perspectives on tea preparation and on tea as a contemplative practice. We're chatting with Lina Medvedeva, owner of Floating Mountain, and with Scott Norton, who runs Floating Mountain's tea history workshops and, with Lina, leads the tea meditation sessions at Floating Mountain. We first talk with Lina about the origins of Floating Mountain and some of it's unique design features, as well as Lina's own tea journey and her perspectives on tea and spirituality. Scott has become known in the New York tea community for his experiments in re-creating Song dynasty style whisked tea (the precursor to matcha), and we chat with Scott about the importance of not just learning about but actually experiencing tea history as we sample two of Scott's approximations of Song-style tea using Song-era tea wa

Today we welcome back to Talking Tea Shiuwen Tai of Seattle’s Floating Leaves tea to chat about one of our favorite teas, Taiwan’s celebrated Dong Ding oolong. Shiuwen believes that Dong Ding represents everything that Taiwan has to offer in terms of producing tea, and we chat about the qualities that make Dong Ding unique in this capacity. We discuss three basic styles of Dong Ding – traditional, fragrant and charcoal roasted – and together we taste and compare both a traditional and a charcoal roasted Dong Ding. Shiuwen points out that Dong Ding is a very “physical” tea, and we talk about the tea’s physical sensations as well as its flavors and aromas. We discuss the impact of Dong Ding’s terroir (particularly its soil) and oxidation levels, and Shiuwen tells us about a continuing controversy over Dong Ding’s cultivar.  When we move from tasting a traditional Dong Ding to a charcoal roasted Dong Ding, Shiuwen chats with us about the effects of charcoal roasting, both for Dong Ding and for oolongs in general

At Talking Tea we've long wanted to explore the seemingly deep divide between tea and coffee, and between tea drinkers and coffee drinkers. But lately we've come to realize that the divide might not be very deep at all, and that there might be more similarities between the two beverages, and the two communities, than we ever imagined. To help us look at how the gap between coffee and tea is already being bridged, we're chatting with Nate Cochran of Spirit Tea. Part of Spirit's focus is the introduction of high quality specialty tea to the coffee roasters and cafes, and Nate himself has worked in third wave coffee as well as in specialty tea. Nate chats with us about his background in coffee and tea, about Spirit's focus and how they create accessible tea menus for coffee environments. We discuss differences and similarities between tea and coffee from the perspective of process, oxidation, terroir and cultivar, but mostly from the perspective of flavor and aroma. We look at what flavor profiles in tea may att

Today on Talking Tea we welcome back Kevin Gascoyne of Montreal's Camellia Sinensis Tea House. If you've heard any of our earlier episodes with Kevin, you'll know that Kevin is a specialist, and one of the world's leading authorities, on Indian tea. Kevin returns to the show today to chat with us about some of the challenges currently facing Indian tea production, and how an innovative new project in south India called the Tea Studio is attempting to address these challenges. Before we dive into the Tea Studio, Kevin gives us an update on the state of affairs in Darjeeling and tea production there following a lengthy labor strike in 2017. We also sample a black tea from the Indian state of Sikkim and talk a bit about Sikkim tea. Kevin tells us about significant issues facing Indian tea production today, ranging from climate change to labor shortages, and how the Tea Studio Project was born in an attempt to address some of these problems. We discuss the origins of labor shortage issues in the Indian tea indust

There is an amazement of tea that's hard to capture in words. It can happen when we experience a tea for the first time and are astounded by flavors and aromas unlike anything we've experienced before. Or when we revisit one of our favorite teas and find elements we never noticed before. Or when we find ourselves drinking a tea that's been expertly prepared and artfully presented in a way that awakens all of our senses.  Today we're at 29b Teahouse in New York City, where the owners and staff strive to create and recreate these moments of tea amazement every day. We're talking with Stefen Ramirez and Andreas Vagelatos, two of the owners of 29b, about their unique philosophy and approach to tea. We chat with Stefen and Andreas about their backgrounds and the origins of 29b, and how they developed their goal of fostering a sophisticated but easily accessible process of understanding tea for both new and experienced tea drinkers. Stefen talks with us about the inspiration he drew from vertical wine tastings, and

One of our guiding principles here at Talking Tea is that conversations about tea and tea culture have the power to deepen our understanding and enhance our experience of tea. Today on Talking Tea we're exploring one of the ways people are increasingly coming together to share and talk about tea: tea meetup groups. We're joined by Roy Lamberty, founder and organizer of the New York Tea Society, a popular tea meetup in New York City. Roy tells us a bit about his own tea journey, how and why he came to organize the New York Tea Society, and how the group has grown and evolved since its inception. We talk about the challenges of running a tea meetup group and discuss choice of venue, theme and other important considerations in planning a successful meetup. But we also chat about the bonds that are formed through sharing tea, the value of learning from each other and the appeal of the meetup format to tea drinkers of all levels of experience. Aside from his role as meetup organizer, Roy Lamberty is the owner of m

Today we welcome back Kevin Gascoyne of Montreal's famed Camellia Sinensis Tea House to explore tea pairings, and specifically pairing tea with scotch. We begin our chat by looking at some current developments in tea innovation and sophistication, and then begin to look directly at pairing and explore how two different flavor profiles can play against each other. Kevin gives us the how and why of "sandwich" pairing - tasting a scotch sandwiched between two tastings of tea - and we discuss the importance of focusing on sensory experience in pairing, as well as the fusions, contrasts, clashes and harmonies that can result. We get to explore first hand the amazing complexity of taste and aroma that emerges as Kevin takes us through a sandwich pairing of a single malt scotch with a rock tea.  Kevin encourages everyone to experiment with pairing on your own. If you can (legally) drink alcohol and want to try the pairing we did with Kevin, the tea is Bai Rui Xiang, a Wuyi mountain rock tea, and the scotch is Aberlo

To kick off Talking Tea's fourth season, we're at Té Company, an exquisite teahouse in New York's West Village, talking about an exquisite tea - the aptly named Oriental Beauty.  We chat with Elena Liao and Frederico Ribeiro, owners and founders of Té Company, about the origins of their teahouse, how they've created a cohesive whole between tea and food, and the unique ways they help their customers gain an understanding and knowledge of tea in an easily accessible way. The uniqueness of Té Company is mirrored in Oriental Beauty, a remarkable Taiwanese tea with a signature sweetness. Its unique flavor and aroma are created in part by the tea plant's interaction with an insect, the tea jassid, and Elena chats with us about how this interaction, along with cultivar, climate, terroir, oxidation and roast, come together to create a truly amazing tea.  Elena also gives us tips on how to identify the quality of an Oriental Beauty by looking at the dry leaf.   For more information on Talking Tea and updates on new e

When we serious tea drinkers start to broaden our knowledge of tea, we often encounter two terms that can seem mysterious or confusing: cultivar and origin. What is a tea cultivar, and why is it important? And what exactly does the origin of the tea refer to, and why should we care? To begin looking in depth at cultivar and origin, we're joined today by Austin Hodge of Seven Cups Fine Chinese Teas. Austin is a prolific tea writer and blogger in addition to being a seller, and he's also the founder and director of the International Specialty Tea Association, a non-profit focused on developing quality standards for tea. We chat with Austin about his background in tea and his views on the importance of tea standards, and then we look in detail at two of those standards, namely (you guessed it) a tea's cultivar and its origin. Austin talks with us about what "cultivar" means and how it relates to issues of biodiversity, tea production, the value and pricing of tea,  a tea's authenticity and transparency in market

Earlier this year, TJ Williamson of the World Tea Podcast invited us to join him in leading a session on industry-specific podcasting at Podcamp Toronto. And when the nice folks at Podcamp also gave us the opportunity to record a Talking Tea episode in front of a live audience at Toronto's Imperial Pub,  TJ graciously agreed to join us as a guest on Talking Tea, to chat about the backgrounds of our two podcasts, why we do what we do, and about TJ's work in tea outside of his show. TJ tells us a bit about his own tea journey and some of his experiences working at a Japanese tea farm, and then we respond to one of the questions we received several times after our panel talk: why neither of us include a focus on herbal infusions in our podcasts. TJ's views on herbals are somewhat different from our own, and we chat about our differences as well as our two approaches to tea and tea podcasting. Of course, since we were recording this show in a bar, we had to talk about TJ's line of alcohol-aged teas (shown above),

We're calling this episode "learning tea" because learning about tea can be like learning a language - like learning English, or French, or Chinese, or any other language. There's a vocabulary to tea, and the world of tea is so vast, with so many words, facts and concepts to learn and keep track of, that it's easy to get overwhelmed. Compounding this in the English-speaking world is the fact that tea terms are often actually in another language - most commonly Chinese or Japanese. So what's a tea drinker to do? To look at one solution to this problem in the world of Chinese tea, today we chat with Lew Perin, the creator of a free website app called Babelcarp. Lew calls Babelcarp a Chinese tea lexicon, but it's much, much more than a dictionary. We chat with Lew about his background in tea, what Babelcarp is and how it works, and how its structure and system of links and cross-references make Babelcarp a virtual encyclopedia of Chinese tea. As an example, we type a sample tea phrase into Babelcarp and look at

Most tea consumers never have the opportunity to visit the source of the teas we drink - the tea growers and tea makers in the various tea-producing regions around the world. So here at Talking Tea we've been wanting to hear an insider's take on sourcing trips, to get an idea of what sourcing trips are like and what tea retailers look for when they source their teas. Today we welcome back Shiho Kanamaru of Montreal's Cha Do Raku, to get that insider's look at sourcing. Shiho tells us how she began Cha Do Raku by developing a network of sourcing connections in Japan and then Taiwan.  We chat about sourcing trips as a form of tea self-education, about the cultural differences between networking and sourcing in Japan versus Taiwan, and about Shiho's use of instinct and sensation to find high quality, unusual and extraordinary teas on her sourcing trips. Shiho also talks with us about some of the challenges of gaining entry into the world of tea growers and producers, about the hard work and rewards of going to s

As temperatures begin to drop outdoors and autumn settles into early winter, the scent of smoke rising from chimneys fills the evening air in just about every place we visit in the cooler climates. But the unmistakable aroma and taste of smoke is not something many of us actively seek out in our teas, and the famously smokey Lapsang Souchong is often overlooked by serious tea drinkers. So it's been quite a pleasant surprise discovering that high quality Lapsang Souchongs can have great levels of complexity and depth of flavor. Joining us today to chat about Lapsang Souchong are Zhen Lu and Phil Rushworth of Zhen Tea, an online tea company specializing in Chinese tea. We chat over two interesting varieties of Lapsang Souchong carried by Zhen Tea: we first sample a non-smokey version of Lapsang Souchong, which allows us to explore the base of the tea without the influence of the smoke, and then a top-grade Lapsang Souchong (pictured here), made by the same family that invented the Lapsang Souchong process sever

Today on Talking Tea we focus on the nuances of flavor, and how to fully appreciate the taste of tea by engaging all of our senses. Guiding us through this exploration of tasting is Billy Dietz, a tea development specialist based in Montreal. We chat with Billy via Skype as he shares a little of his own remarkable tea journey and then takes us through two methods of preparing a tea he selected for this episode, a Muzha Tie Kwan Yin oolong from Taiwan provided by Naivetea. We compare the preparation of this tea in the traditional Chinese covered cup known as a gaiwan with the professional tasting method known as "cupping". (In the image here the gaiwan is in the left foreground, the cupping set to its right.) Billy explains the purpose of each of these brewing methods, gives us details on brewing tips in each style and discusses how these details of preparation affect the taste. We chat about how the other senses come into play as well - the visual aspects of the dry and infused leaf and the brewed tea, the ar

What did Talking Tea do this summer? We went to summer school, of course. Tea summer school, that is. In August we attended one of the English-language Summer School workshops offered through the tea school at Montreal's Camellia Sinensis. After the workshop we sat down with Kevin Gascoyne of Camellia Sinensis to chat about current and emerging trends in tea education. Kevin talks with us about Camellia Sinensis' model for tea education, how its tea school began with a goal of giving consumers better access to tea knowledge and how it's evolved to include programming oriented to tea industry professionals as well as consumers. We discuss the Summer School and the benefits of small, seminar-style workshops where students and instructors have the ability to share first-hand experience. Kevin also shares his perspectives on what students should look for in choosing a tea education program, identifying a student's goals and finding a program to fit those goals, the pro's and con's of certification and the ability

This week on Talking Tea we're exploring the intricacies of sencha, the most ubiquitous of Japanese green teas. Sencha? Intricate? Many tea drinkers don't think of those two words in the same context, but we sit down with Zach Mangan of Kettl, a Japanese tea seller based in Fukuoka, Japan and Brooklyn, New York, to sample some senchas and to look at how multifaceted this tea can be. Kettl has developed a reputation for being a purveyor of tea to some of the most acclaimed restaurants in New York City, and Zach talks with us about his own tea journey and his inspiration for launching Kettl. We chat about how sencha is grown and processed, how differing production techniques result in variations in taste, aroma and complexity, and how Japanese tea producers mix tradition with modern technology to create their teas. As we sample and compare a blended sencha from the Uji region and an unblended single-cultivar sencha from Nagasaki, Zach talks with us about why sencha is often (but not always) a blend, and about h

Since we launched Talking Tea in 2014, one of our main areas of focus has been the continuing growth of tea enthusiasm in North America. We've chatted with tea sellers, educators and writers, but we haven't had the chance to talk with anyone actually farming tea in the US or Canada. Until now. Today on Talking Tea we welcome Eliah Halpeny and Cam Muir of Big Island Tea, a pioneering tea farm and producer on the (you guessed it) big island of Hawaii. Eliah and Cam have created an ecologically complex forest environment for growing tea on the fertile slopes of Mauna Loa volcano. They chat with us about how they came to tea production, their model of sustainable tea farming in a self-replenishing forest and how that model impacts the flavor, aroma and quality of their teas. We also chat about Hawaii's budding tea industry and about how the artistry and science Cam and Eliah bring to their work go into creating what Cam calls a "symphony of flavors" in their teas. And from our perspective, that symphony is a mast

This week on Talking Tea we return to the Tea Institute at Penn State University to explore the evolution and burgeoning growth of interest in Japanese tea ceremony study at the Institute and beyond, and the transformative nature of tea ceremony practice. We first chat with Drew Hanson, founding instructor of the Urasenke program at the Institute. Drew talks with us about his own journey from art to tea, the history and development of the Japanese track at the Institute, and changing demographics and perspectives among students of Japanese tea ceremony. Aside from his work in tea, Drew's teaching background is in literature and theater, and since tea ceremony has been called an "improvised drama", we look at whether tea ceremony in the Japanese tradition is a form of interactive theater. We explore the roles of action, dialogue and utensils, the "parts" played by participants, and those transformative moments of giving freely from the heart which are common to both theater and tea ceremony. We're also joined

If you've listened to our Talkin' Matcha episodes you'll recognize the name of Tyas Huybrechts. Tyas has been a blogger and tea ceremony instructor based in Osaka and Kyoto, Japan, and we're delighted to welcome Tyas back to Talking Tea to chat about his new venture, The Tea Crane, a company focused on chemical-free Japanese tea. Tyas shares his views on how the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has impacted the taste and aroma of Japanese teas and influenced the preferences of tea consumers.  Tyas is also an instructor in the Enshu school of Japanese tea ceremony, and we discuss his vision for spreading an awareness and understanding of tea ceremony through emphasizing the role of the guest in tea ceremony education. More about The Tea Crane, including information about its programs, workshops and classes, can be found at its website, http://www.the-tea-crane.com/ and on its Facebook page.   For more information on Talking Tea and updates on new episodes, visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/