bringing style to the art of tea appreciation
A Taste of Korea I’ve been enjoying Korean green tea for a few years now. Last year I was introduced to some very fine green teas at WTE. This year Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corp. decided to step up their promotional campaign. Representatives of Korea’s tea industry have a “pavilion” on the Expo floor, where from booths 232 to 239 you can sample teas and visit with Korean delegates. This afternoon they invited influencers and tea writers to taste […]
This year the Expo has moved to the North Building of the Las Vegas Convention Centre. The orientation was confusing, but once I got my bearings and a cup of Oriental Beauty from Teas Etc. tea break lounge, I was in my happy place. Core Sessions “Competing with the Big Guys” was presented by Shabnam Weber, owner of The Tea Emporium with 4 locations in Toronto. Her advice was sage, constructed from 12 years in the business selling premium teas […]
World Tea Expo 2012 In a year where we saw tea retail grow and take over new ground, it should be interesting to notice subtle developments within the tea community at World Tea Expo. Teaopia in Canada was recently bought out by US chain Teavana which went public with its IPO in July 2011. Montreal-based David’s Tea opened 2 new shops in NYC. Starbucks hired Charles Cain formerly of Adagio Teas, to run their Tazo Tea operation. Wherever you […]
I am thrilled to be hosting an illustrated talk for the Bata Shoe Museum in midtown Toronto on Sunday May 13th (Mother’s Day). It’s entitled, High Style: A Fashionable History of Tea. In preparation, I’ve been considering the influence that tea has had on style throughout history. I’ve been delving into Asia’s ancient past, but also investigating tea’s introduction to society in Europe’s Baroque period and beyond. I’ve uncovered some interesting nuggets. During the early 1700’s 1 lb of tea […]
Pargeters by Norah Lofts My husband finds odd books in bins or at sales and occasionally comes home with some gems. Although he hadn’t read it, he thought I might enjoy a book called Pargeters by Norah Lofts, a prolific British author who wrote over 60 books. This was her last novel and it was posthumously published in 1984. The dust jacket was a bit faded and the cover illustration unsophisticated. 284 pages of historical romance in my hand with […]
Tea or Dessert? Most of my tea friends know that I’m not a fan of flavoured teas, particularly teas with dessert names, such as “New York Cheesecake” or “Apple Crumble”, etc. These sweet themed teas are usually enhanced with artificial flavours or if the flavours are natural, the black or green tea base is inferior and anyway, most retailers don’t want to waste a premium tea by adding unnecessary enhancements. There are however traditional fragrances that have been infused into […]
Carpets fit for the Runway When Korhani Home rolled out the carpet at Toronto’s Fashion Week, they had no intention for it to be walked on. Instead they found ingenious ways to evoke style eras through history, reflecting the seasonal designs they are offering. Who would have thought that you could make carpets into capes for masquerade balls or evoke Genghis Khan? Their new collection of home carpets were wrapped around models in ways that would make my fingers bleed […]
Tea cuisine is still very much experimental. There will be successes and failures. The point is to keep trying. Since it is a relatively new culinary category, good ideas will eventually emerge and become part of tea’s repetoire. Coffee has been used for decades in baking and alcoholic concoctions, but I believe that tea performs much better than coffee in savoury dishes. Could you imagine coffee encrusted fish? – I didn’t think so. This time out though, I’m playing with […]
Under the Microscope I’m always pleased when I visit an online tea retailer and find that they have close-up shots of their premium teas. It is reassuring to be able to examine, photographically, the quality of the leaf before purchasing it. Reliable retailers know that we want to see the curl, the colour and the twist of the leaf. It should look as we expect and we hope when the goods arrive we can compare our new purchase with those […]
At a runway show during Toronto fashion week last fall, I found a small bright pink tin of Kusmi Sweet Love tea in a gift bag. I thought the packaging and theme would be perfect for the love-fest that we know as Valentine’s Day. I’ve recently unpacked and sampled it. Sweet Love’s China black tea base is perfumed with all-natural aromatic morsels of cardamom, cinnamon, sweetness of licorice root, guarana seeds and pink pepper. I’m not a big fan of […]