bringing style to the art of tea appreciation
On Tuesday, September 14, 8.30pm, Soo will be chatting with me about my tea universe – lots of potential for liveliness! Visit Soocha Tea for link to registration. During registration, an optional donation can be made to the Nature Conservancy of Canada. Hope you can attend!
An Extraordinary Experience I have just experienced an adventurous evening of tea and chocolate pairing at Soma Chocolatemaker, in downtown Toronto, organized by The Tea Guild of Canada. We were met by Soma’s guide Samantha. As she lead us through the tasting of each morsel, she explained its place of origin and the close relationship the chocolatier had with their farm sources, confirming for me that specialty chocolate sourcing has parallels to direct-sourced fine tea. Curiously, some of the chocolate […]
Anatomy of a Painting The 1715 oil painting, Two Ladies and an Officer at Tea, (above) has often been used to cite the prominent place that tea held in elite society of the early 1700’s. For tea social history enthusiasts, it is a quintessential image, one of the earliest to depict the partaking of tea in the western world. It is part of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s vast collection. While researching for a talk I gave on history of […]
In its sixth year, and now one of the biggest consumer tea festivals in North America, The Toronto Tea Festival is preparing for a large crowd of tea fans – both novices and connoisseurs and everything in between. The weekend event will be taking place at Toronto’s Reference Library in the Appel Salon Saturday February 3rd and Sunday, 4th, from 10am – 5pm. The Festival was founded by Tao Wu and his sister Mingzhu Gao, of Tao Tea Leaf in […]
1906 As I continue to examine Fannie Farmer’s earnest observations and advice on tea in her Boston Cooking School Cookbook, it might be useful to put her book into the context of the world in which she and her readers live. Wilfred Laurier is Prime Minister of Canada Theodore Roosevelt is president of the USA As mentioned in Part 1 of this post, The US establishes the Food and Drug Act to ensure that only food that passes inspection may […]
Spring Flush At this time of year in my part of the world (Toronto), we are keeping our eyes on the weather and hoping for clear sunny days to venture out into our long-abandoned gardens looking for signs of life – bulb leaves surfacing, buds starting to plump and earth worms stirring in the soil. Today there’s heavy snow, tomorrow could be mild and rainy – such is April. On the other side of the world, little green tea sprouts […]
When I first embarked upon my tea studies at George Brown College in Toronto, I was introduced to an odd little tea vessel – the gaiwan – which looked like a wide-lipped sugar bowl with lid and saucer. I struggled to use it – the lid needed to be positioned in a way that allowed the tea’s liquor to flow in a stream without letting any (or not many) leaves to escape the vessel. The index finger had to control […]
The Tea Book, DK publishers On Saturday, September 19th, 1pm, I will be at Majesteas, a tea shop at 950 Queen St. E. near Carlaw Ave. in the Leslieville neighbourhood of Toronto. This will be my first book signing event since the release of The Tea Book in July. Owned by fellow tea colleagues Robert Gignac and Ian Macdonald, Majesteas is celebrating 5 years in business! They have a great selection of good quality tea, especially excelling in black teas, […]
The Tea Book, DK Publishers This year has been devoted to research and inspiration for The Tea Book, a collaboration with DK publishing (a division of Penguin Random House). Famous for their Eye Witness Travel books and many and varied guides to culinary pursuits, DK chose to publish a book on tea at a time when the world’s favourite hot beverage is poised to gain even more ground in markets around the world. This comprehensive primer for tea lovers will […]
World Tea Expo is in its thirteenth year – this will be my sixth. When I first attended in 2010, I promised my calendar that the dates would be secured for attendance every year thereafter. Although it doesn’t compare to a trip to a tea country of origin, it is a chance to taste spring teas from tea regions and meet those closely connected to the source. I mostly go to learn more and build on what I’ve been pursuing […]