The other day chef-at-large Anthony Bourdain was munching on lahpet tuk, Burmese salad of fermented tea leaves. While for Bourdain it may be yet another weird/exotic (depending upon your point of view) dish to uncover, for us tea lovers...
When I first came to the US nearly 10 years ago and tried Darjeeling tea, I was as expected disappointed. The tea had to travel long and hard and obviously the tea without any harvest date marking was old. A decade later when much has changed, including the tea market here, the expectation has as needs be dramatically risen. The US tea market has exploded and the tea consumers are much better informed. Now one of the things the tea drinker wants is fresh tea. However, a lot of tea companies, especially the big ones, still decline to reveal the harvest season or year for the tea. This we find surprising.
After what is always an anxious wait, the first batch of our first flush samples for 2013 finally arrived from Darjeeling. Thanks to modern transportation samples now take under a week to arrive from the gardens of Darjeeling! It's incredible. Think how long the wait must have been not too long ago when couriers were still rudimentary and expensive. We're lucky indeed!
That name never fails to draw the attention of the crowd. When I decided to call this herbal tea (tisane for the purists) Happy Woman Tea it never occurred to me that it would become such a draw for the...
(I had submitted the following article to the local daily for publication. Unfortunately, it must have got canned because I never heard back from them. Now since the main event has passed I feel free to share it here among...
We just returned after a 10-day break in Florida. It was wonderful to exchange the frozen tundra of Rochester, NY for the sun and sand. However, this time instead of just lazing around on the beach my wife and I decided to explore the place. Since we were staying at Vero Beach, which forms part of the Florida's famed "Treasure Coast”, the easiest thing to do was - no prizes for guessing right - treasure hunting.
Nemo, a rather sweet name for a blizzard, came down at 9 am just as forecast. It is potentially for the records storm in the north east US. We could fortunately be out of that deep purple band - the most affected area in the map of weather.com.
[flickr-gallery user_id= 90939526@N06 width=650 height=400] At the last session of the Rochester Tea Society, we went very classical, trying out matcha that had been hand carried all the way from Japan by Janette one of our members. We were lucky...
I was recently in Darjeeling. During the trip I visited Risheehat tea estate. An organic tea garden, Risheehat is owned by Jayshree Tea Company, which has got tea gardens in every tea growing region of India. Our customers have thoroughly...
