I’ve been enjoying the great Assam estate teas from Mokalbari ever since I ordered one on a whim from Vivek Lochan at Lochan tea. This morning, I had cause to visit the Mokalbari website, and I like what I saw. Not for the profile, nor the tea descriptions, nor the press bits, nor the packaging – actually, I do […]
The number of people on Tea Trade that I would LOVE to have a cup of tea with is high. The additional number that I wouldn’t object to having a tea with can be defined by this formula: The Total Number on Tea Trade minus the first group minus one. Yes, just one. I’m afraid that if […]
(Note: This article is from my former blog and was published in April 2010. It is being added as a bonus in the book I am writing, so I thought I’d share it here. At the time, I also made a video inspired by the same essay, which is here: The Devotea and George Orwell In 1946 George Orwell wrote A Nice Cup of Tea. […]
THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM A DRAFT OF MY FORTHCOMING BOOK. COMMENTS WELCOME This is a contentious tea. Perhaps it will never be discussed at United Nations Security Council meetings or suffer from Bono publicly calling for its abolition, but there is plenty of controversy – enough to fuel many storms in many teacups. Most of […]
As I write this, the story is breaking of a deadly quake in India and Nepal. People have died in Nepal, Darjeeling and Sikkim according to reports. It made me think about the people who pick the tea I drink. Surely they count for something? Sikkim isn’t even in my spellchecker! If 15 people died […]
One of my favourite posts from this blog was about Buddhism, but started with a migraine. Of course, I wrote it the next day, when I was more sensible. Now, I’m attempting to write one mid-migraine. If you’ve never had one, you might think it’s a headache. But a blinding headache is only one symptom, and I’ve had migraines where there is […]
CLICK! At 5:36am – that’s less than half an hour ago – I heard a click. I love hearing that click. I hear it every morning at some point between 5 and 6 o’clocks, though if I’m having one of my daring weekend sleep-ins, it could be as late as 6:45. CLICK! I stand to attention when I hear it. I’ve spent two minutes […]
I am boiling mad, because some people I’ve never met didn’t get to have the cup of tea I wanted them to have on the other side of the globe. And I feel I’ve let them down. I’ve just looked back over the tweets where I’ve got stuck into any organisation for a lack of service. And whilst not a big […]
As Sarah Rose points out in “For All The Tea in China”, tea is quite an unhygienic product by the time it arrives in those fancy containers. But that is not the dirtiness I’ll be talking about today. I’ve been blogging about tea in written and video form for around two years now. After my tea shop closed, I had very limited […]
There’s a client I go to see once a month. He is the local rep for a national company, so he is their only person in this state. He works from a home office, so when I see him, we sit around his kitchen table. Usually, he has the kettle on when I get there, and two of those godforsaken yellow tags […]