Last Sunday I had the pleasure of attending Coffee & Tea Festival NYC, which was held at the Metropolitan Pavilion. Since I will not be able to attend Tea Expo in Las Vegas this year, it was great to see a few familiar faces and learn a bit more about my favorite beverage at a venue a bit closer to Baltimore. Read the rest of this entry »
Coffee & Tea Festival NYC, 2009
April 27, 2009 at 2:09 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: Coffee and Tea Festival
I’d be silly not to mention this Tea article…on Wired.com!
April 7, 2009 at 1:44 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: Jesse Jacobs, Kevin Rose, Samovar Tea Lounge, Tim Ferriss, wired.com
Digg This URL Grey: Tea Is the New Coffee
It’s Kevin Rose! Tim Ferriss! Jesse Jacobs of Samovar Tea Lounge! On Wired.com discussing tea! I could write more, but the article is more interesting than my recap would be.
It doesn’t get more tea and techie than this 
Steepster.com – The better Twitter for tea?
March 26, 2009 at 1:55 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: adagio, steepster, twitter
Steepster.com appears to be a relatively new site (beta) dedicated to what I’m finding to be a hot trend among the tea savvy and uber-geeky…the need to constantly update others of what we are sipping at every moment of the day.
I know this is completely lost on most of my non “tea enthusiastic” friends. They don’t understand that we’re not just drinking this stuff. We cherish our sources, and love to share information about our favorite teas and how we prepare them. We also like to tell others about experiences that aren’t so good, so they can avoid a lousy cuppa. I thought I had found my ultimate tea update crazy-place in Twitter, where I’ve been enjoying a casual back and forth with my new found tea birds. That was, until I discovered Steepster.
Tea News on Topix
March 10, 2009 at 1:37 am (Uncategorized)
I was introduced to this site today – Tea News – Topix
Topix.com is a website which aggregates the news found on its many pages from stories found all across the web. It then gives its users the ability to create their own pages based on common interests, regions and the like. The site also encourages discussion on forums regarding featured stories as well as user-generated topics within the different pages.
There is a crazy amount of relatively up-to-date news on tea here! I tend to get a little overwhelmed with small print and multiple boxes packed with information, but for what it is – a site linking to as many other sites as it can – I can see why they chose to go with this kind of format.
The volume of advertising is a bit much for my taste, but I understand the desire to monetize online. I’d be out of work otherwise. To make up for all the ads, I can say I’m at least impressed by the amount of international tea news I found. Also, there really weren’t very many articles that were mistakenly aggregated and off-topic (I can’t count how many times the Texas Education Agency has appeared in my Google Alerts for tea) Tea News – Topix will be going in my bookmarks for now, and I look forward to seeing if it continues to deliver.
Tea Magazines – available online!
March 8, 2009 at 9:28 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: magazines, periodicals, subscriptions
My house is busting with printed material on all kinds of things – books I’m reading, pamphlets on attractions I’ve visited, and of course tons of flyers and business cards communicating all kinds of information regarding teas and different companies which provide them. Where is this paperless world I thought I’d be living in around 2009-ish?
I suspect it’s a bit more of a ways away. But for now I can get a couple my tea magazines online – and that’s a pretty good start.
The Leaf is a new magazine which exists exclusively online (for free!). I feel it is a little difficult to read, but mostly because the articles are packed with information and my screen could be a bit bigger! Layouts and photography are lovely. Subject focus for this magazine is mostly Chinese teas and traditions. For a $25 donation, The Leaf is offering a gift package containing fine tea and a black & white printout of the most recent issue. I wish them continued luck, and encourage you to check them out if you haven’t already.
I’ve also recently learned that Tea, A Magazine is now available in an online edition. They are charging $12 per year or $24 for two years at Zinio.com, a site for digital magazine subscriptions. Tea, A Magazine focuses on various teas and traditions from around the world.
William I. Lengeman III of Tea Guy Speaks put out a great list of tea periodicals available in paper form, for those of us still stuck in not-so-paperless 2009. You can visit his article directly by clicking this link.
If you enjoy other tea periodicals online, please do the favor of sharing via comments below. Looking forward to hearing about what else is out there that may have been missed in this post!
Geeks love Tea
March 6, 2009 at 4:45 am (Uncategorized)
Saw both of these items on Think Geek, one of my favorite sites for gift items I find funny and my husband never understands.
Yerba Mate, Gourd and Bombilla Set!…it’s not quite tea (Mate is not derived from the Camilla Sinensis plant), but Mate is showing up on tea sites and in tearooms everywhere in the US.
Monkey-Picked Tea!…I suspect an oolong. And no, it’s not really picked by monkeys “Monkey-Picked” is supposed to mean that the tea is of better quality*. Just remember quality is subjective. And that the tea vendor may really want you to believe they have Monkeys tending tea bushes. This teaches us if you want to impress others, telling them their food was collected by animals wins points.
I like how tech geeks are seeing beyond the industrial coffee makers and flavia machines of the world to get their fix. But hell, I just love geeks in general. And ones that know what to do with a Bombilla? Sweetness.
*correction/addition: Sandy M Bushberg of T-Ching was kind enough to contact me via Twitter with a far better explanation of “Monkey-Picked” than I provided. He says “Monkey-picked usually refers to the legends about the highest (and best quality) tea leaves picked in the Wuyi Shan mountains.” Many thanks for the correction.
A few Tea Tweets worth Repeating, 3/5/09
March 5, 2009 at 4:38 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: tweets, twitter
@lainiep:Lament of the Leaves: Tea Carnage! http://tinyurl.com/bqs32s #feedly #tea
@TeaEscapade:Think I’m considered the resident geek at work because of my tea obsession.
@teaforlife:Tragedy. Hate to lose good tea. This may become more of a problem over time.
@tropicalteaco:#3 FREE TEA CLUB sample will be Buckingham Palace Garden Tea Party. If you are not a member its not 2 late. http://tinyurl.com/cxzuj9
@thetearooms:Under covers, days unshowered, reading mindless rubbish, cup of tea at bedside, alarms set for when I nod off: this is life.
@damnfinetea:Having some coffee
ReTweeting Tea Tweets
March 4, 2009 at 3:28 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: tea, tweets, twitter
Don’t know about you, but I’ve been doing a bit of following some amazing “tea birds” on Twitter, and love seeing what can be conveyed – or totally misconstrued – within the confines of 140 characters.
With this in mind, I’m in the process of collecting some of my favorite Tea Tweets of the week to post here on the blog. Will keep you posted on what I find – perhaps one of them will be yours!
