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Tea Made from Panda Feces

When I read the headline, "Tea Made from Panda Feces Expected to be Most Expensive Brew in the World" in the Tea News Direct (who got it from New York Daily News), I immediately thought about the expensive coffee beans that apparently pass through an Philippino cat's system. Coffee connoiseurs talk about the smooth dark chocolate flavour without a hint of bitterness, and the demand for this coffee is helping to provide work for impoverished people in the Philippines.

But, I sure hoped this article wasn't about someone trying to pick tea leaves from panda poop!

It turns out that a wild life expert from Sinchuan University, An Yashi, is planning to fertilize tea plants with the panda feces. Apparently the college lecturer plans to launch a special blend of green tea, which will fetch up to $36,000 per pound. The article goes on to explain why the tea would be so costly:

"Yashi, a college lecturer at Sinchuan University, said using panda excrement to fertilize the tea plants has a health-promoting upside because it contains nutrients from one of the bear’s favorite meals — bamboo.

 “Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 percent of everything they eat: that means their excrement is rich in fibers and nutrients,” said Yashi, noting that those nutrients make their way into the tea through the fertilization process.

“Just like green tea, bamboo contains an element that can prevent cancer — and enhance green tea’s anti-cancer effects — if it is used as fertilizer for the tea.”

 

Tea and Blood Pressure study

Australian scientists have released a study that suggests that 3 cups of black tea per day can reduce blood pressure. This is more good news for tea! The study suggests that "those who drank black tea three times a day enjoyed a slight drop in blood pressure when compared to others who had another beverage." (cited from Ozarks First dot com) This conclusion would also suggest then, that black tea is good for the heart! And of course, it is great news for those on the borderline of high blood pressure. A slight change in lifestyle by drinking tea could improve health radically.

Steeped Tea offers lots of delicious ways to enjoy black tea! What are your favourite black teas? Do you drink tea for enjoyment or for health?

Japan Devastation Has Left Japanese Tea Growers Safe

Have you wondered if or how the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan might have affected tea gardens there?

According to this article at the World Tea News website, the tea gardens are unharmed, and maybe being in the mountains rather than the coastal region has something to do with that.

Japanese Growers Safe But Fate of Coastal Retailers Unknown

By Dan Bolton, World Tea News Editor

First-hand reports indicate Japan’s tea growers and manufacturers were largely unharmed by the devastating quake, but severe damage to the country’s transportation and electrical infrastructure including scheduled blackouts is a setback.

The greatest concern among growers is for tea retailers in urban areas. According to one grower and president of a company in Shizuoka “40 to 50 tea stores in the Sanriku region were swept away.”

Professor Emeritus Kanzo Sakata at Koyoto University, an authority on Japanese tea production said Thursday "very few tea plants are grown for commercial use where the Tsunami attacked."

 Tea plants are cultivated mostly in southern part of Japan, he explained. "In Ibaragi Prefecture (where 20 are reported to have been killed) there are some tea gardens. Tea plants are not cultured along the seashore. So they have not been damaged by the Tsunami," he said.

A grower supplying Matchasource told owner Alissa White “The disaster in Tohoku (Japan’s northeast) and Kanto is awful, too terrible, too horrible! Beyond our imagination. We are very worried about our many customers there, because we cannot contact them at all yet. People who live in the area need a lot of help.”

“Fortunately there was no serious damage or casualties in Shizuoka prefecture and I have not heard of any damage to tea farms, factory or any related facilities so far, though it was a big shake even in our area,” Masanori Den Shirakata told World Tea News.

Busy phone lines make it “still very difficult to contact customers” said Shirakata, a third generation owner of Den’s Tea. “All transportation around Tokyo and in the north is in a panic,” he said. “We hope that people who suffered during this unfortunate event will be calm and peaceful as soon as possible.”

Sara Kadowaki, Founder of Sara's Tea Caddie New York said “business is running as usual in the area west of Nagoya City (located between Tokyo and Osaka) but the situation is still very fluid and we are expecting the government planned power outage like rationing electricity."

She said black out areas include nine prefectures including Shizuoka which is the biggest tea production area in Japan. “It also includes Sayama city in Saitama prefecture, another well known tea growing area,” said Kadowaki. “It will depend of how long the crisis persists but with the explosion of the fourth power plant the situation does not look very optimistic.”

Fortunately rolling black outs in Shizuoka are limited to the eastern part of the prefecture which has many fewer tea gardens, she said.

The spring harvest has not begun but “if the situation persists during pre-harvesting, harvesting and production, the shortage of electricity and power will be problematic,” she said.

Chieko Yamamoto, Vice President of AOI Tea Company, said immediate family, workers and friends were not affected since most live south of Tokyo. “Our tea fields and production area are mainly in Nishio and Kyoto regions and they had some minor earthquakes but no damage,” she said.
“We are praying for the people who got affected with this disaster,” said Yamamoto.

ITO EN employees and families are safe, said Rona Tison, Sr. Vice President-Corporate Relations. “The company is doing everything possible now to help with the relief efforts. We appreciate your support during this very challenging time for the people of Japan.”

“We at KEIKO-TEA are fortunate as our organic tea gardens and processing facilities are over 1000 Km away from the tsunami area that hit the North East of Japan,” said Sylvana Levesque. “We are completely on the southwest part of the country. Moreover, our tea gardens are situated at approximately 200 feet above sea level,” Levesque explained. “I’ve been in touch with two of my usual vendors and they, both from the Kyoto region, have confirmed they are alright with no disruption to their business,” said Levesque, Keiko’s Vice President of Business Development.

Japan’s domestic market consumes most of the 90,000 tons of green tea produced annually. Ninety-nine percent of Japanese tea is green, said Den Shirakata. Five of the six major tea producing regions are south of Tokyo. Growers in Shizuoka Prefecture south of Tokyo produce half of all Japanese tea and were unharmed.

Sayama in Saitama Prefecture was closest to the epicenter but gardens there are inland at relatively high elevations.

Estimates place quake damage at $180 billion. Insured losses could be as high as $35 billion, even without tsunami- and nuclear-related losses, according to Barclays Bank and Credit Suisse. It will take four to five years to rebuild Japan’s damaged infrastructure.

The Bank of Japan, wary that Japan’s debt stands at 200 percent of its national income, on Mar. 14 injected a record 15 trillion Yen ($184 billion) into money markets and several billion more in the days that followed to bolster the economy. The government is encouraging banks to continue lending to meet financial demand for post-earthquake repairs.

“The disaster in Tohoku (Japan’s northeast)and Kanto is awful, too terrible, too horrible! Beyond our imagination." - Japanese Grower

 

While enjoying a cup of Steeped Japanese Sencha, remember those in Japan who are still far from leading a normal life, and may we suggest you consider a donation to Japanese relief efforts, if you haven't yet?

Yet Another Use for Tea - Raising Frogs!

This news article comes from the BBC News Online.

 Exotic frogs reared in redbush tea in Gloucestershire

Eleven poison dart frogs have been raised by UK experts in pint glasses of redbush tea.

Amphibian keepers at the Slimbridge Wetland Centre, Gloucestershire, reared the amphibians from tadpoles in the brew to help keep them disease-free.

The caffeine-free African tea contains fungus-beating antioxidants, according to amphibian keeper Jay Redmond.

Mr Redmond said: "Every morning just before I made my cup of tea I made sure the tadpoles have had theirs too!"

Shop-bought tea

The yellow-banded and green-banded poison dart frog tadpoles were raised in pint glasses, topped up with the shop-bought redbush tea, which is sometimes called rooibos.

Some species of poison dart frogs, native to South America and among the most toxic on earth, are critically endangered.

A combination of deforestation, introduced species and a fungus which kills amphibians has damaged population numbers.

Mr Redmond added: "It is a bit of advice that people know in the industry that to keep them disease-free they should swim in redbush tea for the first few weeks of life."

Only in Canada, You Say...

It seems that Vancouver Island will soon be a place where tea is cultivated. Waye Brendan writes at TChing, "With the revelation that I possess a thoroughly green thumb and a lifelong love of the tea leaf in all its forms and manifestations, I now find myself on a land-buying quest for a dozen or so acres to attempt the cultivation of Camellia sinensis on Vancouver Island."

If all you think of when you think of Canada is ice, snow, the frozen north, well, consider this...

... it may not be that far from a reality. Brendan says, "After visiting the Charleston Tea Plantation (in the US) this past September, the idea that I could potentially grow tea in Canada has moved from a distant fantasy to a burgeoning reality.  Climate change, for all its negative repercussions, has moved the tea-growing belt further north as the planet heats up.  This is great news for me up here in an area of western Canada known as the banana belt.  And speaking of such, the University of Victoria recently announced that they successfully grew their first batch of real bananas on Vancouver Island.  Who would have imagined?"

So just how close is Brendan to making this dream a reality? "After combing the raw land listings for Vancouver Island, I jumped on the ferry and started the process of locating a suitable parcel of land.  The prime growing region on the Island is the Cowichan Valley, about a 45-minute drive north of Victoria.  It has the warmest annual climate in Canada and already supports a very successful wine industry.  The other very cool aspect of the Cowichan is the abundance of south-facing mountain slopes, which we in the tea business know is highly prized for tea cultivation.

My search of more then a dozen properties yielded two potential parcels – one just over 10 acres and the other around 16 acres, both on sloping terrain.  Just recently, a tea grower in the Nilgiri Hills in India informed me that he produces around 1,000 pounds of orthodox tea a month from his 45+ acres.  This is a yield of 22 pounds per acre.  At 10 acres, my little tea garden could potentially produce 220 pounds of orthodox tea a month.  The downside, of course, is the painful wait as my little saplings take root and grow into mature tea bushes - a wait that I’m sure will pass with a surmountable collection of challenges."

And how long before Brendan's Canadian tea is available to interested buyers? Well, don't hold your breath. Tea plants take some time to mature. As Brendan says, "I’ll let you know when the first “first flush” is ready for harvest.  However, don’t hold your breath - unless you can do so for at least seven years."

Neat, EH?

And for those of you who remember the line - Only in Canada... pity! Here you go (by the way, for the time being, Steeped Tea, which is far more full-flavoured than Red Rose anyway, is also only in Canada. Pity!):

That's a LOT of tea!

Mercy Health Center, in Fort Scott, Kansas, set a new record on Saturday, September 26th, 2009,  with the world’s largest cup of tea at its Mercy Day observation.
The cup held 700 gallons of tea. The tea alone weighed more than two and a half tons, and served almost 15,000 servings. The teacup, created by J.D. and Ed Webster, is 9.5 feet wide at the rim, has a three foot handle, and stands 5.5 feet tall.
The reason for the teacup goes back to the Sisters of Mercy’s foundress, Sister Catherine McAuley, who on her deathbed in 1841, asked her caretakers to “see that the Sisters have a comfortable cup of tea when I am gone.”
The other reason for the teacup is as a fundraiser for Mercy’s cancer center. Right now, the facility has four chemotherapy beds. The event serves in part as a chance to raise money for a potential expansion of the cancer center in six months to a year.

Do you have a favourite tea cup?

Dozen Tea Sommeliers Emerge From Local Program

The first class of certified tea sommeliers has graduated from a new program offered in the Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts at  George Brown College in Toronto.

Although hundreds of students attended seminars offered as part of the program over the last three years, only 12 emerged with certificates in hand (or soon to be, anyway – following a ceremony scheduled Dec. 1).

Offered in conjunction with the Tea Association of Canada, the program began as individual events geared toward tea enthusiasts. It evolved into a formalized program consisting of two parts: four courses covering an introduction to tea, tea regions, and preparation and consumption; and four technical and business-focused courses covering menu, sensory development, service training and tea garden management. (For a complete curriculum, see the program's Web site.) In addition to these 140 hours of course work, graduates had to complete a 20-hour internship.

Bill Kamula, chief instructor at George Brown, and Stephen Field, another professor at the college, taught most of the classes, occasionally calling in outside experts for specific topics. Kamula likened the tea course to the college's wine sommelier course. It is designed to give graduates what they need to start a career in retail, restaurant and hotels, tea tasting and buying. Those who graduated received a Certified Tea Sommelier certificate.

One graduate, researcher and author Nora Gubins, described the classes as "captivating." With a background in the art history of tea ware, she thought taking a class or two would be fun, but she was hooked after the first one.

"Going to a culinary college and looking at tea from a historical, anthropological and cultural viewpoint was extremely fascinating," Gubins said. Although she's unsure exactly how she will use the certification now, Gubins felt the experience was well worth the time and hard work.

"I think a lot of us are wondering if there's a business for sharing the positive message about tea," she said. "My angle is not just on taste, but the wonderful stories around tea. If it leads to a series of articles, possibly a book, I don't know yet."

Tea is the New Coffee - article

Loved this article about ubergeek Kevin Rose's transition to tea and how he's sharing the new-found love with everyone. Here's the original article, written by Brian X Chen:

Digg This URL Grey: Tea Is the New Coffee

The drink of choice for Web 2.0 zillionaires isn’t a quad espresso anymore. It’s a soothingly steeped tea harvested from a shaded mountainside half a world away.

Captains of the internet like Digg’s Kevin Rose and business guru Tim Ferriss (pictured right) are gravitating to the ancient drink, and enterprising retailers are stepping up to fill their every need. 

"We’ve had the Red Bulls, coffee and everything else," Rose says of Digg, which spends about $1,000 a month just on specialty tea for employees. Rose himself favors a cup of Pu-erh imported from China’s Yunnan province after a tough day at the office.

"It’s one of those things where you want to turn to something really natural and from the Earth — and from something that isn’t going to give you a big crash," Rose told Wired.com. "Once you start consuming tea it makes sense: This is the best of all worlds."

In Silicon Valley, specialty tea is quickly becoming a phenomenon. Specialty shops, stores and tearooms devoted to the leaf are sprouting up all over the Bay Area.
In San Francisco, tea businesses have gone beyond Chinatown and
Japantown, spreading to Hayes Valley, the Castro and SOMA.

Tea is the new coffee — the tipple of choice for the Twitteratti. The culture that brought us pizza as a food group and $20,000 coffeemakers has now discovered tea. And its internet-savvy boosters like Rose and Ferriss are leading a movement in the United States to promote the leafy beverage as a trendy drink for new-age geeks who are as obsessed with having energetic bodies as they are with fast computers.

"It’s the new social lubricant," said Jesse Jacobs, owner of Samovar Tea
Lounge, a popular mini-chain of high-end tea rooms in San
Francisco. "You’re never hung over and you can never drink too much."

Rose, Ferriss and Jacobs are hoping to see specialty tea hit the mainstream just like coffee. And it’s certainly possible: Many credit Alfred Peet for single-handedly spearheading the specialty-coffee movement when he opened the first Peet’s Coffee & Tea store in Berkeley in 1966. Starbucks soon followed, and today their coffee shops are omnipresent.

Tea is so ancient that its exact origins are impossible to trace. In one popular Chinese legend, emperor Shen Nung, who drank only boiling water for hygienic precaution, discovered tea by accident 5,000 years ago. According to the tale, some dry leaves fell from a bush into the emperor’s boiling water, and the first cup of tea was created.

Today, fine teas are taking their place in the center of the digital universe. Specialty shops like the Samovar Tea Lounge are virtual emporiums of the beverage, carrying teas from cities, villages and gardens all over the world for guys like Rose and Ferriss, who use it to find respite from their endlessly busy, overly connected lives.

Jacobs, owner of Samovar, which opened three locations in the past year, explained that technology and the internet have changed everything for the tea industry.

"Technology, commerce, shipping methods, storing methods — all these things come together so that today we have access to the best tea ever," said Jacobs, who has a background in technology himself as a former user interface designer.

He added that the emergence of social networks like Facebook and Twitter are bringing exquisite, obscure teas to the tech-driven world.

Digg founder Rose, for example, who is hailed as one of the most influential people on the web, is playing a large role in bringing obscure teas to the mainstream. He said he quit drinking soda as a New Year’s resolution in 2000, and he turned over a new leaf for tea.

Rose often tweets about new teas he’s trying out to his nearly 400,000 Twitter followers and even created a separate Twitter account — @goodtea
— devoted to tea. He also started a Facebook page about the ancient beverage, where he posts videos and information. To top it off,
Rose links to Samovar Lounge’s web site on his personal blog, and he plans to make videos with Jacobs showing geeks how to brew loose tea.

Another active member of the tea resurgence is Ferriss, an angel investor and a former owner of a supplements company who became a Silicon Valley star with his bestselling book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.

In the book, Ferriss plays the role of motivator-in-chief, instructing businesses to adhere to one rule of thumb: Cut out all excess information, such as e-mail, Twitter, Flickr and so on. And when something crops up that could potentially stifle productivity, such as a work crisis, hire someone else to deal with it.

So it comes as no surprise that Ferriss, a man who preaches paying more while dealing with less, prefers tea over coffee. He doesn’t want the jitters, the increased anxiety or the bouncy high. He just wants the energy. And he admits that being a tea connoisseur requires spending a bit more than the stuff you’d get in bags. At Samovar, patrons spend anywhere from $10 to $50 each to enjoy a small cup of exquisite tea — such as Mu Za Tie Quan Yin, if they’re feeling extra fancy, which runs for $140 per ounce. 

"Tea shots of gyokuro for $50 a thimble full?" Ferriss used as an example. "It ain’t cheap, and it’s certainly not for everyone, but that’s the key:
It’s affordably indulgent. A way to show off your insider knowledge instead of distasteful displays of wealth, much of which has been lost."

How long will it be until you can stroll down a block just about anywhere, sit down and enjoy a cup of Ryokucha imported straight from Japan? Rose is optimistic that the tea renaissance is just five years away.

"There’s a reason tea has been popular for thousands of years," Rose said.
"I have a feeling we’re getting closer and closer to the tipping point."

Nothing Like a Little Ingenui-tea

I read about this young man in the World Tea News.

Australian Teen Leads Successful Tea Biz

Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Jason Loft did not drink tea as a child – unless you consider 14 years of age part of childhood. That’s how old Loft was when he picked up a small family venture and turned it into a lucrative tea business. Jason's grandfather, Frank Loft, created the Dutch Teapot Strainer in his garage in 1970. The small, umbrella-like strainer fits down the spout of a teapot, straining the liquor through the leaves. The elder Loft founded TPS Manufacturing, a home-based family business, to make and distribute the strainers, and the company sold several thousand of them over the years. Business waned following Frank Loft 's death and amidst the rise in popularity of bagged tea. By the late 1990s, Loft’s father – an accountant by trade – filled orders only occasionally. Jason Loft came into the picture in 2006, following an accident that took him out of his part-time fast-food job. Eager to continue making money, he approached his father, who pointed him – in family tradition – to the shed, where the small factory for making Dutch Teapot Strainers sat, neglected. Since then, Loft has not only revived TPS Manufacturing, but also launched his own, adjunct business, Pop-In Teas. His mission is no less than to introduce his region to the rewards of drinking full-leaf teas. WTN Editor Heidi Kyser caught up with Loft, who will be 18 in a month, to see how that plan is unfolding.   To read the interview, click here.   Remember that it's National Hot Tea Month. It's also FREEZING cold here in Ontario. I can't think of a better way to warm up than with a nice hot cup of tea, steeped in my  nice big brew in the mug, so I can keep my hands warm too!    Blessings and happy sipping! And stay warm!

New Tea Concoctions

Recently, Starbucks announced some new tea-based drinks would be added to their beverage line-up. It will begin selling three new tea-based lattes and two nondairy tea drinks.

The new lattes are made with steamed milk and Tazo full-leaf tea bags. The new varieties include the Black Tea Latte, the Vanilla Rooibos Latte and the London Fog (an Earl grey-based) latte. The company already sells a chai tea and green tea latte.

Starbucks will also launch new Tazo Tea Infusions -- nondairy drinks made with Tazo black chai tea and steamed fruit juice. The company will offer a Berry Chai Infusion, made with berry and black currant juices, and an Apple Chai Infusion, made with apple juice.

The latte drinks will be priced between $2.85 and $3.50 for a tall, depending on the location of the store. The infusions will sell for $2.40 to $2.70 for a tall. I don't know if the Canadian version will cost more.

I don't know if these new drinks have crossed the border and are being offered in Canada yet. But why would I share the news of what a retail beverage company is offering? To remind you to think outside the box. Steeped Tea offers over 50 delicious loose leaf teas and you could turn many of them into your own latte or infusions and save lots of money while doing it! When our large packages of loose tea range from $7.99 to$12.99, and yield about 50 cups of tea, that's a lot of lattes!  I think I'm going to start experimenting and during the next few weeks, I'll make a point of sharing some of my own recipes here, to continue our celebration of National Hot Tea Month! And if you conduct a few taste experiments of your own, please share your recipes by leaving a comment.

Happy sipping! - Ann