The little yellow teapot in the centre of the table draws my eyes like a beacon as I walk through the door into the modern, spacious, arty space.

Our hosts today are Jackie and Peter. Peter, lovely chap though he is, seems almost insubstantial next to his other half, who seems to glow with inner warmth as she welcomes me in to join the throng.

To my left I see that odd young man in a dressing gown. Someone suggested his name was Thomas, but I don’t know. Every so often he bursts forth , Wilde-like, with some funny utterance, but then prefers to slip back into the shadows.

Sitting next to him, as I suspected, is Milly. Beneath the harmless old lady exterior that she likes to play on is a keen wit, a sharp eye, saucy humour and a big heart. It’s like a variation on Angela Lansbury’s most famous role, except here, it’s “Tea, She Wrote” and there’s a lot more double entendres. Wellington snores at her feet.

My eyes skip over Cynthia — I know who she is, but she’s kind of hard to spot next to her partner Estella, who is handing her a small glass of Oriental Beauty, or “Bug-Chewed Oolong” as it’s often – and accurately – described.

It’s not hard to see why I find Estella fascinating. It could be just the natural curiosity to see things that are different to oneself — the fascination of the lesbian to the heterosexual man, the intrigue of the dyed-in-the-wool Marxist-Pinko-Socialist-Communist-whatever to an insipid, vaguely Orwell-inspired social-liberal-conservative-democrat like myself, or even the fact that Canadians and Australians share a common British ancestry and fear of becoming American.

But I suspect it’s more to do with the way she rails against injustice, wears her heart on her sleeve and can find humour in the blackest of situations.

Obviously, my place is on the other side of the table, with the Antipodean contingent. Hazel is there, steadfastly refusing to drink tea. Hard to figure out why she hangs with this crowd, except that she shares our tilt on life and we all think the world of her. She’s laughing, which seems to be an almost permanant state.

I sit in the middle between Hazel and Meredith, who is as Australian as I am but is forced to live in exile in New Zealand. I note that not only does she have an enigmatic nametag, but her teapot is also sporting a nametag.

At that moment, Liss and Ken come in; contrasting world weary and well-travelled with youthful exuberance. Ken’s already joking with Jackie; as usual much laughter ensues.

Peter pours Liss a nice green and we chat amongst ourselves. I enquire after The Literatus, but no-one’s seen him for a while.

On an easel is a photo of our last gathering, from the Tea and Coffee Brewery in Temecula, Dianne steeping heroically whilst Eddie tinkles the ivories. The photographer has done masterful job, and whilst it’s unsigned, the perfect angles and the small hissing cockroach inserted into the corner tells me who it is.

Then Jackie rings a bell, the signal to get down to business. “Today, The Devotea will share something special with us”, she announces as I pull a packet of Daintree from my pocket, basking in the glow of a dozen friendly faces.

This story is brought to us by our guest contributor The Devotea.

Ed.note: This post was originally posted in late 2010 but was lost in a technical error. It has been recovered and is being reposted in honor of Milly. Rest in Peace.

The argument about the best method for brewing tea is a big one. Opinions vary from each person to the next and techniques are as varied as there are types of tea. Hardware innovations in tea brewing don’t happen very often, though every now and then a new gadget pops up on the market promising a better way to brew tea.

However, there is a modern way to brew tea – one that is better than anything that has come out in recent memory. We say modern only because it is a method that is just over a hundred years old. Compared to yixing pots, that’s practically a baby…

As a tool or method for brewing and rebrewing tea, it doesn’t get much better than the French Press. Originally created for coffee, it has since found its way into the tea world as way to brew, enjoy, and savor the agony of the leaf.

Like many things with tea, there is a secret to using it and it is easy to get it wrong.

The history of the French Press

Cafetière à piston in French, the origin of the Press is disputed between the Italians and the French, though it was an Italian, Attilio Calimani, who patented it in 1929. Stories of it go back as far as the 1850′s as part of coffee legend.

The legend of the Press describes an old farmer out on a walk who sits down to make some coffee over a fire. Lost in thought, instead of boiling his coffee grounds and water together, as was the norm, he boiled the water and forgot to add his coffee grounds. When he realized his mistake, he poured the grounds into the already boiling water. Because the coffee wasn’t saturated, it floated on the top, making his coffee undrinkable. He found a screen and used it to push the grounds to bottom of his jar. With the grounds out of the way, he was able to enjoy his coffee. In fact, he found that because the grounds were not sitting in the water as it boiled up, the coffee tasted better, lighter and far less bitter.

The story is told in many different ways with the Italians and the French fighting over the nationality of that old man, but the method of using a screen to move the coffee to the bottom of the pot is heart of what later became known as the the French Press. The mechanics of the Press are simple, nothing more than a plunger with a screen inside a cylindrical carafe.

How to use a French Press

Using a Press is easy, it doesn’t require any special skill but there are some unique things that can be done with it that let you enjoy your tea more than most any other modern method of brewing tea.

• Put your leaves in first. Drop the dry leaves into the bottom of the Press.
• Boil your water, or heat it to whatever temperature you need using your stove or kettle.
• Pour your water onto the leaves. Just like any of the other better methods for brewing tea, the hot and violent swirling water will help open up the leaves and spread them out more.
• Let it steep for however long you want or need it to.
• Plunge and pour out all of your freshly brewed tea. This is the secret and the ultimate trick to getting it right. Using a French Press doesn’t remove your need for a teapot, it just gives you a better way to brew it. Even with the plunger down, the tea will continue to brew.  Have your cups or mugs nearby for serving, and a teapot to hold the rest.

What makes a French Press special?

• It’s visual. The majority of Presses sold today are glass.  Which means that you get to experience an aspect of your tea that you don’t get with a clay pot. The agony of leaf the is the unfurling of the leaves during the brewing process. Watching good tea brew can be an experience by itself. Appreciating the visual part of brewing tea is something real tea lovers do, the French Press is probably the single best way to enjoy this. In fact, pulling up on the plunger can create a brilliant swirl of leaves. This aspect of it is not for everyone, but to those who like it, it holds a certain amount of beauty.

• It’s reusable. Once your pour out your tea, the leaves are left in the Press for another serving of hot water. After you’ve enjoyed your first steeping, you can simply heat some fresh water and begin again. A French Press makes resteeping over and over again very easy.

• It’s easy to clean. Cleaning up a Press is far easier than most other modern methods. The wet leaves are not crammed into a small metal filter, nor do you have the dripping mess of a fat, wet and cold filter bag to dump into the trash. Simply spraying a small amount of water into the Press loosens up leaves and you can just dump it all down the garbage disposal in your sink. Or, if you prefer a greener alternative, you can always pour them out into a houseplant or garden for composting. There really is no mess at all.

The French Press is a very western and modernized way of brewing tea. It is devoid the mythology, mystery and technique that goes with yixing pots, gaiwans and tea trays. It is a refined, simple and useful way of brewing tea that allows a tea drinker to easily experience their tea in a unique and elegant way. To some, it may be the best and most advanced way of preparing tea.

Do you or have you used a French Press for brewing tea? What are your thoughts? Do you agree with us about it’s usefulness and style?

This morning, Jackie had a brief conversation with Adagio Tea’s brick-and-mortar retail guru, Charles Cain, via Twitter. It started with a simple question posed by Charles about at what price does tea become expensive. It’s a good question and, in our opinion, really gets to the heart of the matter when it comes to challenges that the tea industry needs to overcome. The question itself speaks to the primary factors that are holding back that great Tea Revolution we’ve heard so much about and it all comes down to two things – price and availability.

Curiosity question for all you #tea lovers: At what point does a tea seem "expensive"? $5 per ounce? $10 per ounce? What's your number?

March 14, 2011 09:06 via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@AdagioRetail

Charles Cain

Here’s a transcript of the conversation that took place:

leafboxtea: “Expensive” is so relative. Would I splash out occasionally on an expensive tea, yes. But for daily sipping $5 is too much.

TeaPages: At risk of being unhelpful, I say “depends” For really high quality I’m less price-sensitive. But $7-8 gives pause.

leafboxtea: Thing is, I drink an awful lot of tea. We go through 4oz in about 4 days in my house. Can’t spend $20 every 4 days or so.

dloehr: $10 might be that tipping point for me.

Teawench: It depends on the tea. $5/ounce for a good Darjeeling is different than $5/ounce for an average blend or flavored tea.

dloehr: I’ve shopped at a tea place that rhymes with nirvana, and they add up quickly there.

AdagioRetail: Funny thing customer psychology: $5 per oz is $0.50 per cup at home. And yet we’ll gladly spend $3 on a brewed cup.

dloehr: I’ve rarely if ever seen that equation. That’d be easy to promote/inform. (Said marketing boy…)

TeaPages: We don’t always do a great job communicating that to buyers. Many don’t know how to translate oz to cups.

leafboxtea: tea for us is a daily “necessary” drink. No soda, or coffee And the cafe-brewed tea here at $3 doesn’t compare to our own

AdagioRetail: Agreed. Still amazing to see what people do spend daily on coffee, soda, alcohol etc.

AdagioRetail: Frustrating that, for many in the US, coffee, soda and alcohol are part of the grocery budget and tea is a luxury.

AdagioRetail: Frustrating because it should be so easy. 1 ounce = 10 cups (2.8g each)

leafboxtea: Thing is, Americans see it as luxury because it’s marketed as a luxury. There needs 2 be a balance between commodity & luxury

Our opinion in detail

The basis of what we think here at Leafbox Tea is summed up in that last comment. From the consumer’s perspective, the tea industry is represented by extremes – there are luxury brands and there are commodity brands. The number of luxury brands has increased in recent years. Brands like Mighty Leaf, Adagio, Rishi, Numi, Revolution Tea, and Teavana are setting the stage for industry. Those are spotlight names. In addition to them, there are dozens of smaller, up-and-coming brands whose owners and employees are working hard everyday to compete and differentiate in a heavily crowded tea marketplace.

The troubling fact is, every single one of those brands is selling its tea as luxury product. Look at the glossy packaging and expensive design seen throughout the industry. Both online and off, brick-and-mortar stores sell teas as a luxury item. Up-market cafés style tea as urban and stylish. All that style and design costs money, and it is the consumers who pay for it. Only one company seems to buck the trend, Upton Tea, with its old-fashioned website and hard-to-read paper catalog lacks style and flash, but offers incredible value for consumers who are able to navigate its offerings. Simply because they stuck with the old ways, they have now differentiated themselves in a market that seems to push luxury at every corner.

With all this, there is another part of the market that needs to be considered and that is the commodity outlook of tea. In most of the world, tea is treated as a commodity item. In the marketplace, commodity tea is Lipton and its direct competitors. If we look at the low end that Unilever created with Lipton and the upper end of the luxury, specialty tea market – we really find no middle ground in the place that matters - the humble grocery store.

We’ve had tea shop owners turn up their noses at us at the mere suggestion that mid-quality loose tea products should be sold in bulk in grocery stores. This is a favored topic by us and something we’ve discussed before (Are you getting the best value with your tea?). This is the middle ground and the area that should be explored. The Europeans sell bulk, loose tea in 125 gram pouches in many ordinary grocery stores – what are they doing right that we are are doing wrong?

Since the conversation here started with Adagio, we’ll circle back here to them here. We’ve seen Adagio tea products in the grocery store, but in every case it looks like a failed channel for them. About 3 ounces of ordinary tea for about $12 in packaging that just looks expensive – and every time it sits there, isolated, dusty and lonely-looking among the colorful boxes of tea bags. It is very hard to buy something like that. That product style can’t compete in a grocery store because it doesn’t fit into the magic price area of grocery store tea of $3-$7.

Anyone in the grocery industry will tell you that sales come down to packaging and finding the right mix of value and appearance to grab customer’s eyes and attention. Everything about packaging has been fine-tuned through decades of marketing. The loose tea segment of the tea industry should learn from those lessons. Someone with the entrepreneurial spirit and the money should eschew the traditional tea shop and tea parlor methods that are so ingrained in our culture and jump on the grocery store bandwagon. Grocery stores are the last channel of the American marketplace that the loose, specialty tea industry has failed to penetrate.

Operating a warehouse in a dingy part of town, driving truckloads of tea across the city to the food broker’s distribution warehouse every week is not as glamorous or trendy as running a tea shop or café. There are no fancy tea parties or $300,000 websites. The entire enterprise would probably seem boring, without flash, style, or even much customer contact and the ego-build (and tear-down) that comes with it – but it will probably do very, very well.

A way of looking at it is that there is no loose tea for sale in the grocery store – does that mean it doesn’t work? Not really, it just means that, for now, there is no competition and in filling that void, tea companies will enter into that untapped middle ground between commodity brands and luxury brands.

Share your thought below – do you have price threshold for tea? What is too much?

As part of our development of Tea Trade, we’ve now officially moved our blog onto the Tea Trade blogging system. Our forums are present as are all of our posts. This is an entirely new installation of Leafbox Tea.

We are completely confident with the Tea Trade blogging setup and have moved Leafbox Tea into it not only to consolidate our websites, but also as a proof-of-concept. We’ve remapped our domain, leafboxtea.com, to our new setup. The Tea Trade blogging platform is designed to help you preserve your blogging brand while giving you integrated access to the best and most robust social-based network for tea bloggers.

As we continue to develop the Tea Trade initiative, the feature set to promote and connect bloggers is only going to improve. We’ve partnered up with some of the best developers in the industry to ensure that the platform supporting Tea Trade stays modern, up-to-date and innovative.

We discovered this fascinating video from one of the bloggers on Tea Trade. It is about the origins of Tie Guan Yin, the processing of it and the Chinese cultural importance of it.

No explanation does this video justice. Just grab your teacup and enjoy!

Journeys in Time: China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage – Part 8 – Tieguanyin tea (40 Minutes)

Source: http://english.cntv.cn/program/journeysintime/20101018/103514.shtml

Via:http://4thflavor.teatra.de/2011/02/12/processing-tea/

Three mugs of tea into the day and enlightenment finally sets in. I’ve been wondering what to write about and my thoughts turned to my relationship with tea. Yes, we all know I love it. Of course I do, or I wouldn’t be devoting all this time to writing about it, and building a whole web site dedicated to it. So, yep my loyalties to the fine leaves have been tried and tested.

Tea and I have a very special thing going and I know that. In fact, we’ve clearly hit the stage many long-term relationships are said to reach. I am 100% dedicated to this drink. I am absolutely loyal to this drink. However, I am not infatuated. I love tea, but I don’t think about it every minute of the waking day. I don’t revere it, and I don’t put it on a pedestal. I don’t spend hours gazing at it in a glass pot. I make it, I drink it and I truly enjoy it. Simple.

I know what I have with my tea. There aren’t many mysteries between us. I know what I get when I sip. I know how to make it beautifully. I know how to bring out the best of the leaves. But I’m not obsessed. Passionate, certainly – because for me there is no other.

We have a happy relationship built on years of mutual trust. My tea knows I never fail to make a cup. I always keep it close. I know the taste will never let me down. I’m not talking about the little errors of our ways. Yes, sometimes I make mistakes when I brew it. Sometimes I oversteep, or use too much. But it isn’t the tea’s fault, it’s mine. I will always return and do a better job the next time.

Now there are quite a few tea drinkers out there who talk about their obsession with tea. They write pages and pages about tea on their blogs. They make videos tasting the most obscure teas. And then one day they’re suddenly gone. Not even a year into their fledgling efforts. While I applaud admiration for the leaves, obsessions make me uneasy. Let’s face it, how long can an obsession last? How long will yours?  It won’t. You’ll be passionate to the point of exhaustion over your tea, and then one day you’ll just burn out. You’ll no longer want it. You’ll move on to the next “hot” thing. I’ll find you blogging about the Mocha Lattes at Star B.

See, that’s not going to happen to my leaves. I’m not going to switch, I’m not going to dabble in coffee, or cola and then go back to tea. It’s tea for me. Only tea and always tea. For ever.

Yours,
Me

There are a lot of rules for tea – there are probably more rules for tea preparation than any other drink. Even George Orwell published an essay about brewing tea – eleven rules for tea. There are fewer commandments in the Bible…

Here at Leafbox Tea, we are no different. We are currently writing an ebook about tea. Turns out, that you can’t write a book about tea without putting in brewing instructions. So, we set out to find out what the rules really are.

That’s twelve rules so far, there are a lot more. Generally though, the rules are not much more than quaint cultural holdovers which express the tastes of the people,  businesses, institutions and cultures which write them.

These rules are not really as important as businesses lead people to believe. Of course, if you ask us, the more rules you put on something, the less appealing it becomes. The vast amount of rules out there about tea are confusing – no wonder Americans still don’t understand tea. When looking at the rules, there is, apparently, nothing simple about tea at all.

In the process of writing our Field Guide to Tea, we tested some of these rules. Violated and intentionally broke them wanting to see the results. What we found was that the rules really don’t matter.

Tea is a matter of taste – all the tea rules leftover from centuries ago matter little if they cause you to brew up something you don’t like.

Breaking the Rules

Never drink puerh on an empty stomach – This has been making the rounds again this year. There was an article published on an English-language Chinese news site about what the Dim Sum restaurants won’t tell you. Most of the items on the list were nothing but mythological nonsense about tea – the most painful to read was that you should never drink puerh tea on an empty stomach. Says who? There is no reason not to, in fact, we occasionally like starting the day with a cup of puerh. Even with all the nonsense in that particular article, the most disturbing thing about it was the number of times it was promoted. Even the United States Tea Council promoted it on their Twitter account – com’on guys, this is the 21st century we are beyond that now.

Black tea needs boiling water – Not always true, but we are also guilty of promoting it as a rule. It does make things easy, though. Use an electric kettle, when it shuts off, pour out your water. Were you not there when it shut off? If the water is still hot, it’ll still brew you a pretty good cuppa. A Leafbox Tea member once commented that “black tea needs scalding water.” Scalding water is not always boiling water, and this is probably closer to being a truth anyhow. Boiling water is not necessary, especially if you are using tea bags or broken tea leaves. These seem to be less resistant to heat and give up their flavor easily.

Green/white tea should be brewed at xxx-degrees – This is nonsense. A lot of people around the world manage to brew up a cup without the use of a thermometer everyday. In fact, in the Leafbox kitchen, despite having access to samples of some really fine teas, we don’t even have a thermometer. We’ve brewed up some rather fine and exquisite green teas without ever worrying about temperature. The saying, “water, off the boil” describes water that has been allowed to cool after boiling. The exact rate at which water cools varies based on a handful variables and will different in everybody’s kitchen, but simply letting your water sit for a minute is just fine. Tea is art, not science.

Preheat the pot – This rule comes about because of the desire to keep the water as hot as possible. Does it make a difference? No, not really. We typically brew our tea in glass pots, which are so thin and shed heat so quickly that there is not point in preheating it. Heating the pot can be an extra step. For most people, the mass of water will stay hot long enough to brew the tea without worrying about warming the pot.

How do you feel about all the rules that at various places around the internet? Are they examples of sage advice or do you find yourself making your own tea, by your own rules?

We are: A very large tea company with small garden values. Small values in a garden, really.

We seek: Happy people, but this isn’t Disneyland. You’re not dead in paradise yet, so we’ll just settle for “people.”

Residency: Preferably from some former colony; because that means you’re not doing so well now.

Suitable candidates: We like Tamils from Sri Lanka, and lower caste Indians. Impoverished pluckers from Japan and China are quite acceptable. Model tea pickers from Africa? We could use some more. White skinned natives need not apply at all. Not that we think you would.

Sex: Female. Unless you’re African, but if you’re African and male, then we can’t use you. Sorry, but you just don’t look as cute among the dainty tea leaves.

Body Type: Slender – but not obviously malnourished. Nobody wants to know your petty personal business, right? Right!

Attractive to Westerners: No open sores, callouses, chemical burns, or crooked backs.  Don’t need to see the pesky effects of your job on display.

Health: Must be compatible with “Attractive to Westerners”. See point above. Other than that, who cares, we’re not bloody socialists are we?!

Age range: Young, which means you must in fact be young. Even elderly looking tea models are only twenty-five years old, silly.

Hair: Long, needs to be clean on day of shooting. One bucket of fresh water will be provided for this purpose only. Remember, fresh water is not for drinking! No moving, and/or visible head lice. Put a cloth over your head.

Clothing: To be supplied. A full line of figure hugging “tea picking” outfits in enthusiastic colors available. Don’t bring your own work “clothes”, these are quite unsuitable. Nobody wants to see authentic, unless it’s “authentic.”

Demeanor: You must be willing and able to look ecstatic while hauling a bulky basket on your back. It’ll be full of the sixty pounds of tea you picked. Smiling is a must. Broken, stained teeth though not desired, are expected and can be photoshopped.

Attitude: Convincingly but wholly unauthentic; you’ll need to be upbeat, inspiring, optimistic. Anything but your usual self, really.

Speech: Mostly not required. You’re not being interviewed!  If however, you think you *are* being interviewed, it’s likely those fair trade folks, in which case you need to keep mum. In exceptional instances entirely incomprehensible native chatter permitted.

Tea picking experience: Preferably not a lot, experience tends to translate into unattractive sagging flesh, bent spines,  deep wrinkles, and dark circles under the eyes. Not exactly attractive to westerners.

Compensation: Aside from a little fame on a cardboard tea box, or in a western tea ad you mean? What more is there to want?

For those of you still reading this, or having this read to you (50/50 chance if you’re Indian) we are currently considering adjusting the tea scales, for one time only, to start at true zero.

Chance of a life time! And you don’t have many. Chances we mean. Not lives. You old Hindu you

Applications taken, after work only.

“From 1910 onwards, a variety of versions of the Tamil woman’s tea picker image appeared in Lipton’s advertising. In all of these images, the Tamil woman was shown smiling gently in a lush plantation.”

–Imperial Persuaders: Images of Africa and Asia in British Advertising, Anandi Ramamurthy, Published 2003 by Manchester University Press )

Tea picking is hard work – long hours and little pay is the norm. For most tea workers, standards of living are below their country’s poverty level. The images commonly seen in ads rarely reflect the reality, which the workers experience every day.

These videos, Bitter Drops of Tea, parts 1 and 2, illustrate the difficult challenges that female tea workers in Sri Lanka experience. What they show is far removed from what we see in advertising on television, in print and on the web.

“…we make tea…by burning their blood.” S. Visvalingam, Researcher