MattCha has posted a fantastic series on the traditional making of green tea in Korea.

Part 1: Picking the tea

Part 2: Heat-Treating the Leaves

Part three: Rolling and Drying

Part Four: Final Processing and Sifting

Matt will take you to Korea and show you, step by step, the process by which tea comes to your cup from the bush. Click on the links to read his commentary and see his lovely photographs documenting the process of making green tea the traditional Korean way.

If you agree with that sentiment, you might want to join the rest of the world on June 28th for an afternoon tea party!

The idea was born in the facebook group, “A cup of tea solves everything”  and participating members will pause at 4pm on June 28th to relax with a cup of their favorite tea.

At first, only London tea-drinkers planned to engage in the time-stopping event,  but as tea-lovers everywhere popped up, the idea grew to include world-wide teaophiles. If everyone has a cup of tea at around 4pm (in their own time zone), it may just be the world’s longest tea party yet!

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your (tea) garden grow?

By 2010, thanks to the efforts of the Darjeeling Tea Association (DTA), most Darjeeling gardeners will be able to answer, “Organically!”

Currently, there are 87 tea gardens which grow Darjeeling tea. For each one to make the switch to organic gardening styles, it takes about three years, during which time the tea production decreases (up to half of normal production).

For teas to be grown organically, not only are chemical fertilizers and pest control substances restricted, but some “natural” controls are as well. For example, organic gardens may not use tobacco juice to control pests.

This is a huge undertaking, but soon, you’ll be able to sip a cup of the freshest of fresh Darjeeling tees, with the knowledge that there is nothing but tea in your cup.

World Tea Expo: May 30 - June 1, 2008
Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV

If you are a tea lover, you might want to attend the World Tea Expo 2008. There will be several workshops, including “Tea & Chocolate,” “Blending” skill workshop, “Brewing/Serving” skill workshop, and “The Way of Tea.”

There will also be a showing of “The Meaning of Tea” one night, and a networking convention another night.

Conferences like, “Converting the coffee culture,” “Conducting a successful tea tasting,” “This isn’t your grandma’s tea room,” and geographic location-focused tea tastings are also on the schedule.

It sounds like an amazing event! Please go if you can, learn a lot about tea, and come back and tell me about it (and make me insanely jealous that I didn’t get to go).

If you are new to tippyleaf’s blog, or if you’re a regular visitor, please consider subscribing for free.

A companion post to the China Now announcement, which will be hosting a wonderful touring exhibition and range of activities hosted by the Chinese National Tea Museum. This museum really is an extraordinary resource, for those fortunate enough to be able to visit, and is a perfectly fitting monument for a culture to whom tea is even more fundamental than our own. Located in the Zhijiang province of Hangzhou, it first opened in 1991, and has seen rising attendance from tea fans from all over the world. Combining museum, botanical garden, and tea plantation, it really is a stunning sight to behold.

The museum is also a lively centre for academic research on tea – if ever you wanted to attend the University of Tea, this is it (they’ve yet to begin dispensing degrees but it’s only a matter of time - I feel I’ve long since earned my B.A. Hons in Tea Drinking, and it’s about time someone gave me a certificate to prove it) .

Especially interesting are the sections on the Tea Apparatus. Tea sets in China are traditionally as important as the tea itself, and there is an excess of aesthetic over function (in other words, Chinese tea sets are extremely beautiful, beyond what is required of them, and often resemble works of art in themselves).

The classic design of cup and saucer of course was invented in China, thousands of years ago, during the Tang dynasty. Teapot making takes off, big time, during the Ming dynasty, and pot-making becomes a distinguished and noble craft, with increasing attention paid to artistic design. The teapot becomes a beautiful thing, and both tin and clay pots become expensive items.

So do leave a window for the Chinese Tea Museum events at China Now. A rare chance to see ancient tea sets, as well as an opportunity to get savvy with Chines tea customs and history. Which will come in handy in a few years when the Chinese become Masters of the Universe.

You may recall the leading news item on 21 May 2007, when the Cutty Sark

at Greenwich was severely damaged after going up in flames, and the extraordinary sight of a London skyline, usually dominated by Canary Wharf, obscured by a nineteenth century tea clipper on fire.

The Cutty Sark, built in 1869, is the only surviving tea clipper. A ‘clipper’,which refers to the speed by which it passes through waves, is the name for a typical multiple-masted sailing ship used for trade routes between the UK and the East Indies. The legendary Cutty Sark carried tea from China to London, in an era of fiercely competitive races which rewarded the first ship to arrive back with tea from China with huge profits.

Her fame across the world survived the replacement of clippers with more efficient steamships, and survives even to this day – the ship attracts millions of visitors a year and is one of London’s key tourist attractions - and is testament to the importance of tea in nineteenth century commerce and culture.

The ship had been closed for conservation when it caught fire. Mercifully, the Cutty Sark Trust assured the public that more than half the ship had been removed elsewhere for preservation. It is estimated, however, that the cost of restoring the ship will reach somewhere in the region of £35 million.

The immense conservation project is well underway, and can be monitored on the official Cutty Sark website . There is also a fund set up should you wish to make a donation towards resurrecting this once indestructible symbol of the tea trade.

Here are some tea commercials from around the world, which I found on YouTube. Most of the tea commercials on YouTube seem to be for iced tea - iced tea can be good or bad, but either way it’s where the money is in tea these days, hence the number of advertisements for it. These are all links to videos…

• Caterpillars looking for those buds.
• Wizard of Oz in Spain.
• Sex sells even tea. More sex. Trust me, there are a lot of these nubile Asian women selling tea on YouTube.
• If this is real, it is the strangest tea advertisement I have seen.
• Celebrities aren’t picky … Britney and Eric.
• And of course the Brooke Bond chimpanzees. Brooke Bond (now Unilever) created PG Tips tea. PG stands for Pre-gestee, but I don’t know what that means.

Spotted this recently in the trade news. Tea trading between India and Russia seems to be taking off again in a big way. During the, ahem, glory years of the Soviet Union, 50 per cent of tea into Russia came from India; but since the end of communism, Indian exports of tea to Russia fell dramatically. But the historic commerce between the two countries is being sparked up once more, and the Indian government is aiming for a $10 billion trade turnover target with Russia by 2010.

Reading about this, I can’t help but hark back to the romance of nineteenth century tea trading, and how, even further back, the invention of new teas arose from this long distance trading. The trade in tea between China and Russia, for instance, required the smoking of teas such as lapsang souchong and Russian tea. The latter tea originates in China, and has a similarly distinct smoky flavour to lapsang souchong; it takes its name from the method of trading between the two countries, which involved the use of camel or mule caravans for transport. These journeys of course take their time, so the tea would be smoked, which involved a special process to preserve the leaves over a period of several months. Smoking the tea also created, from this necessity, a whole new taste: that robust, woody, oakey flavour, which gives that extra kick.

Actually, I can think of another China-Russia cross-breed, with its own kick, from which the Indians, in their rekindled relations with Russia, could take inspiration:

I find differing Eastern and Western cultural attitudes and rituals around tea-drinking an endlessly fascinating area. Here in Blighty, we love a nice cup of tea and a sit down (more about which another time). There is a lovely informality about tea-drinking here, a place where tea is the ultimate social lubricant, spanning generations, and serving as a great social leveller. Unless you’re taking tea in a more formal situation, say for instance, with the Queen, in which case, a ritual element enters into the situation - tea delivered by footmen, impeccably poured, a precise routine practiced for centuries, followed to the letter. Yet I’m sure once poured, even tea with the Queen would probably break the ice a little. The idea of sitting down for the taking of tea has a whole other meaning in the cultures from which tea originates. Take Japan for instance, and its incomparable ‘chado’, or tea ceremony. It makes tea with the Queen look like the height of unbuttoned casualness.

This elaborate ceremony, which involves the preparation and serving of tea by a host to his or her guests, consists of a series of elaborate prescribed movements. Appropriate formal attire is de rigeur: kimonos for the host, either kimonos or other formal wear for the guest.

The ceremony occurs in a special tea house, usually of simple, subdued design.

Guests often wait in a separate enclosure, and when they are called to do so, ritually wash themselves in preparation. A light dish is sometimes served, with sake, as a preliminary, before the host summons them again.

There follows more ritual cleaning, using exact movements which have been carefully learnt (after years of practice). The bowls are placed in an prescribed order, and green tea is prepared using movements which have remained exactly the same over centuries (a Western equivalent would be the priest preparing bread and wine in a Christian ritual).

There is not much room for chat, as you’d expect. A complex series of bows and set phrases are exchanged. A sensual-spiritual experience devoted to the preparation, sight and smell of tea-making, it can last up to five hours.

…one of life’s great existential dilemmas, as Shakespeare himself observed. His most famous character, Hamlet, is almost driven mad by the question: do I use a teapot, or do I go directly for the cup. By the time he makes his mind up, and opts for his special skull-shaped teapot, the play is nearly over, and it’s too late. The water’s gone cold.

But seriously, folks. Teapots. People have been using them for centuries. In fact, since China’s Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Here is a picture of one of the very oldest surviving teapots from this period, dated 1533.

The first teapots, like the above, were made from zischa, which is a kind of clay, and come from the YiXing region of China. YiXing teapots are still regarded, to this day, as a benchmark of quality. YiXing teapots, baked at 2,000F+ high heat, are made of very fine clay. They contain tiny pores, which absorb the flavour of the tea, and can actually enhance the flavour as it brews. They also maintain heat longer than other kinds of teapot (again, improving quality and flavour); and they look great.

Here are some modern examples of YiXing teapots

I confess I’m a borderline