New Article: Unusual Tea Origins

You can blame it on climate change, shifting economic status or connoisseurs' need for something new, but the fact remains that unusual tea origins are getting to be hot right now. I just covered the trend for World Tea News. Excerpt:

Terroir, the concept of distinct flavor imbued by region-specific factors such as climate, soil and varietal, originated with French wine-making, but it also applies to tea. Pettigrew said today’s tea consumers want to treat tea like wine and are taking a new interest in origin.

“You don’t excite people with just average tea; you need the unusual experiences (such as new origins) to make it more exciting,” she said.

Cain said this new-found connoisseurship does not mean tea businesses should forgo old favorites – then, he went on to passionately describe his current favorite tea, a “fruity and full” first flush Nepalese black tea with “fascinating” peaks and levels in flavor.

This kind of excitement about new discoveries – and the work of people like Melican, who has traveled to 26 tea-producing countries on six continents – is encouraging the expansion of specialty production techniques into a multitude of new and unexpected places.

Some traditional origins are also producing orthodox teas and using foreign processing methods in response to customer connoisseurship, Cain and Pettigrew added.


This was fascinating to research. I hope to write more on some of these individual origins in the future, when they are further along. In the meantime, you can read the full article on World Tea news.