Off to SF Tomorrow

I'm headed out to San Francisco for a week starting tomorrow. Planning to meet with a number of tea people, which is always a treat. I'll also be checking out a few more coffee places for my work with About.com's Coffee/Tea site. If you have any suggestions for places to visit, I'd love to hear them!

Happy sipping!
~Lindsey

PS -- If you want to follow my SF coffee/tea adventures, you can check them out on the VeeTea Twitter page.

Yay! I'm the New About.com Coffee / Tea Guide

Quick announcement:

I'm the new About.com Coffee / Tea Site Guide! Right now, I'm building up a lot of new content. Soon, I'll be editing some of the recipes, articles, etc. from the previous writer, cleaning any spam out of the Forums and otherwise sprucing the site up. Here are a few new things I've been working on:

Tea, Tisane, Coffee, Cocoa & Apple Cider Recipes
A Guide to Pairing Hot Chocolate with Food
Hot Drink, Hot Drink Equipment & Hot Drink Media Reviews (Side note: If you want to contact me about reviewing one of your products, you can email me at vee (AT) vee tea (DOT) com.)
A Coffee / Tea Blog (The current topic is Tisanes vs. "Herbal Teas" -- it leaves the tisane/herbal tea nomenclature debate up for a vote.)

I'll periodically post updates on the site's progress here, but if you want more info, you can sign up for a weekly newsletter in the top right of the site and follow me on Twitter @AboutCoffeeTea. BTW, if you have any suggestions for new content, I'd love to hear them!

Tea in Film

I recently asked my Twitter peeps about their favorite movie scenes involving tea. Here are their responses:

Winnie at Teance said, "the scene in Fearless with Jet Li before the fight is good."

HonestTea said, "The Mad Hatter's tea party from AliceinWonderland!"

JeeJuno said, "Karen and Felicity drink tea in a scene from Out of Africa, not a grand scene, but a GRAND movie!!"

dcbuck said, "The only scene I can even think of is the bit from the second Karate Kid movie just before the very dramatic storm sets in."

Also, thetearooms linked this segment on tea at Harrods. (I visited Harrods' tea department when I was in London. Fantastic!) The film clip includes an amusing (and very dated) segment on how to brew tea with a teabag. YouTube kindly led me to this old film how to brew tea with information that's (mostly) still relevant today. (I love the use of the words "tea juice" throughout...)

What's your favorite movie scene involving tea? Seen any interesting old tea films lately?

World Tea Expo

This post is dedicated to the World Tea Expo. It was, as usual, fantastic. Here are a few highlights from my week in Vegas, from the Expo and otherwise:

Seeing so many tea people -- I love learning about what everyone is up to, talking tea and connecting with people and ideas in the industry. Connections took the forms of chatting between classes, touring the show floor, interviewing like mad, holding a TweetUp, sending the obligatory "where are you now" texts to find fellow attendees... I only wish I'd had more time to spend with everyone!

Trying new teas -- ITO EN's new shincha (sold out already), Hawaii-grown teas from Sherri Miller, oolongs from Teas, Etc. and much more... Along with the people, this is one of my favorite things about the Expo each year!

Interviews -- I held about two dozen interviews over the course of the Expo. Some were informal talks, some were sit-down-with-a-recorder interviews and some were video interviews. The videos were with notables like James Norwood Pratt, Jane Pettigrew, Bruce Richardson, Kevin Rose and Steve Schwartz. They'll start showing up on World Tea News soon.

Classes -- My favorite class was Rona Tison's Japanese green tea cupping course. Tasty! A few of my other favorites were with Charles Cain (TeaGschwendner USA), Michale Cramer (Adagio) and Elisabeth Knottingham (The Teacup in Seattle, WA), who held a fantastic class on hiring and keeping great employees.

Leaving the Strip -- Sometimes Vegas is just so... Vegas-y. This year, I got off the strip on a few occasions. Downtown Vegas' First Friday with my husband, my World Tea News boss and her husband (and his beautiful flower shop, set to open soon) was fantastic. Red Rock Canyon was gorgeous! And tapas with the Gamila Teastick crew was was tastier (and cheaper) than most of the strip fare.

What was your favorite part of the Expo? What are you looking forward to about next year?

New Article: Tea & the Internet

I have a new article out on using the Internet as a marketing tool for your tea business. Excerpt:

Twitter is sometimes referred to as “micro-blogging” because it has informal, blog-like content and a 140-character maximum. For each tweet (Twitter message), Jacobs said, he averages less than 10 minutes of writing and more than $500 in revenue.

Cason launched a Twitter campaign in March to reach 10,000 followers (readers) by April 1. Although he failed in the goal, he did generate publicity and reached 1,100 followers – enough to temporarily crash his site when he tweeted a 40 percent off sale.

“The best thing about Twitter is you get to follow who you want,” Cason said, “so you know that everyone who is receiving your tweets wants to know what you have to say. All you have to worry about is telling them what they want to hear.”

Dake recommended Twitter over other social media, video and blogging, explaining that it’s efficient, easy, free and effective for immediate connections with people. At the recent SXSW festival in Austin, TX, he used Twitter for a Tweet Up (get-together) where he gave away Mighty Leaf. He said it generated word-of-mouth publicity that lasted weeks after the event.

Sources gave these tips for using Twitter:

*Put content before sales.
*Keep posts educational, casual, unique and personable.
*Give it a face, but don’t make it overly personal.
*Follow Twitterers in related areas.
*Tweet often.


You can read the full story on World Tea News. Enjoy!