Black Friday/Cyber Monday Tea Sales

Looking for an awesome deal on tea and teaware for the holidays? Check out this list of Black Friday & Cyber Monday Tea Sales I wrote for About.com. It includes deals from Adagio, Rishi, Samovar, Teance, teas, Etc. and more. If you have a tea company that's offering a deal for the holidays, please add it to the list! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!!

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?

Teance Spring Harvest Parties

Teance is quickly selling out of seats for their Spring Harvest Parties. I went to a Fall Harvest Party there last year and HIGHLY recommend it. Details from Teance:

ASIA ADVENTURES
May 29th 7pm
Spring Harvest Tea Party I

Celebrate the Spring Harvest with us at Teance. Our tea buyer will share stories from this year's tea trip during a slide show and a tasting of rare teas. She will speak extensively about farm conditions, the tea market in China, and of course entertaining anecdotes of the lives of the tea producers she meets along the way will be included. Each trip is full of surprises!

Rare Phoenix Oolongs
Maojian Green
Taiwan Oolongs

Space is limited. PLEASE RSVP. $18 per person

RARE TEAS FROM THE HARVEST
The Art of Tea reaches its zenith in the form of these rare teas, produced each year in extremely small quantities by only a few remaining qualified artisans. They are usually commissioned by the Central Government of China for gift-giving, and never available for sale. Even the most die-hard tea aficionados may never get a chance to taste such rarities.

Anxi White Tea
Keemun Spring Bud
Nanjing Yu Hua Rain Flower


Space is limited. PLEASE RSVP. $25 per person.

Make a reservation here.

Tea Chocolates

Did you get your mom something tea-related for Mother's Day? I did! Check out these yummy tea chocolates from Charles Chocolates and Teance. Other mom-friendly tea gifts include:

Flowering teas
Flower-based tisanes
Chocolate teas
Cool teapots
Afternoon tea for two (or more)

What did you get for your tea-loving mother?

Tea Sales

Here are some tea sales for the week, the month and pre-Valentine's Day:

Rishi Tea -- sale on Organic Wild Rose, Silver Needle Jasmine and White Tea Melange through Valentine's Day
Teance -- $20 off online purchases of $70 or more this week, enter code "VALENTINE" at checkout
Urbana Tea -- 30% off all online teas for the month of February, enter code "URB3510"

Do you know of any other cool tea sales going on right now? If so, please add them in the comments!

Top Ten West Coast East-Meets-West Tea Spots

Sunset Magazine's current issue includes a great list of the West Coast's top ten East-meets-West tea houses. Cool! The fantastic Teance tops the list, and some of my other favorites (Imperial Tea Court, Tao of Tea, Le Palais de Thes) also make the list. I hope to visit some more of the tea houses listed in my future trips out West. Have any of you tried them? What's your opinion?

Leaving SF...

So sad to be leaving San Francisco today... I can't wait to come back! It's on my short list of cities to live in once I tire of NYC, so we'll see -- maybe I'll end up there soon! :) In the meantime, I have a few goodies to take back with me -- amazing oolongs and an "eight treasures" herbal tea from Teance. (Next time I go to Imperial Tea Court, I'll have to be sure to save time for selecting pu-erhs, instead of just interviewing the owner (at the Ferry Building location) and enjoying the incredible hand-pulled noodle soup with friends (at the Berkeley location). Still, I'm very glad to have the teas I managed to pick up!) What's your favorite tea from a vacation/business trip?

In SF

I flew into SF after stopping off in Chicago on Friday night. It has been a busy trip so far: a tea tasting at Teance, interviews with tea professionals at Teance and Samovar, time with old friends and amazing food and tea. As always, I am very impressed with the approach to food here, and am glad to see many aspects of that approach (appreciative, contemplative, responsible) reflected in tea. Also, the weather has been fantastic. It was over 80 degrees this weekend! More soon...




Golden Gate Park












Winnie Yu at Teance in Berkeley













An amazing spread of sweets at Samovar (where I also had a phenomenal gyokuro and a great honey-aged phoenix oolong)

Tea Sales

There are some good tea sales going on right now. Here are a few:

Teance has free shipping for orders over $50 through September 30.
Urbana has half off all rooibos through the end of October.
ITO EN is selling cases of Oi Ocha, Japan's #1 RTD, at a discount through September 30.

Do you know of any others? Let me know and I'll post them!

Dim Sum, Mooncakes and Tea

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of joining Winnie Yu (of Teance) and some of her friends for vegetarian dim sum and tea in Chinatown. (Winnie's rule -- Always bring your own tea to dim sum! Good advice...) She gave me these fantastic lard-free mooncakes, which she ordered from China for Teance. They are an important of the annual Moon Festival, which happens mid-fall, and were used to smuggle secret messages during the Ming Revolution. Since they are very heavy sweets, Winnie suggested pairing them with pu-erh, but they also go very well with the wonderful Tieguanyin Winnie gave me.

You can read more about pairing tea and sweets in my most recent World Tea News article. You can buy Winnie's incredible teas (which she sources from farms directly) on Teance's site. Maybe if they get enough emails requesting mooncakes, they'll offer them online next year. :)

Tomorrow at the Asian Art Museum (SF)

There's a cool tea event at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco tomorrow. If you're in the area, check it out! Details below:

Thursday, September 4
5 to 9 pm
FREE with museum admission ($5 after 5 pm)

Still dusty from its annual trek to Burning Man, Tealchemy's Tea Temple will be erected inside the Asian Art Museum for MATCHA. Everyone can sip earthy tea inside this mammoth atmospheric, communal space, which celebrates the centuries-old nomadic trade and travel of the Silk Routes. Elsewhere in the museum, taste teas from India, Persia, and Tibet (courtesy Samovar) or those along China's Tea and Horse Roads (courtesy Teance).

Discover how these different blends are brewed and grind your own spicy chai (Indian tea), mortar and pestle style. Learn about tea and its cultural influences, see art of the spice routes on a guided tour, and view Power & Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty before it closes (Sept. 21).