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.

Kevin Rose Tea Interview

At the World Tea Expo, I had the pleasure of interviewing a number of tea celebs. The interviews will be popping up on World Tea News over the following weeks. Here's the first of the interviews I conducted: talking tea with Kevin Rose of digg.com. More soon!

Tea Blender Interview

At the NYC Coffee and Tea Festival, I had the pleasure of meeting Nini Ordoubadi, tea blender and founder of TAY TEA. She mainly blends rooibos, which she acquired a passion for while visiting her husband's family in South Africa, and is known for her innovative flavor profiles and, ahem, unusual names. ("Better Than Sex" is one of her attention-grabbers.) I just learned that she has designed an artisanal tea collection for Henri Bendel. Exciting! The signature tea line includes:

Little Black Dress (black)
Bendel Rose (black)
Girl's Playground (green)
Bendelicious (green)
Safe Sex (rooibos)
Morning After (herbal)

Watch this great interview on tea blending with Nini from Revel in New York, a video blog that does fascinating profiles on noteworthy New Yorkers, to learn more about Nini's approach to tea and (with tea) life.

Pate de Fruit

Several of the people I interviewed for the tea and sweets article (I'm not linking it anymore... By now you've read it or you're not going to read it!) lauded pate de fruit as an overlooked/lost treasure of the tea pairing world. I'd never actually tried it before, so before I heard the recommendations, I thought of it as nothing more than glorified gummy bears. The conviction behind endorsements from people like James Norwood Pratt made me very curious about them, though, and I was lucky enough to have Charles Chocolates send me some samples!



Chuck Seigel of Charles Chocolates warned me that two of the flavors, Blood Orange and Passion Fruit, are too acidic to pair with tea. He was right -- they would have overpowered even a strong tea. (Perhaps they could pair with an intense fruit tea? But I can't see that being very interesting...) At any rate, they were good on their own, but the others were wonderful with tea. The White Peach was airy and floral, perfect for a first flush Darjeeling or a slightly astringent Japanese green tea. The Papaya was mellow but tropical, sweet, complex and lingering. I'd love to pair it with a chocolaty pu-erh, second flush Darjeeling, strong Keemun or mellow Ceylon. The Raspberry was refreshing and full of flavor, but not too tart -- ideal for Assam or Sri Lankan black teas or vegetal/astringent greens. Yum! I really hope the idea of pairing teas and pate de fruit catches on again in the near future! I'd love to be able to go into a tearoom and get these with my tea.

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. :)

Lady Mendl's Tea Salon

I recently had the incredible pleasure of joining tea etiquette authority/author Ellen Easton for afternoon tea at Lady Mendl's Tea Salon (at The Inn at Irving Place). I'll leave Ellen's fascinating and unique personal history and immense tea knowledge for another day and focus on Lady Mendl's for now.

If you love great tea and food but normally avoid afternoon tea because you find it too fussy, then this is the place for you. They take care of every detail so you don't have to do anything but show up on time, enjoy and pay the bill. The food, from hearty smoked salmon on pumpernickel and goat cheese with sun-dried tomato on seven grain to delicate, creamy crepe cake and petits fours, is magnificent. (Don't let the idea of afternoon tea or the low, especially by NYC standards, price fool you -- this five course meal requires that you arrive with an appetite.) The tea menu, which includes a number of single-origin teas and even some custom blends, is delectable. (If you'd like, you can add candied ginger, orange zest or beautiful handmade sugar cubes, but the teas also stand perfectly well alone.) The decor, from the custom-upholstered furniture and the working fireplaces in each room to the fresh flowers that coordinate with each room's unique color scheme, is impeccable. (Perhaps this is why famously detail-oriented director Wes Anderson considers the Inn at Irving Place a favorite spot for writing and editing his films.) The staff is attentive and knowledgeable without being cloying. (Although I'm sure Ellen would want you to brush up on your tea etiquette before you arrive, the waitstaff do not seem the types to turn their noses up if you happen to commit some mild faux pas.)



I really have to say that this was one of my favorite tearoom visits of all time, especially as it was in the middle of my recent World Tea News article frenzy and I needed a dose of serenity with a dollop of luxury more than anything. There's a certain understated elegance about the whole experience of Lady Mendl's that seems lost on many New Yorkers and tourists alike. The simple act of sitting down to enjoy tea, food and company is so often lost on an espresso-chugging, power-lunch kind of city. I'm glad to find that it remains intact, tucked away in a nearly unmarked building on a quiet little street near Union Square in the heart of old New York's Gramercy Park.

PS -- Reservations required. Call (212) 533-4600 to make them.

New Vee Tea Article

There's a new Vee Tea article up on World Tea News! It's part two of the American tea palate series. Excerpt:

Despite the shift toward “pure” teas, blended teas are holding strong. Most sources linked flavored teas’ popularity to palatial accessibility, but Pratt offered a more practical reason: “Flavors are essential in places like most of the American West, where the water is so bad, real tea flavors are undetectable.”

Flavored specialty teas are here to stay, but sources said they are undergoing radical changes. According to Harrison, “In the past, low-quality black tea was a carrier for an artificial fruit flavor. Now, there is an understanding for intelligent tea blending that goes way beyond fruit and fannings.”


Read the rest on World Tea News!

World Tea News'' Vee Tea Article

World Tea News just put out a new Vee Tea article. Yay! Excerpt:

As RTDs capture a larger share of the beverage market, they shape the palates of a new wave of tea drinkers. Today's RTD trends can give us a glimpse of what's on the horizon for hot tea.

The shift toward RTDs

Seth Goldman, TeaEO of Honest Tea, said, “The single biggest thing feeding RTD growth is that people are moving away from sodas.” The primary reason: high fructose corn syrup.


Not sure if I mentioned it, but I am now a features writer for WTN. Part two (loose tea) will be out in a few weeks. Meanwhile, you can read up on RTDs and the American palate and
check out my profile. If you'd like me to write for your publication or company, you can contact me at vee (at) veetea (dot) com.

I'm off to have lunch and tea at Google today. More on that next week!

World Tea Expo, Day 2

Random notes for the day:

Trends:
Many more young people in attendance than last year
Lots of tea factories, fair trade farmers' alliances, and plantations in booths (increased ability to source directly)
More organics

Class:
Tea and Meditation by the authors of Tea Here Now, very interesting presentation on the connections between the two

Highlights:
Meeting James Norwood Pratt
Getting to see all the booths up close
Snagging samples of some fantastic shaped/flowering teas
Talking tea with other tea people
Buying some recent translations on Chinese and Taiwanese teas (particularly oolong and pu-erh)

It was an incredibly full day. I'm taking a moment to relax in my hotel room (if you can call blogging relaxing!) and then I'm off to dinner with Rajah Banerjee of Makaibari and a night on the town with a bunch of tea kids. Fun! More tomorrow...