Tazo Profile

When I worked at Whole Foods, Tazo was a customer favorite. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed when they were bought out by Starbucks. However, when I was India, I saw the extensive nonprofit work they were doing on fair trade tea plantations in Darjeeling and decided to rethink them a bit. Here's an interesting company profile I came across in my research. Enjoy!

Excerpt:

"...tea is making a comeback, with U.S. sales of $3 billion in 2006, up from $2 billion in 2001, excluding restaurants, according to the market-research firm Mintel.

The U.S. market is dominated by three brands — Lipton, AriZona and Snapple — with smaller players like Stash and Numi growing fast.

Specialty tea companies had trouble with rapid growth in the past because tea growers were not producing enough high-quality tea for them, Jage said. That is changing, with more growers providing top-quality teas now that they see sustained demand for it."

Scissor Sisters

I don't usually post about music or celebrities, but this is pretty cool. Honest Tea recently posted about the Scissor Sisters drinking their tea in an NYC visit. Fun!

On/Off Mug

Charles and Marie has done it again! I've posted about some of their hot teaware before, but here's their new fun toy: a mug that operates on binary. Cool.

Resolutions/National Hot Tea Month

One of the most common New Years resolutions in the US is to lose weight. Studies have shown that drinking tea aids in weight loss, but perhaps an even larger benefit to weight loss than the ingestion of tea is the REPLACEMENT of sugary sodas and "juice drinks." Either way you look at it, it makes perfect sense that between the weight loss benefits and the cold spell, January is National Hot Tea Month. If you haven't already, take this month to drink to your health and make a healthy habit of tea!

Makaibari Eco-Tourism

Soon, Makaibari (a fantastic estate which I visited last summer) will have a luxury eco-tourism resort.

Harsh Neotia, chairman of India's famous Ambuja Realty said, “We have finally decided on our partner for tea tourism. We could not have found a better partner than Makaibari, which is globally renowned for its tea. Now we will decide on the scale of the project and the investments involved along with the nature of the partnership."

Exciting!!! Read the full story here.

Honey for Coughs

Apparently, your grandmother was right. According to a recent study, honey is a better way to treat children's coughs than dextromethorphan (DXM), the most common active ingredient in cough medicine. "The results were so strong that we were able to say clearly that honey was better than no treatment and dextromethorphan was not," said Dr. Ian M. Paul of Pennsylvania State University in Hershey. Personally, I love a dollop of honey in a good Hot Toddy when I have a cough. Yum!

Read more about the study here.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! May it be filled with peace, happiness, and lots of tea.


~Vee