This is a new page whose intention is to bring stories and information about Tea
elsewhere in the world Please Click on the story you wish to read

 Display Hong Kong Airport

Selling Tea in Southern Australia

Tea Drinking in China increases dramatically

Tea Bubble Brews In China

Yorkshire Tea Growing 

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April 28 2013
 
"A correspondent has sent this interesting story with photos above
                of a display at Hong Kong Airport"

More facts about Tea

 Lu Yu was born in 733 and wrote this classic after studying all things tea as a young man.

 It should be remembered that Robert Fortune and many others in their quest to unlock Tea's secrets  travelled to China in disguise and faced great dangers.

 Had they known, they could simply have obtained Lu Yu's book which would have told them all they wanted to know! (not then available at Amazon.com)

 (a bit of useless trivia: Gongfu Tea. Gongfu means disciplined skill, hence Bruce Lee's Kung Fu!

12th Century Display	Bamboo Whisk for Powder
Bowl from Qing dynasty	Changsa Teapot

Gongfu Tea	Ming 1600 - 1620
Pot

Ming Display Large Teapot                                                  Steeped tea   January 14 2013 Bill Henderson  tells us this interesting story about selling tea in Southern Australia Went up to visit a small town called Sassafras in the Dandenong Ranges, overlooking Melbourne, and came across a wonderful little place called Miss Marples Tea Room  and an adjoining shop called Tea Leaves which had an amazing selection of teas for sale. All loose tea, no tea bags, and I'll attach a couple of pictures which may be of interest to ex tea planters.   It was doing quite a brisk trade with what appeared to be mainly tourists, but even I bought some Darjeeling. The prices were extremely high with first flush Darjeeling at $32.50 per 100grams so I went for the late season darjeeling at $7.00 per 100g. Wonder what the producer gets?   Didn't see any Seychelles tea but told them I would get  some for them to display.  Thank you Bill April 7 2012 We are indebted to Aline Dobbie for passing on the information about Tea drinking In China from Today's Times Today's Times has a huge article ‘The higher price everybody will pay as China develops taste for a proper cup of English tea'.   Well the Chinese have now discovered black tea which is being sourced from India....guess who McLeod Russel is the world's leading producer of black tea, supplying about 104 million kg a year from gardens in the Indian states of Assam and West Bengal as well as Uganda, Rwanda and Vietnam. It was founded in 1869 by Captain J H Williamson and Richard Boycott Magor, British colonial tea merchants.  It occupies the same offices that it moved into in 1894.  The company is responsible for more than 10 per cent of Indian's annual production of 990 million kg of black tea.  India is easily the top black tea producer, with about 50 per cent of global output last year.  China produces about 1.1billion kg of green tea, virtually of which is consumed domestically.  Mr Khaitan predicts robust growth in the next few years as newly affluent Chinese drinkers acquire a taste for it.  ‘It is becoming more fashionable in China and younger Chinese drinkers are starting to drink it instead of green tea'.  He said higher prices were inevitable because the main producers - India, Kenya and Sri Lanka - were struggling to meet rising demand.  India and Sri Lanka have no extra land available for tea cultivation and Kenya has only very little he said. 165 m cups of tea drunk each day in Britain which equates to 60.2 billion cups of tea in a year.  1662 Catherine of Braganza wife of Charles II reputedly brought the tea-drinking habit to England.  1773 year of the Boston Tea Party, a colonial protest against tea duties.  $2.85 per kilogram - average price of tea in 2011.  4 million tones of global tea consumption - 990,000 tonnes tea production in India.

October 6 2010

From the Daily Telegraph of London-kindly forwarded by Robin Humphries

'Tea bubble' brews in China

Chinese financial speculators are caught in a buying frenzy for a variety of tea that has seen its prices soar to levels only rivalled by the finest wines.

By Peter Foster in Beijing
Published: 9:00PM BST 01 Oct 2010

Tea picking in China Photo: ALAMY

The rare tea made from bushes from the tea gardens of the Ming Dynasty emperors has become the latest craze for wealthy Chinese investors with their sights on a quick profit.

Prices for the Dahongpao tea, which is only grown in a small mountainous area of east coast province of Fujian, have increased tenfold since the middle of last year with online tea traders selling a single kilo for more than £1,000, the country's state media has reported.

"I never thought it would get so expensive," a tea producer, Wu Zongyan said. "It's one price one day, another price another day. Between when we pick the leaves and when it's ready to sell, the price has already gone up."

Chinese traditionally prize tea as the symbolic heart of national culture and believe that in varieties and taste differentials rival that of wine. China is prone to extreme speculative bubbles as opportunity-starved investors seek a home for their cash outside the traditional venues of the stock and property markets which are themselves notoriously volatile and speculative.

In the past year auction houses in China and Hong Kong have all reported fetching record prices for everything from Imperial artwork to French claret and, most recently, Communist-era stamps as speculators search for an outlet for their money.

CCTV, the state broadcaster has reported that the classic signs of a bubble were already evident in the Dahongpao tea trade, with the number of shops selling the tea in Wuyi, the town where the tea is produced, leaping from 200 to 1,500.

As with fine wine, dealers are also reporting fake teas are starting to appear on the market in another sign that the bubble might be about to burst.

An online tea trader told the The Daily Telegraph said prices had risen on he back of demonstrably absurd rumours - including that all Dahongpao tea came from just six bushes.

In reality, genuine Dahongpao is said to come from bushes propagated from six trees that were originally planted to serve the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) emperors.

This is not the first time China has had a 'tea bubble'. In 2008 prices of Pu'er tea, a dark blend from southwestern Yunnan province suddenly spike to several thousand pounds a kilo.

Investors believed prices would be kept buoyant by a report that China's Olympic Games committee would put a tin of Pu'er tea on every competitor's bed - but prices soon crashed back down to earth.

But the level of interest in teas for investment is likely to rise as wealth levels increase. Chinese diplomats fondly recall President Richard Nixon's dismay that Chairman Mao Tse-tung offered him an official gift of 100 tea leaves on his ground-breaking visit to China in 1972. It fell to another Chinese leader to explain that the quantity represented half the wealth of China.

October 28 2007

Indian tea experts come to the UK

  We are indebted to babul Mcleod for leading us to see the article about Indian tea experts coming to the UK to give advice to a Yorkshire Company who are planting tea near Harrogate Yorkshire--thank you Babul. One of the experts is Rajan Mehra the husband of Shalini Mehra who organises the Camellia magazine--well done Rajan and your colleagues

A tea company in the northern English county of Yorkshire has sought help from India in its plans to develop one of the UK's first tea gardens.  Taylors of Harrogate turned to experts from the state of Assam in its efforts to grow tea in "God's own county".

The Yorkshire crop will take a few years to develop

The tea plantation is located in a small courtyard outside Taylors tea and coffee factory. It is home to over 100 China Jat (or China type) tea bushes, planted on small hills, reminiscent of the best tea estates in Assam. The three Indian experts - Rajan Mehra, Muku Rahman and Saurabh Shankar - came from some of the top tea estates in Assam and gave advice on the best ways to grow tea bushes.

Continuous sunshine

The China Jat is usually found at high altitudes because of its ability to survive in the cold, and can grow up to 50ft in height. Experts say it usually takes between three to six years to mature.

"The Indian delegation provided us with really useful advice," a Taylors spokesman said.  But the India team also cautioned that growing the plants would not be a cup of tea either."



"We were told that it will be no mean feat to nurture bushes which usually flourish in the tropics, requiring hours of continuous sunshine each day," a company spokeswoman said.  "However, a tea garden in (the county of) Cornwall is already successfully cultivating tea, something we hope to recreate, only in an even more northerly UK location."

The Head of Tea Buying at Taylors, Ian Brabbin, says that tea is usually named after the region it's grown in.  "So with a bit of patience, luck and advice from India, in a few years time 'Yorkshire Tea' really will come from Yorkshire!"