Talking Tea

At Talking Tea we've long wanted to explore the seemingly deep divide between tea and coffee, and between tea drinkers and coffee drinkers. But lately we've come to realize that the divide might not be very deep at all, and that there might be more similarities between the two beverages, and the two communities, than we ever imagined. To help us look at how the gap between coffee and tea is alread...

Today on Talking Tea we welcome back Kevin Gascoyne of Montreal's Camellia Sinensis Tea House. If you've heard any of our earlier episodes with Kevin, you'll know that Kevin is a specialist, and one of the world's leading authorities, on Indian tea. Kevin returns to the show today to chat with us about some of the challenges currently facing Indian tea production, and how an innovative new project...

There is  an amazement of tea that's hard to capture in words. It can happen when we experience a tea for the first time and are astounded by flavors and aromas unlike anything we've experienced before. Or when we revisit one of our favorite teas and find elements we never noticed before. Or when we find ourselves drinking a tea that's been expertly prepared and artfully presented in a way that aw...

One of our guiding principles here at Talking Tea is that conversations about tea and tea culture have the power to deepen our understanding and enhance our experience of tea. Today on Talking Tea we're exploring one of the ways people are increasingly coming together to share and talk about tea: tea meetup groups. We're joined by Roy Lamberty, founder and organizer of the New York Tea Society, a...

Today we welcome back Kevin Gascoyne of Montreal's famed Camellia Sinensis Tea House to explore tea pairings, and specifically pairing tea with scotch. We begin our chat by looking at some current developments in tea innovation and sophistication, and then begin to look directly at pairing and explore how two different flavor profiles can play against each other. Kevin gives us the how and why of...

To kick off Talking Tea's fourth season, we're at Té Company, an exquisite teahouse in New York's West Village, talking about an exquisite tea - the aptly named Oriental Beauty.   We chat with Elena Liao and Frederico Ribeiro, owners and founders of Té Company, about the origins of their teahouse, how they've created a cohesive whole between tea and food, and the unique ways they help their custom...

When we serious tea drinkers start to broaden our knowledge of tea, we often encounter two terms that can seem mysterious or confusing: cultivar and origin. What is a tea cultivar, and why is it important? And what exactly does the origin of the tea refer to, and why should we care? To begin looking in depth at cultivar and origin, we're joined today by Austin Hodge of Seven Cups Fine Chinese Teas...

Earlier this year, TJ Williamson of the World Tea Podcast invited us to join him in leading a session on industry-specific podcasting at Podcamp Toronto . And when the nice folks at Podcamp also gave us the opportunity to record a Talking Tea episode in front of a live audience at Toronto's Imperial Pub ,  TJ graciously agreed to join us as a guest on Talking Tea, to chat about the backgrounds of...

We're calling this episode "learning tea" because learning about tea can be like learning a language - like learning English, or French, or Chinese, or any other language. There's a vocabulary to tea, and the world of tea is so vast, with so many words, facts and concepts to learn and keep track of, that it's easy to get overwhelmed. Compounding this in the English-speaking world is the fact that...

Most tea consumers never have the opportunity to visit the source of the teas we drink - the tea growers and tea makers in the various tea-producing regions around the world. So here at Talking Tea we've been wanting to hear an insider's take on sourcing trips, to get an idea of what sourcing trips are like and what tea retailers look for when they source their teas. Today we welcome back Shiho Ka...

As temperatures begin to drop outdoors and autumn settles into early winter, the scent of smoke rising from chimneys fills the evening air in just about every place we visit in the cooler climates. But the unmistakable aroma and taste of smoke is not something many of us actively seek out in our teas, and the famously smokey Lapsang Souchong is often overlooked by serious tea drinkers. So it's bee...

Today on Talking Tea we focus on the nuances of flavor, and how to fully appreciate the taste of tea by engaging all of our senses. Guiding us through this exploration of tasting is Billy Dietz, a tea development specialist based in Montreal. We chat with Billy via Skype as he shares a little of his own remarkable tea journey and then takes us through two methods of preparing a tea he selected for...

What did Talking Tea do this summer? We went to summer school, of course. Tea summer school, that is. In August we attended one of the English-language Summer School workshops offered through the tea school at Montreal's Camellia Sinensis. After the workshop we sat down with Kevin Gascoyne of Camellia Sinensis to chat about current and emerging trends in tea education. Kevin talks with us about Ca...

This week on Talking Tea we're exploring the intricacies of sencha, the most ubiquitous of Japanese green teas. Sencha? Intricate? Many tea drinkers don't think of those two words in the same context, but we sit down with Zach Mangan of Kettl, a Japanese tea seller based in Fukuoka, Japan and Brooklyn, New York, to sample some senchas and to look at how multifaceted this tea can be. Kettl has deve...

Since we launched Talking Tea in 2014, one of our main areas of focus has been the continuing growth of tea enthusiasm in North America. We've chatted with tea sellers, educators and writers, but we haven't had the chance to talk with anyone actually farming tea in the US or Canada. Until now. Today on Talking Tea we welcome Eliah Halpeny and Cam Muir of Big Island Tea, a pioneering tea farm and p...

This week on Talking Tea we return to the Tea Institute at Penn State University to explore the evolution and burgeoning growth of interest in Japanese tea ceremony study at the Institute and beyond, and the transformative nature of tea ceremony practice. We first chat with Drew Hanson, founding instructor of the Urasenke program at the Institute. Drew talks with us about his own journey from art...

If you've listened to our Talkin' Matcha episodes you'll recognize the name of Tyas Huybrechts. Tyas has been a blogger and tea ceremony instructor based in Osaka and Kyoto, Japan, and we're delighted to welcome Tyas back to Talking Tea to chat about his new venture, The Tea Crane, a company focused on chemical-free Japanese tea. Tyas shares his views on how the use of chemical fertilizers and pes...

An institute dedicated to intensive, interdisciplinary tea education and research is not something you'll typically see at a college or university in North America - or anywhere else, for that matter. But it's exactly what you'll find at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, where an initiative originally undertaken by students has resulted in the groundbreaking, university-funded...

This week on Talking Tea we look at the growing popularity of tea and tea culture among youth and teens. Chatting with us (via Skype) is Connor Adlam of Tching.com , the well-known blog and online forum for tea information. Connor, the intern social media editor at Tching and also a member of this demographic, shares his perspectives both from a personal standpoint and from his work at Tching. We...

We're releasing this episode in between the Western new year and the Asian lunar new year, and we took this opportunity to quiet our minds, turn inward a bit, and look again at tea as a contemplative practice. Chatting with us in this exploration is Ven. Hyeonmin Prajna, a Zen teacher in the Five Mountain Zen Order based in New York City, and a student and practitioner of Japanese tea ceremony in...

In our last episode of Talking Tea we began to explore the elements of a quality tea with Shunan Teng of New York City's Tea Drunk. As examples of what to look for in choosing tea, Shunan selected two historically famous teas from China. We began in our last episode by looking at Gua Pian, a green tea, and now we chat with Shunan about Bai Hao Yin Zhen, also known as Silver Needles, as we continue...

  This week on Talking Tea we return to Tea Drunk in New York City to chat with Shunan Teng, founder and owner of Tea Drunk, about tips and tricks for identifying quality teas. As an example of what to look for in choosing tea, Shunan selects a Gua Pian, a historically famous green tea from China.  Shunan uses our exploration of Gua Pian to break some myths about tea quality, and tells us what to...

We're continuing our exploration of Taiwanese oolongs this week with a focus on one of the most celebrated of Taiwanese teas, Baozhong. Shiuwen Tai, of Seattle's Floating Leaves Tea, gave us such a fantastic and comprehensive intro to Taiwanese oolongs in our last episode that we had to invite her back to give us some more in-depth knowledge, and we asked Shiuwen to talk about Baozhong because, we...

This week on Talking Tea we begin exploring the spectrum of Taiwanese oolongs with Shiuwen Tai of Seattle's Floating Leaves Tea. Shiuwen chats with us via Skype about the history of tea in Taiwan, and how Taiwan's tea production has been influenced by its relationships with both China and Japan. We discuss some of the factors that go into forming the unique flavor profiles of oolong teas from Taiw...

We’re back in Montreal this week on Talking Tea chatting with Kevin Gascoyne of Montreal’s famed Camellia Sinensis Tea House. Kevin, a co-owner of Camellia Sinensis, is known around the world as a prominent tea taster, educator and author. We talk with Kevin about his passion for Darjeeling teas, how classically grown Darjeelings compare with newer clonal teas, and current trends in tea processing...