I was in Shanghai between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, just as the first mention of a mysterious virus was beginning to appear in the news. I returned two weeks before travel from China was banned and I continue to stay in touch with Chinese industry officials as well as with importers here in America. Elmwood Inn Fine Teas has received a few calls asking about any risks associated with drinking Chinese teas. Here are the facts: *Elmwood Inn Fine Teas stocked up on Chinese teas last year because of the threat of tariffs. All teas in our warehouse and in our delivery system were har ..read more

Shanghai is home to countess tearooms where exquisite teas have been expertly steeped in the Eastern tradition for hundreds of years. But in the historic heart of the city, English style afternoon teas are all the rage in the high-end hotels that line The Bund. In 2018, I photographed afternoon tea at the Art Deco Fairmont Peace Hotel for TeaTime magazine. A year later, I was back to experience the tea service a few blocks away at the Waldorf Astoria. The Waldorf Astoria on the Bund in Shanghai. The embankment, or bund, alongside the Huangpu River is where, a century ago, trading ships ..read more

I am often asked to design teas based upon art, fashion, or historical events. I always find it a rewarding challenge that blends my love for art with my tea blending profession. One of my newest commissions came from the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, home to more than 2,000 paintings, 250 sculptures, 20,000 drawings and watercolors, 40,000 prints, and 35,000 rare books and manuscripts. I was given six paintings from their collection and asked to blend a signature tea for each. The tea tins, bearing the artwork, are now on sale in the museum gift shop. Here ..read more

The Summer Olympics will be hosted in Tokyo, Japan in 2020 and many travelers will be visiting the city with tea on their minds. If it’s a classical afternoon tea they desire, the lobby lounge of the Ritz Carlton offers a sumptuous teatime with an unmatched view. I often avoid using the term “high tea” because, historically, the more correct title should be “afternoon tea.”  But, at the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo, “high tea” – with views of Mount Fuji in the distance – is an accurate description of the elegant tea affair that unfolds daily on the 45th floor of one of the city’s most luxurious ho ..read more

Most of the world continues to be baffled by America’s fascination with iced tea. We drink 80% of our tea poured over ice and, for over a half-century, we have expected this ubiquitous beverage to be “a crisp, clear tea that’s never cloudy,” as first advertised in 1971 by Nestea Instant Iced Tea. While we writers wax eloquently about the legendary tea gardens of China, India and Sri Lanka, many readers will find it surprising that over 40% of the tea imported annually into the United States comes from Argentina.  Tea bushes, planted there in long rows on flat ground, are skimmed weekly ..read more

A news report about plastic particles leaching from tea sachets and into teacups has been spreading online and through news publications across Canada, England, and the United States since the end of September when a research study from Montreal’s McGill University was published. The small scale study showed plastic teabags released as much as 60 millionths of a gram of plastic into a cup of tea. News outlets seized upon the headline "You may be swallowing billions of tiny plastic particles while sipping a cup of freshly brewed gourmet tea." One news blog went on to say “The bags, which ..read more

Interest in the tea rituals of Downton Abbey and the runaway success of the BBC Great British Bake-Off series has spurred a resurrection of Victorian recipes, including one of my favorites - Dundee Cake. Named for a city on the western coast of Scotland (where I spent one of the coldest nights of my life in May 1979), Dundee Cake originated in 19th century Scotland and was originally a mass-produced cake made by the Keiller Marmalade Company.  The company’s promotion of Dundee Cakes made with Keiller marmalade must have certainly spurred sales because their signature crock jars are sti ..read more

A question posed to me almost daily is “What’s your favorite tea?”  For a tea buyer, there is no quick response to that seemingly-simple query. The answer depends upon where I am in the world, who’s joining me for tea, and the season or time of day. I often turn the table and pose a question to my inquisitor. “Would you like to know the tea I drink every morning—as does my wife, my staff, and almost everyone who has ever worked for me?” I ask. Now they are intrigued. That answer is easy. It is a single-estate, Tippy Grade Assam. Assam teas changed the course of the Western taste for tea when ..read more

The iconic clipper ship Cutty Sark has come back to life in her new Greenwich dry dock on the eastern edge of London, not far from where tea clippers once brought endless cargos of tea into the warehouses of the East India Company.  Her journey here was not without incident, and we are fortunate to have an opportunity to once again walk the decks of this proud ship.  I spent a day exploring this great maritime treasure chest on assignment for TeaTime magazine. Britain’s most famous and only surviving tea clipper was built in Scotland in 1869 and set sail on her first commercial voyage ..read more

A question posed to me almost daily is “What’s your favorite tea?”  For a tea buyer, there is no quick response to that seemingly-simple query. The answer depends upon where I am in the world, who’s joining me for tea, and the season or time of day. I often turn the table and pose a question to my inquisitor. “Would you like to know the tea I drink every morning—as does my wife, my staff, and almost everyone who has ever worked for me?” I ask. Now they are intrigued. That answer is easy. It is a single-estate, Tippy Grade Assam. Assam teas changed the course of the Western taste for tea when ..read more