Fans of Downton Abbey may be fascinated—and a bit envious—of the Crawley daughters' morning ritual of awakening to a tray of hot tea placed upon their recumbent laps by their ladies' maids. I suspect the grand estate house was quite drafty; consequently, more than a few cups of hot tea were consumed before the pampered…
When Monkeys Picked Tea
I received a call a few years ago from an MTV staffer who was producing a story on "manly teas." He had been offered a monkey-picked oolong in a tea store. He was fascinated about this rare tea and thought it would be appealing for his male audience. "How do they train monkeys to pick…
In Search of Oriental Beauty in the Tea Fields of Taiwan
Oriental Beauty, one of the world's great oolongs, begins with bug-bitten tea leaves from the mountain tea gardens of Taiwan.
Duck in for Afternoon Tea at the Peabody Hotel Memphis
Bruce Richardson reviews the afternoon tea service at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and stays to interview the hotel's Duck Master before the the daily duck parade.
The Dutch First Brought Tea to America
The earliest reference to the use of tea in Holland appears in a letter dated January 2, 1637, from the “Lords XVII,” the name by which the seventeen directors of the Dutch East India Company were popularly known, to the Governor General of Netherlands East India at Batavia. It reads: As tea begins to come…
Taking Tea in Tokyo
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. The Ritz-Carlton Tokyo Lobby Lounge. Photo courtesy Ritz-Carlton.…
Kagoshima – Japan’s Second Largest Tea Growing Prefecture
As America's demand for Japanese green tea exploded in the 1880s, large commercial tea gardens were planted further south in Kagoshima Prefecture
The Ritual of Tea
My wife and I have found great delight in introducing our grandson to the ritual of tea. Green, strawberry, or black with lots of milk, Davis is enthralled with all the tea families and takes great pleasure in pouring the tea from his tiny teapot into his porcelain cup with the giraffe handle. He gives…
Why Orange Pekoe Tea Contains No Oranges
William of Orange, Husband of Queen Mary, Kensington Palace Every tea seller tells a story about a customer who sent back their pot of Orange Pekoe tea because it did not taste of oranges. How can this be? The answer to the disappointed drinker’s dilemma may be found in the fact that, while Orange Pekoe…
Tour the Tea Clipper Cutty Sark in London
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…