Sadly, as is often the case in LA, the stress accrued in getting to an appointment counteracts the relaxation the appointment is designed to deliver. But despite the fact that it was Parents’ Weekend at UCLA and the campus was teeming with proud parents and their UCLA sons and daughters, … Continue reading
Our early courtship was spent in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, a city rich in history and in beautiful places to have drinks. As well as being the place where our romance first kindled, Budapest was where we started developing from casual tea drinkers to budding students of the leaf. Traditionally … Continue reading
Fall is my favorite time of year. Senses become stimulated and saturated with deeper, richer colors and flavors, and new sounds and fresher-feeling air begins to envelop us. Baking and braising feels new again: home and heart-warming breads, braised stews and meats, and colorful, spicy soups return to my repertoire. … Continue reading
An interesting debate has been raging over the past few years among the tea literati – how do you define quality in tea?The uninitiated might expect the definition to be something as simple as: “A quality tea is one that represents the ideals of its varietal and production style and … Continue reading
Teapots, essentially variants on the ewer, seem first to have been manufactured at Jingdezhen, China’s porcelain center, circa 1426-1432. Stoneware teapots from the Yi-xing potteries were in production by 1500 and became the most expensive and desirable pottery for tea. They were developed for China’s kung-fu tea ritual, which also … Continue reading
When we last visited Nepal, we discovered Shangri-la, an operation envisioned and built by three brothers that provides a sustainable local market for the green leaf grown by over 600 small stakeholders. Before Shangri-la existed, these farmers sold their leaf to more distant factories or even to third-party brokers at … Continue reading