I was recently reminded of the start of my affinity for my favorite tea when we had the opportunity to visit with David Lee Hoffman and his lovely wife, Bea.  David, who is the subject of the Les Blanc film, All In This Tea, had Bea serve me (and, I’m sure, hundreds of other Americans [...]

Everyone talks about the good old days, but in truth, I am still too young to have a firm opinion as to whether the past might have been better than the present.  But what if there were a way to travel back to an older tradition?  Korean teas might just offer a way.
Upon first learning [...]

The train from New Delhi to Amritsar clacked along the Indian countryside.  From my second-class seat, I watched the bright saris of women in the gold-hued fields.  The sunrise illuminated their silhouettes as the women tended the land, boiled water on makeshift stoves in their shanty houses, and bathed babies in buckets of mud-colored water.
I [...]

Consistently ranked among the Top 10 tea-producing countries in the world and frequently in the Top 5, Turkey today is a tea powerhouse on both the production and consumption sides of the equation.  However, that has not always been the case.  From the time the first tea seedlings were imported to Turkey from Japan and [...]

While traveling and enjoying the incredible weather up here in beautiful British Columbia this summer, I’ve taken notice of a growing trend percolating throughout this great province of ours. The menu boards in teahouses and cafés are now offering an incredible array of tea-based lattes.  Even in some of the most off-the-beaten-track hovels, there is [...]

It is in my plans to hike to a mountain top in China and drink tea in a beautiful secluded environment, as sometimes the location in which you drink tea can make the tea so much better.  My favorite cup of tea for the entire month of June was not a tea I would have [...]

Queen Sherma of the Romany Gypsy Nation had just invited me to Rishikesh to work with her and our people on handicrafts to sell in the U.S.  My mind soared with the possibilities.  She gave me her contact information and was gone, but not before I noticed many details about her, studying her quickly and [...]

Recently, I spent a week in the beautiful village of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte Baume in Provence.  Of course, the food, wine, and weather were fantastic, but I was amazed at the quality, variety, and quantity of tea available in the tiny hamlet.
Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte Baume is a small town of about 14,000 people located between Marseille and Aix-En-Provence in [...]

At the conclusion of 32 hours of air and land travel, and upon a delirious 3:00 AM touchdown in New Delhi, I heard my name called over the plane’s loud speaker.  Before I could grasp what was happening, I was led from the plane by an unknown, but very official-looking Aeroflot pilot (you know all [...]

Lately I’ve been blessed to explore some western landscape.  Traveling through northwest Utah, one is witness to huge expanses of rock, very vertical as well as intricately layered horizontally.  From the valley, one also sees vertical forests of pine, and in the distance, more hills and snow-capped mountains just below the clouds.  Even places most [...]