TeaForum.org

Everything Stops for Tea, a glimpse of British tea in 1962: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdtQAEFM2Sw This is an interesting one, as I'm not quite sure who it was made for -- British schoolchildren? Americans? An interesting time because British tea was still largely loose-leaf. This was also arou...

chase-sanborn-orange-pekoe.jpeg Someone might assume from this ad that it was advertising a Japanese tea, or maybe, poorly, a Chinese tea. However, this is a 1910s ad for a Ceylon tea! ceylon-tea.jpg As far as I can tell, this is where the term was born -- during the 1900s push to sell China-bush C...

In 1938, "Orange Pekoe" was still a highly popular term -- Charles & Co. was selling seven different teas with Orange Pekoe in the name, although Esquire was starting to get a bit resentful about it. However, there were just as many varieties of Formosa oolong. I think it's sort of interesting that ...

In May of 1938, Japan and China were already at war, but this had not yet impacted American tea choices -- the bigger concern for most Americans was the cost, as 1938 was a difficult year financially for the average American. Due to heavy advertising, black British-style blends were eroding away the...

The desire for teas better than those available at the local shops is as old as a functioning postal system in the U.S., so I thought folks might appreciate this. These are from A Catalogue of Fine Foods by Charles & Co. , an old New York mail-order house that specialized in catering to the tastes o...

Would have been a good choice when I was trying to coax a decent brew out of a fussy oolong.

./download/file.php?id=11248 Regarding Ms. Gladstar's start managing the herbal section of a natural foods store, I think for most Americans, the herbal section of a natural food store is fairly easy to picture, as many of the remaining ones have not changed since the 1970s. For folks from elsewher...

Not sure if this is appropriate to post here but am hoping for input from mbanu I've noticed that in america, tea drinking is often associated with illness and depression while coffee is associated with business and active life style. Whenever I am sick, my friends often tell me to get some extra s...

We should probably also mention the books that inspired Mr. Pratt's book. tea-and-coffee.jpg The first one was Edward Bramah's 1972 Tea & Coffee: A Modern View of 300 Years of Tradition . Pratt describes it as, "A very readable account of the tea and coffee business from top to bottom by a gentleman...

eternal-slumber.jpg eternal-slumber-2.jpg Nowadays it seems to have gone full circle -- the young artists of the 1970s who were attracted to Celestial Seasonings by its natural reputation replaced by the young artists of today critical of its lack of naturalness. (Meanwhile, Celestial has decided t...

Today is a cooked brick from the Hung Chong Tai Tea Company of Hong Kong (鴻昌泰茶莊) by way of Tak Shing Hong in Los Angeles. Dry stored (no traditional storage flavor), but a very loose brick -- easily came apart in my hands with no need for a knife or pick. Sweet cherry type shou, nice with dimsum. Ma...

As the 80s turned into the 90s, Celestial Seasonings, Thomas J. Lipton, and R.C. Bigelow became the top three, controlling 97% of the market, with the remaining 3% I suppose divided between the smaller competitors like Traditional Medicinals and Good Earth and the handful of shops that still sold lo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHC-lYd7X80 I think this commercial shows the other part of the secret -- as the 1980s progressed, they made an active effort through advertising to de-hippie their teas, or as this one's slogan puts it, "Herb Teas... more tastefully done." Most of their competitors ...

With the website turning 20, I thought it might be fun to give the book a closer look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxZXYet7Zyc The first biscuit it goes into is Rich Tea, which it describes as providing, "the ground floor on which the rest of the biscuit tower block rests. Without it we would be...

good-earth.jpeg So did the hippie blends have their own tearooms? Yes, sort of. The most famous was probably The Good Earth chain of restaurants, as their blends became popular enough that they were sold away from the restaurants as their own thing. good-earth-menu1.jpg good-earth-menu2.jpg It woul...