Whatever happened to James Labe, popularizer of the term "Tea Sommelier"?

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mbanu
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Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 3:45 pm

Tue Aug 25, 2020 8:41 pm

This was a big thing in the late 90s in the U.S. The idea was sort of hiring a professional tea-taster, but for a restaurant rather than a blender. A whole bunch of certifications developed, but then excitement over them started to cool. It was sort of a weird idea from the start, since the demands expected of a tea sommelier were actually sort of equivalent to those of an old-fashioned teahouse proprietor -- some blending skills, some buying skills, some etiquette skills, some brewing skills. In the modern world all of these skills are now the realm of specialists, so a sommelier would need to sit with a blending tea-taster, a buying tea-taster, and probably the waitstaff of a few hotels and teahouses from different countries.

So I sort of wonder what happened to the original -- James Labe doesn't seem to have any recent activity on the tea front online; does anyone know what he is up to now?
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