Ya-Ya’s Tea-Board

I’ve been pretty busy in the last couple of weeks since my return from the Zealong plantation, and today’s post won’t be a long one, but I wanted to share some exciting news with you.

To start with, I would like to announce the imminent arrival of a new shipment of teapots from China’s famous pottery city - Yixing. The shipment includes the tea pots pictured in the title photo of this post, as well as about 20 other different designs. The cargo is scheduled to land on Saturday in Auckland and is expected around 12 Dec here in Christchurch - just in time for Christmas! With this shipment, there will also be a number of different tea trays. Many people have asked in the past for these and the original stock we had sold out pretty quickly - back in the teahouse days.

The other big news is that we now have a page on Facebook for the teahouse. You might have seen the Facebook Like box on the right. Our Facebook page is going to be the outlet to share short(er) bits of information, fast. For this blog, I usually take some time to write posts that require quite a bit of work, but I’m using Facebook for quicker updates. I also am planning to run discount campaigns on Facebook for our ‘fans’, so why don’t you head over and ‘like’ us. I would also love to see Facebook opening the way for an exchange between Ya-Ya and our friends and customers in an informal way.

Uncategorized - Teaware | 2 Comments »

I took the opportunity of  a long weekend (Canterbury day last Friday) to go on a research trip into tea cultivation (and culture) in New Zealand. I’m currently working on a magazine article on the subject with a photographer friend of mine and we visited some important people that play a role in New Zealand’s tea history. I will write more about this subject here in due time, but I wanted to quickly share some of the photos I (the photography amateur in the team) took of our visit at the Zealong plantation just outside of Hamilton. I have written about Zealong’s wonderful oolongs before on this blog (see the article here).

Travel | 3 Comments »

With the heady aroma of nature bursting out in blossoms on every tree and flower, it is impossible to ignore that spring is in full swing.

Spring brings with it a lightness, that feels so welcome after the heavier, grounding winter months. Every year, I feel the urge to open all the windows around the house as soon as the temperature rises. Bring in freshness, bring in light!

Another effect that spring has on my mood is that it inspires me to reach for different teas. While autumn and winter leads me towards black teas and pu-erh, spring is the time when I long for floral oolongs.

Tasting Notes | No Comments »

As announced in my last post, today’s article is about a very special tea: Zealong. Zealong teas are special in more than one regard, as they are not only amongst the best oolong teas produced today, but they are also grown and produced in an unlikely place: the Waikato region here in New Zealand!
I see, I’ve got your attention now!

I don’t want to re-tell the Zealong story, how a father and son - who’d come to New Zealand from Taiwan to start a real estate business - had the vision of growing the world’s best tea here and imported 1500 tea seedlings, just to see nearly all of them die in quarantine. And how they pushed on and have now, nearly 15 years later, 50ha filled with over a million tea plants. You can head over to Zealong’s website to read the full story and watch a nice video about the company. I’ve seen the story repeated too many times and don’t feel like reiterating it here. This post is about my personal take on Zealong.

As the title suggest (and as I mentioned in my last blog post about teas grown in exotic locations), Zealong does something right. Actually, the company does an awful lot of things right. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Uncategorized - know-how | 4 Comments »

NOTE: The idea of writing this post developed almost a year ago and had I written it then, it would read very differently. Some amazing experiences in the meantime caused me to re-think the subject and look at it in a different light.

While some people might think of coconut/pineapple-flavoured tea as exotic, this post is about pure (i.e. unflavoured) tea grown in exotic locations. The tea farms in East Africa (Kenya, Malawi) were established about 80 years ago, but most of the teas were produced for blends with Chinese black teas to supply the British market. Unblended teas from these regions have only been available to Western consumers in the past decade or so. But newer tea regions started to appear in the last decade; they include the American North-West, Hawaii, and - yes - New Zealand. While some of these locations aren’t really that exotic for most Westerners - from a tea perspective, they certainly are. In the following post, I’ll use the expression exotic tea to indicate teas grown in non-traditional countries.

Uncategorized - know-how | 4 Comments »