Where do people in Europe drink the least amount of tea. I was always told it was Italy. The love of espresso and cappuccino was too strong. So I said let's visit Italy and encourage tea drinkers. I am currently suffering in Venice and will visit others cities, searching for our tea.

As a guy that wrote a book about how plants and people combine to make the great tastes that we find in tea: Harney & Sons Guide to Tea, I am always looking out for interesting articles. There was an interesting article in the Washington Post: The tea plant has a whopper genome: 

Visit this post from the Washington Post.

It is a great read!

We had a fun, but hectic trip  In China & Taiwan, we went to some new gardens to find nice green and oolong teas. At the same time, we made sure that some of the basic teas used for flavored black & green teas continued to taste great.  Over time, these teas can become less stellar.

One of my joys is to see our teas being sold in Asia. We saw Harney & Sons in stores  in Shanghai, cafes in Taiwan and Hunan. MY dad would be very happy!

While out in a tea garden, we saw these 2 cute puppies. And we had to share them with you. 

We found a very special lot ( only 2 kilos) of Wild black tea from mountains of central Hunan. It tasted so sweet and smooth, that we had to see where it came from. My tasting buddy, Elvira Cardenas, is seen here plucking some tea leaves from wild plants from the middle of the forest.

We went up into the clouds the other day to see some high Mountain oolongs. We were about a mile above the sea. 

Unfortunately the season has been delayed by the cool weather. However soon we will have some new teas for you to enjoy. 

Here was a tasting of teas from last year. We liked the roasted one on the left best. It had nice caramel notes.