People always ask me… why tea?

How did you get started on this “tea path”?  I guess I honestly can’t pinpoint exactly when my love affair with tea began. I do know that it was years in the making.  What started off as a casual acquaintance, blossomed into an amorous fascination and I knew I had to pursue this acquaintance and fascination.

I do know for absolute certainty is that tea is a HUGE part of my life. After taking over 20 classes from the World Tea Academy and receiving four different certificates (and by the way I’m currently working on getting two new certificates) I recognized and appreciated that for me tea has both a history and a future. Tea has a long history and is steeped in traditions from around the world, making it an intriguing topic, in that every culture has its own unique story of tea.

It’s that “long – history” of tea for me that is the most intriguing and remarkable.  The history of tea goes back hundreds, even thousands of years, and through many different countries.  It’s not just discovering the birthplace of tea for example or the different types of tea produced around the world, but the little-known historical events and occurrences that have tea’s thumbprint indelibly and permanently marked upon them. It’s those virtually unknown and unusual, and even exotic historical events that in some cases have dramatically changed the path of tea forever in the world. How many self- confessed tea drinkers know about the Tea Horse Road or the Great Tea Race of 1866 or The Scottish Tea Thief or the role that Tea and Tearooms played a part in the Women’s Suffragette movement? Not many at all, and I would venture to say even some of the people directly involved in the tea industry are not aware of the past lives of tea, beyond the cup.

In the end, I love tea in every possible way imaginable.