Later, pouring some of last year’s temple tea, he says, “Tea has so much information to give. If you pay attention, you know not only the place, but how the tree grew, even the mood of the person who processed it.” – The Life of Tea by Michael Freeman and Timothy d’Offay (page 101)
Kyle Whittington reviews The Life of Tea, Journey to the World’s Finest TeasThe Life of Tea by Michael Freeman and Timothy d’Offay
This book, in a word, is stunning, just stunning. By far the most beautiful tea book visually to land on my tea shelf. The coffee table book format and fabulous photography by Michael Freeman make this a treasured addition to any collection of tea books. Add to that the knowledge that pours forth in the words written by Timothy d’Offay and we have a truly special book in our hands.
One of the lovely things about this book is that you don’t feel that you’re rereading information on tea that you’ve read 1,000 times before. Rather, you go on a journey to each tea type, each country, region, artisan or tea house, and along the way, dotted throughout the text like so many villages amongst the tea mountains are these wonderful gems and nuggets of information. There’s so much to learn and absorb both from the pictures and the text in this book. It sits such at an unusual sweet spot where a visually enticing book meets a well-researched and written reference book.
This is not a book that requires cover to cover reading. Rather, you can pick an area and go on a journey, then move on to another. In any order. An approach that Tea Book Club members really enjoyed. The text is so well written, with great flow, great knowledge and great humanity. From historical and cultural context to processing details of a specific tea and the atmospheric approach up a tea mountain road. You really feel that Tim has been there, knows the farmers, the people, and the tea.
The large format and visual splendour of this book is, however, perhaps its biggest sticking point, as well as what sets it so beautifully apart. It’s simply not easy to read and requires effort to open and get on with. One solution is to grab the Kindle copy for easy train or bed reading, allowing you to fly through the content laden and beautifully written text without the heft and size the physical book requires.
That being said, I simply love this book… but I’d also love to see a paperback size version falling into the hands of every tea lover out there. Because really, we all ought to read this book at least once.
And here is what some of the Tea Book Club members had to say:
“A great coffee table book, the text wrapped around photography bringing it to life.” – Alison, UK
“I adore it. It’s definitely going to be a long term treasure for me.” – B, USA
“The artistic quality of the depiction is so beautiful and has such integrity. It’s connected things in my head.” – Terri, USA
“One of the strengths of this book is to show different views of what we see in every tea book” – Aimée, Canada
“This book gives you all the information like other tea books but in a very elegant way… plenty of little details, but very important ones.” – Pilar, UK
“The writing was really insightful and the photography was really beautiful.” – Karri, USA
“I really liked his focus on the people in all the different places he traveled to. His perspectives of the farmers was really really nice.” – Nicole, USA
“I’ve been drooling over the pictures. My husband is not a big tea drinker but he even picked it up and learned a lot just from the pictures.” – Terri, USA
“I love the text and I also love the pictures but I found ti difficult to read at night. But I found there was a lot of pieces of information that added a pieceto the puzzle in my mind about tea… ‘Oh, that’s the link between those two ideas!’” – Aimée, Canada
“I loved the section on tea ware, his knowledge and love for the tea ware really shines through.” – Nadine, UK
“I really really like that it didn’t have the ad nauseam facts that are repeated in every other book on tea. There’s so much in there but it’s not done in a stereotypical way.” – Nicole, USA
“I really appreciated seeing pictures of some of the behind the scenes stuff that you don’t usually see in such good quality.” – Sean, USA
“The tea ware section is amazing, you feel like you are reading about art!” – Pilar UK
Although based in the UK, The Tea Book Club is an international group of tea lovers and readers who meet up virtually each month to discuss tea books. If you’d like to join us for next read, visit teabookclub.org or @joinTeaBookClub on Instagram.
Freeman’s photography depicts every aspect of tea.
The Life of Tea: A Journey to the World’s Finest Teas
Goodreads: Documentary photographer Michael Freeman and tea expert Timothy d’Offay explore the terroir, taste, and culture of the world’s favorite drink.
The 10th Edition scheduled for Aug. 27-30, 2021 at the Beijing Exhibition Center in Beijing, China has been postponed in a city-wide effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
The strong alliances and synergies resulting from this close cooperation with producing regions makes the popular exposition a benchmark in northern China by which other shows are measured. Attendees are highly qualified tea industry professionals and large-volume buyers including international representatives. A diverse show floor that includes every type of tea, plus processing and packaging machinery leads to many transactions and remarkable results.
The past nine years the Expo was co-organized by Pu’er city in Yunnan province, Xinyang city in Henan province, Lu’an city in Anhui province, Lincang city in Yunnan province, Huangshan city in Anhui province, Zunyi city in Guizhou province, Wuzhou city in Guangxi province, Xianyang city in Shanxi province, and Yiyang city in Hunan province, respectively.
The expo, which is approved by the Ministry of Commerce in China, is organized by the China Tea Marketing Association and the People’s Government of Xicheng District in Beijing.
Since 2012 the event has featured more than 3,000 exhibiting companies (90% are first-line brands), more than 1,000 media representatives generated nearly 30 million online searches. Visitors total 620,000, including 220,000 professional buyers. Exhibitors report a total of 7,282 projects, with turnover of RMB 5.9 billion. Tea delegations at the event are from a dozen countries including India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Germany, Italy, and Argentina.
The expo annually attracts the best-known tea companies and tea brands in China. The 2021 exhibition covers 26,000 sq. meters with 600 companies participating. Brands include Zhejiang Tea Group, Xiangcha Group, Sichuan Tea Group, Dayi Group, Wuyi Star, Zhuyeqing, Zhang Yiyuan and Wu Yutai.
Education sessions spread tea knowledge and expose attendees to tea culture by showcasing local customs and heritage. A variety of tea cultural activities attract young and fashionable consumers seeking to better understand the tea industry.
Sessions also cover topics of interest to caterers, resort, and hotels operators, tea preparation and proper use of utensils, advice on selecting and properly utilizing water with an introduction to new style tea beverages. Many cross-border tea events are planned, revealing new trends that drive consumption.
The Beijing International Tea Expo has it all: popularity, extensive publicity, high standards, strong professionalism, a broad range of exhibition categories, international buyers, and good service.
Jorhat Tea e-Marketplace in Assam, India is the nexus of five major tea-growing districts with annual output of more than 200 million kg,
Tea Day e-Auction Highlights Boutique Teas
Buyers seeking quick turn-around of fresh tea from specialty and smallholder gardens in India bid record prices at a the first International Tea Day auction, the latest of 1.3 million kilos of tea traded since June 2020. All teas on offer were plucked May 21.
The e-Marketplace at Jorhat is cloud-based making it accessible to buyers around the world.
There are currently six auction centers in physical locations, each run by a separate committee which acts as the auction organizer, all sharing an electronic auction system pioneered by the Tea Board of India. About 500 million kg of tea out of India’s annual estimated at 1,350.
“We created India’s first e-marketplace for buying and selling bulk tea. Along similar lines, we want to develop an international e-marketplace where foreign buyers can directly buy fresh tea from the gardens in the shortest possible time with complete transparency” says mjunction managing director Vinaya Varma.
Vinaya Varma
The International Tea Day Special Auction on June 21 was organized by mjunction Services, India’s largest B2B e-commerce company. The e-Marketplace launched last year amidst the lockdown. India offers a wide bouquet of teas across the year and ships regularly to more than 90 countries. At a webinar on the occasion of International Day, Indian Tea Association Chairman Vivek Goenka said that India has set an export target of 300 million kg by 2023 — a 20% increase by next 2-3 years.
Mjunction is an equal joint venture of Tata Steel and SAIL (the Steel Authority of India), is India’s largest B2B e-commerce company and a leading e-marketplace for steel in the world. Since inception in 2001, mjunction has e-transacted over INRs 1,053,663 crore ($142 billion) on its various e-platforms (an Indian crore is currently valued at $135,000 USD).
Varma said there is a lot of excitement amongst stakeholders on the teas offered in the special auction and have got tremendous response and fetched some record prices. “More than 93% of the total teas on offer got sold. Buyers had logged in from Assam, West Bengal, Delhi, Gujarat, and Rajasthan,” he said.
Nilesh Divekar of Shangrila Enterprise, who purchased Pabhojan Orthodox at Rs 4,000 per kg, said he appreciates the efforts of the mjunction team to provide such a platform where best of the teas are available fresh and in small quantities without any hassles.
Most of the best marks of Upper Assam like Hookhmol, Lankashi, Diroibam, Aideobari Premium, Muktabari, Rungliting Tea Estate, Narayanpur Panbarry, Durgapur, Tirual, Arin, Kathonibari, Friends Tea and Pabhojan participated.
The Pabhojan Tea Estate orthodox tea pictured above brought a record INRs 4000 ($54 per kilo)
Pabhojan Orthodox tea was sold at a record price of INRs 4,000 per kg. Diroibam Speciality Green tea was sold at INRs 1000 per kg, and a Hookhmol CTC tea fetched INRs 510 per kg – also record prices in their respective categories.
Rakhi Dutta Saikia of Pabhojan Organic Tea Estate lauded mjunction’s efforts on the occasion. “I am very happy that Pabhojan has fetched a record price, and hope the mjunction platform continues the good work,” she said.
Dr. Nazrana Ahmed of Diroibam Tea Estate, whose Green Tea was sold at INRs 1,000 per kg, said, “Today’s special auction is of special significance to us, as we have received the highest bid for our Specialty Green Teas. We are happy with the professional approach of the mjunction team and the trust reposed on the platform by the buyers.”
He said the company is trying to make small tea growers’ tea available to the connoisseurs of tea worldwide.
“Our Jorhat office is in constant touch with the small tea growers segment. There is a lot of interest from STG to be part of our platform.
We are very well aware of their struggle and contribution to the tea industry in Assam as well as the rest of the country. “mjunction is also very well aware that many of these small tea growers are producing some of the finest handcrafted tea in the country. Some of the tea is also organic and there is a huge demand in the world market for such tea” he said.
He said in one year, it has been able to bring a lot of buyers and sellers who have been outside the purview of auctions till now. There are many first-time tea entrepreneurs who are now associated with our platform.
“We hold weekly sales. Our first sale was on June 1, 2020 and since then we have not dropped a single weekly sale. During the past year the e-Marketplace connected with hundreds of sellers and buyers across the country, fetched some record prices and received offerings of more than 1.3 million kg of tea from Assam, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh. Nearly 300 stakeholders, consisting of major tea buyers and sellers, are registered in this tea e-marketplace.
“The founding principles and processes of our e-marketplace and Tea Board are different, so a comparison is not really possible,” he said.
The event organized by mjunction elicited positive response from buyers and sellers alike. Kamal Sharma and Pradeep Sharma, Directors of Tea World who purchased Hookhmol CTC from the platform at INRs 510 per kg, said, “With shorter cycle time, teas sold on the mjunction platform are the freshest. We are pleased to have bagged Hookhmol. We have had our own packet with brand name Shree Mangalam since 2002, and we are committed to give our customers the best of Assam tea.”
“While the pandemic hit the industry adversely, it has also given us a chance to let go of inefficient and archaic systems. If we look around in the last one year, the adoption of technology and digital platforms has been wide, deep and rapid. Similarly, the industry leaders must think of ways to include technology in plantation, manufacturing, trading etc while focussing on delivering quality produce.
“I am optimistic about the Indian tea industry picking up using new-age processes and technologies,” he said.
“Many specialty tea producers from North East India have approached our Jorhat office for inclusion. We are going to have separate catalogues for specialty teas and we are expanding our buyer base of Speciality teas” he said.
He said the company will shortly be introducing Buyer and Seller Finance. Again this will be a first of its kind in the industry, as this shall be provided through the platform in a transparent manner. “We are also planning a B2B bulk packet platform, where single-origin and other packeteers may directly sell to retailers across the country, without intermediaries,” he added.
The company is focused on bringing down the sales cycle-time and making freshly produced tea available in the market, directly from the producing region in the shortest possible time. “We want to make the supply-chain efficient, and ease up the working capital burden of the stakeholders,” Varma added.
Sparkling tea is on a trajectory akin to small-batch, craft-brewed beer where carefully selected ingredients are individually prepared to showcase their best characteristics. Recipes emphasize balance, with efficacy and taste foremost. Excellence in blending and brewing preserves high concentrations of polyphenols and other beneficial plant compounds with minimum calories, nothing artificial, the convenience of cans – and the fun of fizz.
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Rishi Tea & Botanicals VP Jeff Champeau on sparkling botanicals.Jeff Champeau, vice president of business development at Rishi Tea & Botanicals
Healthful Effervescence
Jeff Champeau, vice president of business development at Rishi Tea & Botanicals in Milwaukee, Wis., explains that marketing seasonality is a great way to introduce craft-brewed tea into our lives.
Dan Bolton:Jeff, is fizzy tea destined for mainstream consumption? Will authentic craft-brewed, plant-based, low-sugar, lightly carbonated genuine teas and herbal infusions overcome barriers to distribution to become a significant revenue source for the beverage industry?
Jeff Champeau: Absolutely. And that is something that all of us in the tea industry around the world should be proud of and should celebrate. This is like coming home. This is a very exciting time to seesugared soft drinks, sodas and beverages being something people are turning away from en masse. They’re looking for more healthful alternatives. It is an awesome trend. Tea has been around for 5,000 years, it’s resilient, and there’s a reason for it. Tea speaks to our soul. It’s healthful. It enlightens us. It’s one of the most ancient plants that people have ever been connected to. And it’s about time that it hasmuch of the consumer market paying attention. It’s so delicious you don’t need sweetener to appeal to the everyday palate, the everyday consumer out there.
Dan:Breaking the sugar habit appears to be a primary driver of sales.
Jeff: If you’re using high quality ingredients, if you’re using skillful blending techniques you can deliver a very interesting complex taste without added sweeteners. That’s something that people can really feel deeply refreshed by ? not just satiated. Something that tastes good that scratches that itch to refresh my palate after food.
Soda may satiate them in the moment, but you can’t have two or three or four of them without feeling it in your belly. Something that really has the kind of cleansing hydrating effect of sparkling tea — that’s something you can really feel refreshed by and drink several. That’s what we sought to achieve with the sparkling botanicals.
Dan: Tell me more about the characteristics of the new line.
Jeff: Our sparkling botanicals are brewed using real plants to deliver real virtue. They’re the same super premium direct trade botanicals and teas that we use in our loose leaf and sachet tea blends, many of which are certified organic.
We microbrew them using proprietary brewing techniques to yield a really balanced and craft brewed tea that is sparkled up with a carbonated water.
Using rare citrus and achieving a unique balance with teas with herbs, botanicals, spices, were able to develop, a two-year shelf life product with no added sugar, no added sweeteners of any kind, nothing artificial, only zero to two grams of sugar per can, using real infused fruits like berries or citrus.
Micro-brewed sparkling teas and botanicals
And these offer only 5 to 15 calories, which is really speaking to the fact that they have real plants.
It all comes down to that part of the balance. You’re getting the balance of the polyphenols, the tannins that are extracted, whether that’s from tea leaves or from of the super fruit botanicals and fruits that we’re using in some of the profiles.
We have six tasty profiles, with two more scheduled to be introduced online later this year for distribution next spring. Our MSRP is from $2.99 to $3.49 per 12-ounce can. Ordered online a 12-pack sells for $40. Subscribers pay $36.
Schisandra berries grow like a grapes on a vine. The taste is a balance of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and pungent.
Dan: Will you describe the functional plant-based ingredients in these blends.
Jeff: The Schisandra Berry from Northeast China is just amazing. It is an adaptogen that helps the body regulate physical and mental stress. It is used in traditional Chinese and Korean medicine. It’s also been used for centuries as a beauty tonic, to detox the liver, to maintain healthy skin and even an aphrodisiac.
It is called the five-flavor fruit. The outside of the fruit is a little bit salty, the flesh is sweet and tart in a nice balance. The pit is bitter and pungent and a little spicy. It is a mood booster said to deliver energy to the five meridians and to balance chi. It has an amazingly refreshing character with a color like a sparkling rosé.
Schisandra Berry – An adaptogenic elixir crafted from a single ingredient: forest grown schisandra berry.
Turmeric Saffron – This is a blend of tangy Golden Berries from the Amazon, lush California lemons and fragrant saffron, the most expesive spice in the world. The ingredients are steeped with forest-farmed turmeric from Burma and jungle-grown green cardamom from Guatemala. The saffron delivers an amazing hue to the infusion. You can really see that there are real plants used to make these drinks.
Black Lemon – Black lemon is a high caffeine blend of black tea from from Northern Thailand with a combination of California dried lemon and black lemon from Guatemala. The Guatemala lemon uses an ancient Persian technique to ripen and oxidize the the lemon – a kind of food preservative. It has a bright, citrusy flavor with a malty finish. There are about 50 milligrams of caffeine per can.
Dandelion Ginger – My personal favorite contains dandelion root for detox and ginger. It is an anti inflammatory blend that also features a really cool type of tea called Kuro Koji, which is a Japanese green tea that’s fermented with the Koji yeast that’s used in fermented foods. The dandelion root is roasted and the ginger we use is prized for its pungency, aroma, and spiciness. The combination is craft brewed and combined with red chili and detox tonic herbs. It’s like a ginger beer with zero added sugar that offers satisfying depth and heat.
Grapefruit Quince – This blend elevates everyday replenishment with juicy hibiscus, aromatic yuzu and succulent quince. We were inspired by traditional Korean herb teas that feature quince to soothe and support easy breathing. Hibiscus is enjoyed throughout the tropics for refreshing, cooling energy and is widely regarded to help lower blood pressure, promote arterial health and support metabolism.
Patagonia Maqui – Wild-foraged maqui berry stimulates the palate with accents from red wine grape skins and forest berries to create a sophisticated flavor with an almost wine-like profile. Maqui berries are a prized source of antioxidants like anthocyanins and have been traditionally used by the people of the Patagonia for vitality and cleansing. The Maqui berry is harvested from the Patagonia region of Chile. It brings to life different kinds of health functions that are derived from a variety of ingredients. This one is great on the way to work, at mid-morning break or as something to go with lunch that offers a little caffeine to support digestion. At the dinner table it can be served as an alternative to wine.
Dan:Will Camellia sinensis or herbal infusions win the race for market share?
Jeff: I think herbals will lead in North America, there’s a greater variety and different colors, different levels of tartness, ingredients that appeal to the younger drinkers that are maybe newer to the category, but I don’t think that means that we should refrain from using real tea and in developing the lines out further.
Dan:How will tea companies win over the hearts and minds of consumers with respect to the healthful benefits of tea?
Jeff: Tea is part of a broader natural products industry in North America, and I think sometimes what we get wrong in the natural products industry is the too much hype around a particular tea or a particular botanical or herbal ingredient. Being on trend can be exhausting for the consumer. It can treat tea and herb like fashion. Tea isn’t fashion, but that kind of misses the real charm of tea. Tea is not fashion. It’s ancient food and medicine.
Tea can connect us to the rhythms of nature and to the planet. It can access to people far and wide; the growers, the plucking teams, the artisans, and leaf processing teams, the worldwide traders and promoters of tea, the baristas, the grocery merchants, the consumers. But how can farmers and producers be sustained if their particular crops are hot in the market for two years, only to slow down as some other trends takes off?
So, I think the question is, how do we how we choose to market tea and botanicals in a way that really encourages a deep and steady and earnest interest into infusing tea into our lives.
Tea is an agricultural product. It has these different waves of the harvest that come throughout theseasons. Year to year those,harvests are going to fluctuate naturally as mother nature gives us what she can.
If you ask most tea professionals, what’s their favorite tea, most will likely tell you what their favorite tea is, at that moment, because they’re plugged in to the harvest calendar, they’re tracking with what’s fresh and in season.
Botanicals have their own harvest seasons and new areas of cultivation. If we cultivate a seasonal approach and recognize that, tea, herbal teas, botanical spices, a part of our broader choices in diet and in what we choose to consume.
It’s good that we introduce variety into our diet. And it’s good that we introduce variety into our tea habits, too, and embrace that seasonal rhythm of the harvest.
We have an opportunity to really cultivate a dynamic tea culture in North America that celebrates the seasonality of tea. Not every tea is going to be consistent. There’s a beauty in the variety and some of that unexpected that can come year to year and season to season. And we should have a reverence for the tea traditions, connecting us to the deeper philosophy of tea. But we should also feel a sense of creative freedom to draw inspiration from those traditions to offer the North American market new and exciting ways to infuse tea into their lives.
In doing so we’re going to open up their minds to thinking about tea as something that they choose to drink and enjoy on the daily basis, maybe at some different occasions than we might expect.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Sparkling Botanicals
“We want to focus the passion and creativity of Rishi’s amazing team on something totally new and exciting — something that honors our enduring relationships with farmers and tea drinkers while transcending our core business of dried teas and botanicals. As a selector, importer and taste maker, our natural progression is to make beverages with teas and botanicals that are ready to drink. People love our teas but have less and less time to brew them. Tea drinkers are moving to bottled and canned teas to save their time but have few options that offer premium botanicals and high-end teas brewed without added sugar, sweeteners or acidic preservatives. Our new line of Sparkling Botanicals elevates RTD with craft brewing and meets this demand for real plants with real virtue.”
“The perfect cup of tea is one shared with others.” This quote by legendary tea entrepreneur Steven Smith adorns oak paneling of Smith Teamaker’s new café in Portland, Oregon. It’s a café with a tea twist — the plant-based menu features dishes and snacks infused with the company’s premium tea.
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Teamaker Ravi Kroesen on Smith Teamaker’s new cafe concept.Portland’s Steven Smith Teamaker Café. Photos by Andrew Vanasse.
A Plant-based Food Café where Tea Reigns Supreme
The intent of the new café concept, says Smith’s head teamaker Ravi Kroesen, is to “develop foods that reflect our ethos of plants, as well as utilizing tea as an ingredient.” Culinary Director Karl Holl developed the food menu, at the new café working with Kroesen to develop a menu that includes snacks, lattés, and iced concoctions with full meals that demonstrate how tea and food can live in harmony from leaf to cup to plate.
Jessica Natale Woollard:Beets roasted in jasmine tea; quinoa cooked in Sencha; croissants filled with peppermint tea-infused chocolate. These all sound divine. What are these culinary delights?
Ravi Kroesen: These are items we have started offering in our new plant-based café up on Northwest 23rd in Portland, Oregon. The concept is to further being a plant-based company, to further the concept in terms of developing foods that really reflect our ethos of plants, as well as utilizing tea as an ingredient.
Jessica:What flavor combinations of tea and food delighted you the most?
Ravi: I like the sheep’s cheese, sourced locally, used to make our white petal cheese. We blended in our white petal tea, a floral, slightly fruity white tea, and it creates this incredible new experience.
Fat, as you may know, works in this process called enfleurage where it takes on aromas very easily. The fat and the cheese brings in all the flavors you find in drinking the tea, so they’re expressed very cleanly. We use that process in a couple different dishes. There’s one in a bowl that is a delight to eat.
Interior Smith Teamaker Café
The sheep’s cheese comes from a local partner, Black Sheep Creamery. Karl Holl, our culinary director, was very specific in terms of working with local partners, so chocolate, salt, baked goods, those kinds of things, were specifically sought out to have local partners.
Jessica:I imagine the process of developing the menu was filled with experimentation in your lab?
Ravi: Karl spearheaded everything and worked with my team in the Tea Lab to fine tune a lot of the concepts. He already had some of the dishes worked out, but there were some that needed some fine tuning, and with our help — guiding and offering suggestions on how to best achieve the final outcome of a really wonderful dish — we worked together to create a wonderful menu. My team was integral, but certainly Karl is the genius in this whole process and the driver.
Jessica: You just opened the café a few weeks ago, but can you share what menu item has been a popular choice so far? And what you think it is about that item that’s attracting customers?
Ravi: We have a turmeric noodle bowl. Turmeric is such a recognizable ingredient; we’ve seen a rise in consumption in turmeric-based teas over the last five years. There is an understanding in the consumer consciousness on a broader scale now for turmeric being a beneficial and healthy ingredient. Leading with turmeric as part of the overall makeup of that noodle dish allows people to immediately get what they’re buying. The popularity of that dish shows that people who are coming to buy food at Smith, as well as drink teas, are health conscious as well as looking for new and exciting experiences.
Smith Bowl
Smith Iced Teas
Garden Sandwich
Chai Spiced Morning Bun
Turmeric Noodles
Jessica: What is your personal favorite item on this lovely menu? This is your chance to persuade us all to visit Portland!
Ravi: I really do like the masala chai spiced cinnamon sugar bun. If you peel off the layers and eat them bit by bit, you’ll experience how well the masala chai is built into that baked good.
I love to pair the morning bun with our black lavender latté, which is brewed using an espresso machine, or what we like to call a “teaspresso” machine. The machine’s high pressure combined with the heat creates a large amount of dissolved and suspended solids in the brew, which gives a much thicker, richer experience. That was the intention of espresso machines from the beginning, to create this quality of brew that you can’t quite get from brewing in other ways. We use a little bit of oat milk to top off the black lavender latté, and it is such a delight. It pairs so well with the masala chai morning button.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Smith Teamaker Café
Steven Smith Teamaker Café
The café is located in Portland’s Northwest 23rd district, the same neighborhood where the company was founded in 2009 by the late teamaker Steven Smith.
