TEA FOR MOM
Many companies in tea-producing regions worldwide endeavor to improve the lives of female tea workers, their families, and communities. According to the UN and World Bank, providing education for young girls and economic resources to women is one of the best ways to help end poverty in developing countries.
Tea Journey has compiled examples of tea companies that work hard to empower their female employees, support charities that help the underserved, and are owned by women.
(free subscription to all ESTA’s members)
European Tea Culture Conference 2024
May 22-24, 2024 at SRH Dresden School of Management, Dresden/ Germany
Preliminary programme*
Wednesday May 22nd, 2024
“Welcome to Dresden“:
Tea reception at the Steigenberger Hotel de Saxe (1A) overviewing the Neumarkt and the Dresdner Frauenkirche welcome by Corinne Miseer, CEO Dresden Marketing GmbH.
20h Organ Concert (Classic) in the main hall of the Dresdner Frauenkirche (1B):
Compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, Edvard Grieg, Percy Whitlock and Nils Lindberg
Thursday, May 23rd, 2024
Location: main conference venue: Dresden School of Management, Georgenstr. 7, 01097 Dresden
9:00h Opening
Prof. Dr. Hartwig Bohne: It’s all about tea - Welcome to Dresden
9:15h Key note
Lee Jolliffe, retired professor and tea tourism expert from Canada, founder of the International Working
Group of Tea Tourism, currently affiliated with Mah Fah Luang University, Thailand, and a long record
of related publications, e.g., Tea and Tourism (2007), and Routledge Handbook of Tea Tourism (2013),
is speaking about: European Tea Culture and Tourism
10:00h Exhibition: „This is tea“ by Michael Pieracci/Berlin and Dr. Quendt tea lounge with original Dresden biscuits
10:30h Track 1: European tea and pairings (4 presentations) Incl. tea tasting with teas grown and harvested in Portugal and on the Azores
12:30h Lunch break
Welcome by Prof. Dr. Victoria Büsch, President of the SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences
13:00h Track 2: Tea Narratives and Art (4 presentations) Incl. tea tasting with Irish teas
15:00h Networking at De Gruyter Art & Research Lounge
15:30h Track 3: It’s teatime: Ceremonial tea traditions (4 presentations) Incl. Swedish tea tasting and Swedish delights by The Tea Centre of Stockholm
17:30h Guided tea & culture walk in Dresden Neustadt with snacks and tastings. Involved local teashops: Teezeit, Teerausch, Teewald
Friday, May 24h, 2024
Location: main conference venue
9:00h Welcome
09:05h Key note
Jane Pettigrew, Head of Studies at UK Tea Academy, lecturer and author (2001: A social history of tea, 2003: Design for tea, 2018: Jane Pettigrew's world of Tea) will speak about: It’s all about tea ceremonial, enjoyment, successful entrepreneurship, and cultural pride
9:45h Tea lounge with original Dr. Quendt biscuits and Stollen
10:30h Track 4: Tea & Sustainability (4 presentations)
12:15h Lunch break
13:00h Track 5: From Tea history and Heritage to Tea Tourism (5 presentations)
16h Dresden Marketing GmbH proudly invites to a guided tour at the Semper Opera
17h Dresden Marketing GmbH & Kempinski Hotel Taschenbergpalais welcome you to the Saxonian Grand Teatime at the Kempinski Hotel Taschenbergpalais
End of the conference at appr. 19h
*Changes may occur upon number of participants and organizational requirements.
Tea waste, a thing of the past!
The team at ESTA member Canton Tea has been working over the last six months to address this issue of tea waste from and has introduced a Bokashi organic composting system at their Bristol UK HQ. The wet leaf (teabags removed) is simply added to the bokashi bin, an activator is applied, and then sealed. The process from end to end takes approximately six weeks, and after a period of settling the compost is then suitable for use in horticulture or agriculture.
Tea of course is a rich source of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, all of which are needed for healthy plant growth, so tea is a great addition to a compost heap.
And the story gets better! Canton has also joined up with the Windmill Hill City Farm in Bristol, the tea compost is then taken and used on the farm or sold to raise money for their projects “The volumes are relatively low but it’s a big step in the right direction” - Alice Evans, Director of Tea at Canton
ESTA endorses this fantastic initiative as it not only has environmental and sustainable credentials but it also helps solve the age-old problem of disposing of tea leaves, and furthermore it supports the local community.
USE OF INTERNATIONAL TEA DAY 2023 DONATIONS
The funds raised from the International Tea Day event will contribute towards a year of secondary education for a young woman selected from the communities surrounding Satemwa in southern Malawi.
There is significant potential to grow the involvement of local women in tea making, but that pathway begins with education. Too many young women fail to complete their schooling because of financial and social pressures. Rare Charity will identify a talented young woman without the means to continue her studies, and provide a full package of support to allow her to successfully attend and complete secondary school.
This will grow the community of Rare Scholars in secondary and tertiary education, who provide mentorship and peer support, alongside that provided by the Rare Charity team, to encourage one another to progress and excel in their education.
Through growing the number of young women completing education, Rare Charity increases the potential of women to enter tea making, and also raises the aspirations of other young women from the area.
Rare Charity is currently supporting 15 young women from the communities surrounding Satemwa to complete their secondary education, with the first two graduating this summer. The selection of the new secondary scholar will take place in the coming months, ahead of the new school term.
The donations from our International Tea Day fundraising for education for women in Nepal will be used to send Rojina Lamgade, from a third generation family working in tea to a formal tea training programme with Sonam Lama, a renowned tea-maker and teacher of tea-making in Ilam to study tea training. This fund should cover her studies for about 8 months or one full season of tea making. We hope she can come back with a deeper knowledge and interest in tea making to become the second woman tea maker in Nepal in the future.
Rojina
About Rojina:
Tea has been in Rojina Lamgade’s family for three generations. Her family’s history with Kanchanjangha Tea Estate stretches back to before the first tea-production factory had even been built. In fact, it was her grandfather that laid the foundations for the first factory at the estate.
For over 26 years, Rojina’s father, Dhan Bahadur Lamgade, has been driving for the tea estate. From him, Rojina has inherited closeness to the tea estate and tea-making, and has developed the admirable ambition of becoming the second female tea-maker in Nepal, and one of the very few female tea-makers worldwide.
We are excited to be able to support her education, and hope to empower female tea-makers like Rojina, inducting them into leadership roles rather than just tea-plucking.
About Sonam:
Sonam Lama is a renowned tea-maker and teacher of tea-making in Ilam, Nepal. His journey through the tea world began in Darjeeling, but it was in Fikkal, Ilam, where the process of tea-making truly resonated with his spiritual sensibilities. Over the past two decades, Sonam has built a vibrant community of tea-makers in Nepal and around the world, teaching hundreds of national and international students each year. His tea-making and teaching ethos is anchored in nature’s guidance, personal spirit and love for tea.
We will publish regular updates on Rojina’s progress.
Sonam Lama
The United States League of Tea Growers
The US League of Tea Growers is made up of dedicated tea growers, educators, enthusiasts, and retailers and actively encourages the growth and production of high value specialty teas within the USA. They provide education, resources, and support in all facets of your tea growing journey. Their goals are to offer knowledge for specialty tea growing, encourage collaboration between tea growers, promote tea agriculture, recruit academia to teach "best practices" for growers, and represent US tea growers across the globe.
ESTA AND EUT SIGN MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING
European Speciality Tea Association is pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with European Tea Growers Association to formalise the desire of both associations to work together to promote speciality tea.
EUT’s mission is to grow and offer high-quality, single-estate teas across Europe, focusing on chemical free practices. They currently have tea-growing members in the Azores, France, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Jersey, Portugal, Scotland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. The full list of producers can be found in their brochure.
Several of EUT’s members are also members of ESTA, and the two associations have already been working together, some EUT producers have delivered webinars for us and we recently took members on our first tea trip to Het Zuyderblad in the Netherlands and Tschanara in Germany. We hope to repeat that exercise in 2023 to other European destinations.
To download the EUT brochure click here
https://tea-grown-in-europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/eut-2021-leaflet-digital-version.pdf
To visit the EUT website click here
Greetings to my fellow ESTA members, hope you all are doing well!
I wanted to update you all on the current flood situation in South Assam, it has been the worst we have ever since in our lifetime! People don’t have drinking water!
We started our own relief work about 10 days back inside tea estates and surrounding areas under our responsibility
I wanted to further share flood relief work that my amazing team at Jalinga is doing! We have till date managed to reach 1500 families with relief items! In the next 1week to do similar numbers
This video is from 1st July, the Jalinga team heading towards a remote area near Silchar town, specially requested by Mr Niroj Das, Development Officer, Tea Board, Silchar
Best Regards, Ketan Patel
MOU signed between ESTA and NISTEP
European Speciality Tea Association is pleased to announce that it has signed a partnership agreement with NISTEP (Nepalese Increased Sustainable Tea Exports Project) to help promote the production and exports of organic tea from Nepal to Europe.
The main components of the agreement are mutual support and promotion between the two organisations as well as working together on events and other channels to improve the profile and accessibility of Nepalese speciality teas in Europe, and give consumers a better understanding an appreciation of Nepalese teas.
Talks have now started to put the principles and points enshrined in the agreement into practice within the next few months.
NEW SCORING SYSTEM TO HELP EAST AFRICAN SPECIALITY TEAS TO MARKET
European Speciality Tea Association (ESTA) is pleased to announce its formal support of an agreement between the International Trade Centre (ITC) and East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA) in a project to explore the feasibility of establishing a regular market connection service promoting direct trade with global buyers of specialty teas. The platform will serve not only as a means for transactions of specialty teas, but also as a means for seller/buyer discovery and long-term relationship establishment; and promoting East African specialty teas to international markets. This ITC-EATTA initiative is under the auspices of the European Union (EU) funded) East African Community’s (EAC) Market Access Upgrade Program (MARKUP).
Joyce Maina, ESTA Director, is coordinating the Quality side of the project as Lead Judge. The first part of the process, the Competition, has already started with Joyce developing a categorisation system as well as training regional and international jury panel in its application to select the best teas. This will be followed by a pilot run, the intention of which is to test the concept, absorb and analyse the process and results, and to subsequently build a longer-term and more frequently held online marketplace.
The second component is Market Place. In the coffee industry, online private auctions have been building in popularity and frequency over a number of years. For more than 20 years, the Alliance for Coffee Excellence “Cup of Excellence” competition and auction has been promoting and encouraging high quality coffees sold at premium prices in transparent price setting mechanism and creating direct buyer/seller relationship that endure over a long term and building prestige for participants, both buyers and sellers. The project will use similar online system to a send the teas to market, thus providing such a platform for East Africa teas to be promoted to buyers anywhere in the world, aiming for producers to find new buyers, realise competitive prices and to encourage a culture of production and trade of high-quality specialty teas as an alternative to CTC.
Joyce Maina describes specialty teas as being “… premium and luxury quality artisan teas of extraordinary aroma, taste, appearance and terroir; but more than that, the speciality tea movement encompasses the philosophy, deep love and inspiration that creates an elevated experience throughout the tea journey from crop nurturing and harvest to cup preparation and enjoyment. Speciality teas include all types made from the tea plant (White, Yellow, Green, Oolong, Black, Purple and Dark teas) as well as botanicals, fruit and herbal infusions. What makes the offering special is that it is grown and made, selected and crafted, presented and served with a high degree of quality, expertise, passion and care.”
For this competition and marketplace, the teas regarded as speciality will be from across the East African region:
Joyce says ‘This is a breakthrough partnership between EATTA and ITC which will potentially change the nature of speciality tea trading, and it is so important that ESTA is supporting us in this initiative. We look forward to the first online sale coming up later this year. If you are a speciality tea hunter or buyer you will not want to miss it! Come and discover the best of African tea, and make a difference in a speciality farmer’s livelihood”
David Veal, Executive Director of ESTA adds ‘As an association dedicated to promoting speciality tea and inspiring excellence in the speciality tea community we are so pleased to be a part of this initiative, its importance cannot be over-estimated. On a personal level, having witnessed at first hand the success of this model during my coffee career I have been lobbying for this for the last three years so I congratulate EATTA and ITC for their foresight and innovation’.
Results of the first online sale will be announced later in the year.
ESTA JOINS IUTIC
We are pleased to announce that ESTA has been welcomed as a member of the International Union of Tea Industry Union, an organisation dedicated to concept of international cooperation and resource sharing. Link to International Development. Image below
Share your thoughts on tea sustainability
Image courtesy of Firsd Tea
ESTA is collaborating with Tea and Coffee Trade Journal and Firsd Tea to conduct a survey gauging perceptions of sustainability in the global tea industry among business leaders in tea, coffee, and other food and beverage sectors. Conducted on behalf of Firsd Tea and Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, it covers social, economic, and environmental issues associated with sustainability. If you would like to take part click on the word survey above.
ESTA is teaming up with the Global Japanese Tea Association to help promote their very exciting initiative for this summer, The Japanese Tea Marathon, a digital journey through Japan inspired by the Tokyo Olympics, and running concurrently with them from 23rd July to 18th August.
To learn more, and register if you would like to take part at no cost click here Japanese Tea Marathon
HELP URGENTLY NEEDED
If, like us, you have been dismayed at the current covid situation in India where we have many colleagues, friends and members, then you can make a donation here to help doctors, supply oxygen, or directly to UNICEF or Indian Red Cross by clicking here.
European Speciality Tea Association is a membership organisation reliant on the voluntary work of its members, and one of the most effective ways of volunteering is to sit on a committee or working group, many of which have been operating since our inception in 2018. We are pleased to announce that a new committee has just been formed under the chairmanship of Sharyn Johnston of Australian Tea Masters and that is the International Development Committee. This will be the outward facing part of our association and will be responsible for developing some really important areas of activity for us such as ethical and environmental issues, organised trips to areas of Origin, collaborations and partnerships supporting the tea value chain and it's issues and problems, and the role of tea culture, traditional and modern, in the tourism and hospitality sectors.
A number of working groups are being set up to tackle these various areas, and we are inviting members to contact us at hello@specialityteaeurope.com should you have an interest in joining any of these working groups.
ESTA Origin Trips will visit farms in traditional tea growing countries and also in Europe.
To see the full organisation structure of ESTA visit the About Us page.
Can We Save Tea as We Know It?
By Nigel Melican Teacraft September 8, 2020
The good news: Currently, tea is completely free from GMO – no transgenic varieties are known to exist commercially. And the bad news: Perhaps, one of the most pressing and challenging issues for the future of tea as we know it is the rapid climate change growers are now experiencing.
In nature, things move slowly; the genus Camellia evolved around 9 million years ago as a tropical forest plant, and now there are 250 Camellia species including our well-loved Camellia sinensis. The China and Assam tea varieties diverged about 22,000 years ago coincident with the last Ice Age, and the split between the Indian and the Yunnan big leaf types occurred around the time of tea’s first domestication 3,000 years ago in China, where purposeful tea breeding is first recorded from 1,000 years ago. Progress was leisurely. Modern tea husbandry dates back just 200 years, and the development of specifically improved elite cultivars as recently as 80 years ago – and even today it still takes 20 to 25 years to create a new tea cultivar.
Climate change, however, is swift and moving fast. When I started my crop science career in 1963, studying yield and photosynthesis, the atmospheric CO2 level was 320 ppm – it is now 420 ppm – a rise of 31 percent in the time it takes for two breeding cycles of tea. Climate change is global: Polar ice is melting, sea levels rising, droughts are more frequent, flash floods more common and hurricanes more severe. Over the past 80 years in Assam, the annual average temperature has risen 3°F, ambient maximum temperature from 95°F to 125°F, and annual rainfall has declined by 8”. Climate predictions for 2050 in Assam show a greater than 90 percent reduction in tea suitable land – that’s just 30 years, hence, hardly more than one tea plant breeding cycle. Growing conditions are changing fast, so we need to adapt our crops to handle them. Drought tolerance, salt tolerance, ability to withstand flooding, high temperatures, increased UV, lower humidity – our tea plants will need to have all of these enhanced attributes to survive and to thrive.
The pace of climate change is accelerating, but natural plant evolution is slow and ponderous. Even conventional plant breeding cannot match the speed and range of adaptation required; it is naturally restricted to the range of genetic variation occurring within the genus. Transgenic breeding searches outside the confines of a genus, and it can design in attributes from unrelated plants. The drought resistance of a cactus perhaps, or from animals the range of salt tolerance of a migrating salmon, or the heat tolerance of a thermophilic bacterium – these extreme attributes could be introduced swiftly and effectively into our tea plants. In the last two decades, GMO plants and animals have been produced with many useful genetic improvements via transgenic breeding. GMOs exist because they are a fast, precise and a less expensive way to design new varieties with unique characteristics.
While our Camellia sinensis is still GMO clean, don’t think that scientists have been standing still. They have been tinkering with tea genes in China, India and Sri Lanka. While China is ahead in publishing the tea genome, Indian scientists have perhaps the only free-living transgenic tea bush in the ground. It is not yet equipped with useful climate change modifications, just with marker genes from bacterium E.coli to show that the technique is possible. But the genie is out of the bottle.
So, you should ask, if the capability is there, why hasn’t an agrochemical / agricultural biotech business not messed with our tea plants? Well, in the last 20 years, they have gone for the low hanging fruit – the easy money. Modifying an annual crop like corn is fast, the acreage is huge, and new seed is needed for sowing every year. Tea takes longer to modify, the industry has far fewer acres, and new plants are required only once every 80 years, so targeting an annual crop is a no-brainer. But, having successfully introduced GMO into key annual crops – and as climate change bites into the availability of lucrative perennial beverage crops such as wine, coffee and tea – biotech may soon review their GMO strategy.
Now, wouldn’t it be ironic if our only hope of saving tea as we know it was to embrace a method that we have been striving so hard to avoid?
This article originally appeared at World Tea News (https://worldteanews.com).
Nigel Melican is owner and managing director, technical services, at Teacraft Ltd. He’s also the 2018 recipient of the prestigious John Harney Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Tea Conference + Expo. Teacraft Ltd. provides comprehensive service to all sectors of the tea industry, including equipment and machinery supply, beverage consultancy, training and research and development. Melican has more than 40 years of experience in the tea industry, and he’s assisted clients in 26 countries – from green tea in Australia to antioxidants in Zimbabwe. His particular interest is in planting tea in non-traditional countries, assisting small farmers with techniques for handmade tea production and marketing, and encouraging the use of sustainable tea growing and manufacturing methods. To learn more, visit Teacraft.com.
THE IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE TO TEA
This video was produced by Treehaven Productions in association with the Northwest Tea Festival, featuring Nigel Melican, Kevin Gascoyne and Elise Petersen.
They talk about how the changes in climate are impacting the monsoons, how farmers now experience such factors as hail in summer, drought, deluge resulting in soil erosion and the loss of nutrients, and how adaptable and flexible they need to be now and for the future.
