Natural. Magical. Uva 2011 Seasonal Flush.
There is no beverage quite like tea. Brewed from the leaves of a herb first recorded as a medicine five thousand years ago, tea has since been celebrated in the most revered manner by poets, emperors, kings, and commoners. Tea is universally known as a healthy herb though not often as one that is...
On business and biodiversity: a view from Nagoya
At the Convention for Biological Diversity’s Conference of the Parties 10 that is ongoing in Nagoya, Japan, opinions are divided on whether business has a role to play in biodiversity. Strange though that may sound, at the same Conference some businesses are justifying that opinion by their actions. Major pharmaceutical companies in several Western nations...
The Emperor and his new clothes (Donald Trump and his new tea)
Funny how things seem to work in endless loops in business. Something becomes popular, it becomes a success, and that success attracts big business which buys up all the little guys who made the thing popular. As the bean counters take charge, things invariably go stale when they dismantle all that made the thing a...
Lies, damned lies and the coffee lobby
Fact and fiction should contrast as dramatically as black and white. Strangely that truth does not seem to hold anymore as the world enters a state of altered reality reminiscent of that which George Orwell described in 1949. In this dimension, it is not the State that is Big Brother, but something far worse. The...
The Man with no Tea in him
Hearing the advice, earlier this week, of a learned marketer who proclaimed that tea – in the form that we know and love it today – will disappear in five years, and that tradition, love for tea are obsolete amongst a new generation that desires only instant gratification, it seemed that the 21st Century is...
21st Century Beverage : terroir in tea
The story behind your cup of tea is a fascinating one, for it is infused with art, history and dedication at every stage from hand picking the tender leaves through the ancient and traditional cycle of withering, rolling, fermentating, baking and sifting the tea leaves. And finally there is the art of tasting and selecting...
The Harsher Truth behind the Harsh World
Suggesting that ‘..the fortunes of the Hill Tamil workers on its many plantations have not kept pace with the industry’s growth’ hides a much more complex reality than first meets the eye. Notwithstanding the superficial comment of the Ceylon Tea Traders’ Association representative that the workers are well cared for and not exploited, there is...
The Wall-E Prophecy
In the movie ‘Wall-E’ we are transported 700 years into the future, when the last surviving humans have been forced to abandon a polluted Earth and find refuge for their corpulent selves on the spaceship Axiom. The characterization of humans as grossly overweight dugong like creatures, transported in pods – being limited in their ability...
…. and then there is tea (green tea for the first timer)
If there was any doubt about the ancient wisdom that tea is good for human health, they were dispelled by the findings of the Fourth International Scientific Symposium on Tea and Human Health. Yet, like those that persist in smoking cigarettes in the face of overwhelming research advising against it, there are some who still...
One tea, two personalities
Two mugs of tea, made using the same Dilmah Single Origin Pure Ceylon teabag, brewed for the same time in identical porcelain mugs and tasted seconds apart in the same conditions – yet entirely different. One has brightness, depth and strength, with the wonderful balance of richness and flavour that is the hallmark of Ceylon’s...
‘Greatness’ in a cup of tea
An advertisement in an inflight magazine on a trans Atlantic flight exclaims, ‘Experience the greatness of our new tea lattes’. Beneath, the advertiser earnestly underlines its claim, ‘ Yes, we did say greatness.’ And then it shows a photograph of a cup – nice, off white on green, probably porcelain – filled with a foamy,...
The bottom line
At a time when every politician and bureaucrat is more aware than ever of the plight of marginalized people in less developed countries and the need for fair trading relationships to ease the gulf that exists between rich and poor nations, there is little or nothing that is being done to address the human cost...
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