Tea blogging retrospective; four busy years

First published in TChing in two parts, here and here.


I just took about three weeks off blogging, maybe the longest break in the past 4 years, over which time I wrote 451 posts.  It's a good time to explain what I've learned, and to question why I posted that much.

Originally writing about tea was part of exploring social media and online groups, checking if blogging was a good fit.  I was just messing around for the first 2 or 3 years, starting in 2013, and at some point shifted gears related to exploration.  TChing helped prompt that; I started doing interview and research posts, moving beyond the review form, starting just over 4 years ago.  It's appropriate that an interview with one of my favorite vendors, Cindy Chen of Wuyi Origin (a business started well after that) was my second post.

There probably never was any one point.  I liked to write, and kind of needed a hobby, and prior interests like cooking, wine, exploring Buddhism, and outdoor sports had cycled through.  I'd already been drifting towards deeper tea exploration even 6 years ago.

Lots of tea exposure worked out.  My own style of reviewing developed, conveying experience in more detail than most people would probably want to read.  That can help me place what I experienced of teas years ago now, if I factor in changes in communicating experience, and the shift in expectations and exposure.  Research posts covered themes like caffeine level, fluoride risk (right, it's in tea), pu'er storage concerns, mineral content in water as a factor, and lighter topics like why it doesn't work well to microwave water for tea.  Interviewing producers has been nice, and studying cultivar background; reviewing processing inputs hasn't went as well.  Conducting group tastings has been more of a miss than a success.

I was lucky to visit a lot of places in that time, some especially related to interesting tea culture:  China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and Russia.  Family vacations never centered on tea producer visits, but I did visit a farm and a small plantation in Laos and Indonesia, and tea oriented markets here and there.  Oddly that never came up where I live now, in Thailand.

It's hard to summarize what I've learned.  Many things; it works to place teas in relation to lots of other types, and identify layers of components going into every tea experience.  Sorting out variations in sheng pu'er, differences tied to source area themes, aspect character types, aging transition patterns, etc., has been interesting and involved.  I'm a bit over 2 years into mostly focusing on that, but the initial start predated my blog.

Exploring South East Asian teas has been an interesting main sub-theme.  A few friends in Laos and Vietnam (two in each country) have made all the difference in providing access to teas that are most typically very difficult to come by, with Hatvala's online selection a pleasant exception.  Last year I met a main Myanmar producer, Kokang, and a small local farmer and two other vendors in Thailand helped with the same scope related to here.  I really should name more names, and say more about Nepal and Assam, and have been considering doing a post that lists out thanks in that way.

Discussion never really developed much.  A few people a year offer thanks, related to blog information and discussion input, and I meet a number of visitors to Bangkok, but beyond that I don't hear much feedback.  It was never about praise, or even mostly about me, so it has all worked out.