10 years of tea culture changes, and writing about tea

November 2013; the month this blog started, and the most excited I've ever seen him

we met Kalani that day

10 years ago I started this tea blog, or just over that at time of this initial draft.  This whole post could be self-oriented and introspective, about why I did, and my experiences along the way.  It seems more interesting to skip most of that and talk about how Western tea culture changed over that decade.  I could say a little about my own experiences and perspective, but a little of that goes a long way.  

I've been living in Thailand for almost all of the past 15 years, so maybe I'm not the most qualified person to speak for Western culture.  Still I will explore that context here, comparing and contrasting global online perspective and that in the US, Europe, and wherever else.

The first point is more about me than tea culture, about moving towards the further side of an experience curve, and the rest is more general, about those broad changes.

the far side of a learning curve:  it was interesting considering the main classic tea blogger, Marshal N, of Tea Addict's Journal, either stating that he had learned most of what there is to know about tea or that he had covered enough, back when he ramped down blog posting some years back.  I think he literally stated something closer the first point but I took it to mean the second, that it was enough of a more active exploration and sharing phase.  

I couldn't relate then; it seemed like there was too much for any one person to cover half of it all, so you might tap out whenever you like, but it would never amount to experiencing as much as there is left to get to.  Now it makes more sense.  If you were to break down learning and experiential exposure into basics, intermediate range, and more advanced or esoteric scope it wouldn't be difficult to clear through basics relatively quickly (main categories, how to brew tea different ways, basic sourcing, etc.).  Intermediate range exposure would take a long time to sort through, pushing that on to trying most main types, dabbling in range outside Chinese teas, digging deeper into brewing and gear use, being able to identify quality of different versions, encountering the first dozen or two tangents (storage issues, common flaws in tea, basic processing, social trend themes, etc.).  Online discussion would help with that.

It would never be clear when you had moved past these broad category thresholds, which are vague and indeterminate, but at some point you'd be on to range most tea enthusiasts typically don't experience, or even knowledge and awareness most vendors don't possess, potentially broader in range than tea producers encounter.  Then eventually exploration would get old.  Writing and discussion could become tiresome, and even though you would never clear through all the sub-types and location origins, or quality levels, variations, exceptions, etc.  Trying the first couple hundred examples of these types could seem like enough, or the first few thousand examples of tea versions.  A main favorite type might change a few times, and you might settle into a bottomless main preference version (eg. sheng pu'er), and not stop experiencing that tea range, ever, but discussion and writing could still get really tiresome, not just not fresh but also not worth the effort.

I suppose I'm essentially there now, and have been, but I still write anyway.  I don't want this post to be about that, though, so let's move on to the rest.

main changes in Western tea culture in a decade:  some rotating set of people will always be exploring loose tea for the first time, and some others pushing on to the far end of an exposure curve, but the generalities in typical patterns of interest can still shift.  Text blogging is more or less dead, as an example.  It hasn't been replaced by one main thing, as one might've expected, but that interest coverage has been taken up by Youtube video options, Instagram participation, tea app use, Discord discussion, and so on.  Facebook groups more or less came and went as the main discussion form, also not replaced by just one thing.  

Tea preference trends have came and went; sub-types or origin areas became popular, or at least "hot," like Indonesian, Nepalese, or Georgian tea.  With so much reference content and discussion de-centralized now there would never be as pronounced main forms of themes like that again, one novel type being popular at one time.

Good specialty tea interest never really took off and became mainstream; that was strange.  People tended to revisit that theme every couple of years, that tea was finally having its moment, but it seemed to never.  Incremental increase in awareness, demand, and sales only kept progressing.

What really changed though, related to the tea itself?  Trends in styles evolved.  Tie Guan Yin had evolved to be very lightly oxidized and not roasted even well prior to a decade ago, and patterns like that kept occurring, shifts in preparation styles related to what was demanded.  Whole-leaf Darjeeling has been evolving over the last half dozen years, but it's still not common or mainstream (per my understanding, at least).  Classic Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese teas aren't evolving much; they were fine as they were.  Maybe different cultivars are used to make Wuyi Yancha over time, or lower oolong oxidation and roast levels can become trendy, but to some extent basic style range doesn't change.  For new origin areas the opposite is true; the range of what Indonesian, Nepalese, and Georgian tea all are changed, quite a bit.

Sheng pu'er evolved a good bit but it's probably as well to set that aside, to avoid the risk of a 1000 word tangent on those trends.  I think better versions of the entire range of what exists are probably far more accessible now, with market pressure making a medium quality range fairly accessible across lots of types, driving up pricing level to where expensive versions were before, or beyond that, going back 20 years.  Higher end demand didn't push pricing as far as one might've expected; you can find plenty of tea selling for $1 a gram or over but the high end stays leveled off there, with lots of pretty decent tea selling for 50 cents to 80 cents per gram.  Then of course plenty of exceptions keep going beyond that.  It's tempting to guess how that parallels or contradicts trends and pricing levels in China but it seems as well to leave that out of scope too.

direct sales / producer outlets / small local vendor sales:  it seemed like this would evolve, and to some extent it has, but not as much as one might've expected.  The same is true for vending platform outlets designed to facilitate this, something like Tealet was set up to be originally.  Some more-direct vendor sales might be based on Ebay or Amazon, but variations of vendor forms that existed a decade ago are still the main sales channels, even if there are more alternatives now.  

If tea awareness and demand really had taken off there probably would have been enough volume to support new channel evolution.  Plenty of exceptions exist, producer vending pages, FB pages set up for sales, varying forms of monthly tea clubs, etc., but Yunnan Sourcing is still the main outlet, and smaller specialized vendors like Seven Cups or Essence of Tea are still around, seemingly doing well.  Locally oriented sales outlets like Farmerleaf and Hatvala seemed to evolve to be more common around a decade ago, and some are more developed and mainstream now.  

Tea shops changed, related to Teavana expanding and collapsing, but it's probably as well to set aside that too, as drifting out of the range of discussing tea culture.  I do see sales channel forms as an important part of tea culture, as cafe availability is, but it's enough to focus on perspective and home personal consumption scope.

Western tea culture forms:  a decade ago there was an emphasis on pragmatic and narrow forms engagement with tea experience and exploration, per my understanding, and for the most part that's still the case.  For many people interest expanded to limited Gong Fu Cha gear, process, and aesthetic forms but for many more it stayed focused on the drink itself, perhaps including aesthetic and gear collecting dimensions but not being mainly about that.  

Global Tea Hut was the exception earlier on, combining tea appreciation, religion, and religiously oriented practice, gear use, and aesthetics.  Other comparable presentations and organizations never evolved much.  Some individuals take this up, or Moychay is an example of a somewhat national tea culture (based in Russia) folding in some related aspects, but tea and Taoism or Buddhism never linked further.  Tea masters promoting traditional, lineage-based exposure forms never really caught on, outside of limited application in China and Taiwan.  Per a conflicting interpretation a lot of Western context training is equivalent to that, and it could be difficult to judge degree of uptake, of any practice or perspective.  Lots of people hold training certificates now.

In a way that's strange, isn't it, that far less changed than stayed the same in a decade?  When I look back at the other interests I pursue they're far different now, from how they were that far back.  As an example running has completely changed in the last decade, altered by the uptake of performance tracking devices, improved shoe technology, and a range of other training approach evolution and options of things to buy.  The races haven't changed so much, how far people run, or what occurs during one, but there was hardly any learning curve to experience a decade ago, in comparison, about training forms, what data to monitor and review, supplement use, and so on.  

Oddly the evolution doesn't push on to make all of the most natural themes more mature, for example with electrolyte supplementation still seemingly in its infancy, with more focus on what is natural to sell, the shoes, clothing, and electronics.  Discussing training practice generates Youtube reference revenue, so that's common, and shoe reviews.  I suppose it makes sense that there is no parallel in the world of tea, that gaiwan use basics videos draw views but not enough for lots of channels to earn revenue from posting them.

future direction:  why would more things change than already have, or that transition pace increase?  Tea awareness and demand may or may not ever "take off," and if not there should only be gradual transitions in what is popular, or the range of types available.  

It's odd that I've made it this far without mentioning flavored blends, or teas mixed with tisanes; that definitely already happened.  If demand increases quickly everything already available would expand.  There would be more Thai teas to buy, and better quality versions of them, related to a sub-theme I've been focused on for awhile.  Or with gradual uptake increase that would shift very slowly, as it has been.

I've also not mentioned tea podcasts or online meetup forms; those happened.  With tea being so experiential online or social media exposure forms may never really expand much, beyond where we are now.  An app can only help you so much with a tea drinking experience, and over and over they develop those to add novel functions and then just try to sell you tea there.  Steepster was really functional, a place to write and share notes about what you experience of tea versions, and discuss ideas in forum style threads, but it came and went in the last decade (it's still up, but quiet now).

Couldn't an AI tea master eventually stand in to provide engaged instruction and discussion?  Sure.  Maybe that will happen in the next five years, given the pace things change related to all that.  It's hard to imagine that being a good thing.

Some of those really esoteric tangents have been interesting, but I don't think any will seem more important later on.  The learning curve related to brewing water mineral input has shifted a lot over the last few years; that will continue.  Focused training related to identifying scents has been developed; I see Facebook posts about that from time to time.  Use of testing to identify tea components, quality level, origin area, and possible contaminants has been initiated; for sure that will progress.  But none of all that will change ordinary tea experience or perspectives on tea, I don't think.

my future direction with tea:  the automatic first thought:  why not monetize what I've learned?  It is a natural path for tea bloggers to move on to write books, to do consulting, or try to sell other services related to tea.  It's odd how few become vendors.  I've either edited or have been part of a pre-release review process for three books about tea, and for the second it seemed like I had written most of the same ideas about all of the same topics, and liked how I presented them better.  My ideas and writing wasn't better, of course, it's that my own writing choices seemed to represent the most natural way to express the ideas, to me.

I've earned very little related to doing some writing, consulting, holding an event, and tea related tour guiding, maybe on the order of $1000 over a decade.  Even at ten times that income rate, $1000 in one year, it wouldn't change anything; at 100 times it would be a start.  Writing a book is practical, and selling tea is definitely an option, but ramping up some sort of tea services isn't as promising.  Tea related conventional employment maybe even less so; it seems highly unlikely.

Moving on to write less in this blog seems likely; I like to write, and to share ideas, but half the posts every year are all but identical to older versions.  I've just reviewed three sheng versions from Thailand and Vietnam that I also reviewed last year's versions of, which weren't all that different.  That pattern had been coming up related to Wuyi Yancha and Darjeeling versions for some years.  Writing 20 posts a year instead of 80 might make sense, more on perspective themes, and less reviews.  If a vendor offers to send standard tea versions I could still review those but that definitely repeats; those kinds of write-ups could be the 10th post that's all but the same as earlier ones, just swapping out a few aspect terms.

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with me arranging a meetup series with a couple of dozen tea experts or interesting related participants in 2021, part of a late covid "getting out" social contact replacement.  I could continue on with some similar initiative.  Or maybe it would be interesting to move the whole blog theme to video, and add messing around with editing, technical details, and video form performance (and buying electronics; not a positive aspect).  I live in Bangkok and Honolulu at different times of the year; we're definitely in interesting places for background.  I probably will do that, but then I've been thinking that for years.

I don't really see myself as a tea expert, even though few ideas in discussions, or in books or other references, tend to be unfamiliar, for some years now.  I can't place the scope of the range I haven't yet experienced in comparison with what I have; it just doesn't work that way.  Very few people have had broader tea experience, but some definitely have.  Not completely unrelated, to me relatively extreme humility tends to pair well with tea learning and experience, people remaining an active student of the subject even when it's their time to share ideas and guidance to others.  

That's what I've been trying to do, to share ideas as a fellow tea enthusiast.  There's a normal lifecycle of that usually changing forms, and I've been feeling I'm at this place myself now, for a couple of years.  

One last point:  I've received very little feedback about what I've written over ten years, which was kind of an initial main point, but I still appreciate people reading what I've written.  The stats say that hundreds of thousands of people have read the posts, or tens of thousands have read a significant number (or people and bots did).  

It's nice when people comment that a post means something to them, and even negative feedback is helpful.  It can sting a little but people being critical essentially always have good points to add, about different gaps or ways to interpret what I've expressed.  Thanks for reading!

early blog photo, seemingly taken on a Nokia phone.  it's gaba oolong, which I still find strange.