11 years of blogging; perspective on tea culture

 

There's no compelling reason to pass on my opinion on tea themes now, just because it's back to the time of year I started blogging, but I miss writing beyond review scope here.

Rather than fill in more on how my experience has changed, since it hasn't much, I'll limit this to some thoughts on themes that define where tea culture and the tea industry is right now.

tea culture in the US:  it's not really moving forward, compared to where it was 5 years ago.  If anything a good-sized, but still limited, group of people exploring tea through social media discussion and online content consumption have went quiet.  It's natural, learning and exploring, then seeing that new range as just normal, and learning less.  Social media groups are changing, and some are dying; I'll add other sections on that.  The tea itself, preferences and options, hasn't really changed.

tea culture in Thailand:  in some ways Thai cultural development themes mirror and lag behind the US, and in others they don't.  In both countries very few people being really into tea has continued, with many joining groups, in real life and in social media, but that also leveled off.  Small event functions finally started to work locally this year, one mall-based conference oriented event in Bangkok, that finally didn't also include coffee.  Better quality version production has finally made more of a start in Thailand, lagging behind Vietnam's progress, way behind original source countries like China, Japan, and Taiwan.

tea culture online:  not different than last year; Discord groups and Reddit sub participation picks up, and Facebook groups go quieter.  One main specialty tea FB group, Gong Fu Cha, is slightly more active than 2 or 3 years ago, but vendors drive the activity, so a lot of that is marketing.  New active members there tend to be relatively new to tea, so it's right back to where online discussions were 6 to 8 years ago, exploring new types, and working out which vendors are actually good sources.  

I don't actively discuss tea online that much, beyond sometimes answering questions on Reddit.  It's harder now for me to keep learning, and my peers in background and experience have talked enough, for the most part.  I moderate a FB tea group, International Tea Talk, but it's mostly dead now, evolved beyond it's more active phase, even though it has over 30,000 members.

FB groups can still work well for organizing local gatherings

tea sources:  a new wave of Chinese vendors is driving Western facing sales to "the West," or at least trying to.  Chen Sheng Hao, a pu'er producer, and Oriental Leaf, a mixed type reseller, work as good examples.  Or ITea World is an example of a positive form with some kinks still being worked out; they used free sample distribution to engage online discussion, overdoing it for final amount of feedback in the Reddit r/tea space.  Use of novel forms of sample sets also works for them, but then ironing out uniform quality is ongoing; some versions are better than others, so value is a bit all over the place.  Selling sample sets offsets that; people should be able to tell what is better and what they like best.

I see this development as a good thing, as a potential for competition for a very limited set of main Western vendors.  Some new sources, including Western options, are selling pretty mediocre tea at medium pricing levels, and some actually go beyond that, offering novel range and good value.  Jesse's tea house, a Tik Tok based vendor, has replaced Mei Leaf, a Youtube based vendor, for drawing criticism for selling overpriced and medium quality tea.  Both vendors do serve a positive industry role in marketing tea to a new audience, and raising awareness.  That seems to get missed in the specialty tea industry, that if all the vendors only try to capture the most of a small market it will never grow.  Running standard ads isn't the only way to spread awareness and raise demand; novel forms of events can build up both slowly, bit by bit.

producer issues:  Darjeeling has been suffering due to shifting costs and demand context for years, it seems, so that's not new, but eventually the last plantation will be owned by a corporation instead of a family there.  Chinese producers seem to do ok.  A dip in the Chinese economy poses challenges, but built-up demand in China and in the West has set a strong foundation for demand for them.  

Nothing is really new; no new push for organic / sustainability themes, no new product ranges, and nothing novel related to presentation forms (eg. new compressed styles, although some experimentation continues).  Using health claims for marketing seems relatively played out, which is interesting related to tea probably really being fairly healthy.

Trump and tariffs:  this is the newest concern; a new wave of import taxes may well increase the cost of tea in the US.  Or maybe not.  Since tea is barely produced in the US at all, with limited exceptions, this wouldn't make sense, given the drive to make US companies more competitive, but not everything Trump and Republicans do is supposed to make sense.  It would be strange to have tea drinkers shoulder more tax burden; it's too small a factor to make any real difference, and doesn't relate to the broader trade issues.  But it could come across as vindictive, which would be part of the point, to escalate opposition, in theory to other ongoing unfairness.  

I doubt it will change much.  Tea costing 10 to 20% more wouldn't be a welcome change but also not so significant.  A larger new tax would sting more.

new styles, origins, something new being popular:  it's going to get harder to know what trends even are with social media becoming quieter.  There hasn't been a hot new source region in years, as far as I know; Georgia seemed novel and promising some years ago, and Nepal long before that.  Sheng pu'er keeps sucking the air out of the room related to popular range.  Surely a broader, but still small, group of well-exposed sheng drinkers has moved on to appreciating different range, well-aged versions, good quality boutique styles, and so on.  South East Asian versions gain traction, over time.  

The standard list of vendors are probably doing slightly better year to year (Yunnan Sourcing, White 2 Tea, Crimson Lotus, and so on), but this doesn't change anything.

a hybrid style Greengold Georgian white / green tea, reviewed here

inflation as a factor in the US:  probably anyone earning in the lower half of incomes in the US is struggling a bit from price increases, especially over the last two years.  Most people already buying $100 sheng pu'er cakes probably weren't in that group.  It could serve as a barrier to larger scale entry to better tea, for some, but limited awareness was already working out like that.  Specialty tea never was positioned to couple with a broad cultural form shift, eg. to benefit as coffee and craft beer had before.  If anything those other trends getting old for people might be the next main wave for tea; those interests are fine for a long time, but lots of types of preference go in cycles.

what's next?:  it's never easy to tell.  I had always been concerned that multi-level marketing would make a mess within tea exposure, but that came and went quietly (Steepology, was that?).  Intuitively new solutions like automated marketing and sales based on drop-shipping should've already happened, but didn't.  Or kind of did, but didn't gain any traction.  Automatically created content made by people who know almost nothing about tea are just too easy to spot.  

Jesse's tea business shows how just being one short step ahead of the beginner learning curve can work, and it's odd that's not more of the norm.  But then the smallest tea businesses have always struggled, and it's not easy for most people to create high quality social media content, and then use that for effective marketing.

I think earlier producer-side development progress elsewhere might consolidate within the Western markets in a different form at some point.  Vietnam has been driving better tea production and vending for a few years, and options have broadened in places like Georgia, Darjeeling, and Assam.  There's always a brief window when a new origin area emerges when novel offerings and value are both exceptional, then when demand catches up it transitions to more standard priced range.  All that happens based on small, well-organized vendors transitioning to become medium sized.  

A large foreign vendor like Moychay, the Russian version of Yunnan Sourcing, sort of, has been poised to play a larger role in Western sales for years, having established an accessible branch in the EU in Amsterdam, but they're still not such a familiar name.  Growing local demand by building pleasant tea drinking spaces and holding events supports their business, it just doesn't drive international awareness.

No one is driving any industry change or expansion.  Blog writing, like this one, have lost a lot of following, and Youtube content never gained it back.  There are thousands of people showing photos of tea on Instagram, and hundreds of people selling tea event services and training, or probably that is thousands of people globally, counting events, education, and tourism oriented options.  It's still not changing much.  Few of us take up interests and lifestyle practices by deeply exploring and going all-in on novel themes like specialty tea.  More people just drink a little tea, often moving slowly from tea-bag flavored blends on to better loose versions of flavored blends.  It's fine, but per the perspective of the other kinds of tea enthusiasts it misses a lot of potential.

A broad group of people have normalized drinking decent tea, following most of the learning curve that they ever will.  That group is broad but very limited in overall scale.  Specialty tea may never "have its moment," in a scaled-up industry demand sense, but for them it already is, every day.

I'm not usually in pictures here, here with my family

the tastings are better with visitors

Thai tea expo / function in Bangkok Central Embassy

 

I checked out a local Thai tea event at one of many Bangkok malls, at Central Embassy, at the Open House area on the 6th floor.  It's the first such function I've ever been to in Thailand, beyond there being a few tea related booths at coffee and tea related events.  It was nice.

A series of special presentations is one part of that; a tea expert of some sort was presenting about Gongfu brewing and aged Shui Xian, it seemed.  I didn't catch that much of that; the point is pointing out that it extends beyond sales booths.  For people considering visiting they may want to check out that schedule and get in there; it all only runs for another 6 days.  There is also plenty to see and experience from the vendor booths.

The sales booths were fine, representing a broader range of tea vending than one might ordinarily hear of.  They were split between producer booths and other types of vendors, cafes and such.  I talked to the Taetea booth staff, to Emerald Thai Tea (a local producer who make different kinds, including some older plant pu'er), and to another specialty producer who makes a lot of types of teas in the North (Sawan Bondin).  I tried some teas at all three booths; that's a nice part of such an event, that people hosting sales booths are happy to share small cups of tea and talk about the products and background.

An old tea friend had a display there, Danitha / Pop of Chai Jin, a Japanese tea sales and ceremonial brewing themed place.  Zhennan is a familiar local cafe that had a booth, but I missed them being at the booth when I went by.  There were others; Pop was talking to another small shop owner who I've met before, Eastern Tea Concept, that I also said hi to.

So what would be the best draw there for people who are really into tea, or just curious to explore further?  Probably mostly just seeing the range, in case some of it really matches your own interest, and then you could buy some tea from them.  Being able to try the teas makes all the difference.  

It would be nice to support local Thai companies promoting better quality specialty tea.  My tea budget is deep in the red related to my family living in a high cost of living city on a Thai salary, in Honolulu, and I've spent more than normally allocate on Vietnamese teas recently, so my own tea spending is severely limited just now.  It was still nice meeting and talking to people.

I was asking one Thai producer and vendor about how sales would go through Myanmar, since of course they're having problems with civil war there.  He didn't know, but I met a private importer from China who was working with Myanmar tea just after that.  It made for a really interesting discussion, hearing about how things go there.  

A bit rough, of course; he said that I shouldn't be visiting Myanmar any time soon, but that with the right preparations, connections, and support he can still go there.  He said that the tea plants growing there are quite old and now integrated with old-growth jungles, kind of a common theme everywhere, whether or not it actually matches the marketing spin descriptions.  This is an interesting tangent, to me, which I discussed more in relation to Thai ancient trees and forests.

Emerald Thai Tea booth, worth checking out

those ancient forest sheng versions; it was interesting trying them there

How would someone really know tea plant ages?  You can't, really.  Variety Sinensis plants grow to be large shrubs or small trees and age to reduced productivity over a century or less, but variety Assamica plants (both Camelia Sinensis) can grow to giant trees, and some can live for over 1500 years.  Size isn't the best indicator of age; they will grow at different rates and to different sizes depending on conditions.

But with the right local context background you can at least place when tea was growing there locally, which should set a very general earlier original time when plants were introduced there.  I forget how many hundreds of years ago that related to the teas being sold from Northern Thailand; I think 300 years and 700 years, for two different versions, carried by the Emerald Thai Tea brand producer.

It sounds impossible, right?  Thai history must have been quite vague just 2 or 300 years ago.  People know who the King was, of course, and some broad details about industries and lifestyle, but drilling down to tea production is something else.  

But there was an earlier empire in the North that supposedly had clear ties to the tea production (per that discussion at the event, at least), the Lanna Kingdom.  Dating that time-frame and knowing of local tea production couldn't tell you any given plant's age, but it could support a real claim that tea was there in a given area then, or at least probably was.  That's a long time ago; who knows.  Let's check Wikipedia's input on that timing:

The Lan Na Kingdom or The Kingdom of Lanna (Northern Thai:, pronounced [ʔāː.nāː.t͡ɕǎk láːn nāː], "Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields"; Thai: อาณาจักรล้านนา, RTGS: Anachak Lan Na, pronounced [ʔāː.nāː.t͡ɕàk láːn nāː]), also known as Lannathai, and most commonly called Lanna or Lanna Kingdom, was an Indianized state[broken anchor] centered in present-day Northern Thailand from the 13th to 18th centuries.

The cultural development of the Northern Thai people had begun long before as successive kingdoms preceded Lan Na. As a continuation of the kingdom of Ngoenyang, Lan Na emerged strong enough in the 15th century to rival the Ayutthaya Kingdom, with whom wars were fought. However, the Lan Na Kingdom was weakened and became a tributary state of the Taungoo Dynasty in 1558. Lan Na was ruled by successive vassal kings, though some enjoyed autonomy. The Burmese rule gradually withdrew but then resumed as the new Konbaung Dynasty expanded its influence. In 1775, Lan Na chiefs left the Burmese control to join Siam, leading to the Burmese–Siamese War (1775–76).

Following the retreat of the Burmese force, Burmese control over Lan Na came to the end. Siam, under King Taksin of the Thonburi Kingdom, gained control of Lan Na in 1776. From then on, Lan Na became a tributary state of Siam under the succeeding Chakri Dynasty.

Throughout the latter half of the 1800s, the Siamese state dismantled Lan Na independence, absorbing it into the emerging Siamese nation-state.[3] 

That goes on to say that an important development step was consolidating local rulership and establishing Chiang Rai as a capital in 1262.  Of course it doesn't really relate to when tea was being produced.  If a local tea producer could somehow connect that political history with the tea industry history it could establish that production on the order of 700 years ago, or even a bit earlier, maybe 750.

Two people showed me pictures of old, giant tea tree plants; that's something.  No one really knows how old those are though.

Tae Tea / Dayi; it was nice trying some familiar range sheng pu'er there

Sawanbondin; a brand selling different ranges of teas and herbs

the Sawanbodin booth was especially nice for trying different versions

The state of better quality specialty Thai tea

I tried some relatively interesting Thai specialty tea versions back when Huyen visited in a local shop back in January, a higher quality level than I usually run across.  I've been buying and liking Wawee Thai sheng pu'er (or pu'er-style tea) for a few years, and my local friend Aphiwat makes fantastic local sheng, based somewhere near Chiang Mai.  

Plantations have been developing new styles for years, like Oriental Beauty / Dong Fang Mei Ren and red / ruby oolongs, long after producing Jin Xuan and other varietals from Taiwan as rolled oolong back in the 90s.  I keep hearing of new developments in making local gaba versions, and Thai shu pu'er.  Tea Side made small batch, basket fermented shu a number of years ago, maybe 5 or 6, so that's not really new.

So what else is new?  It would be helpful if awareness and demand for these teas developed.  People can keep on making better and more novel styles of teas, and I guess profiting from selling them when demand enables pricing spikes (I've seen them selling for the better part of $1 / gram).  But for it to become a normalized, developed market theme that exposure needs to broaden.  

I guess events like this one can help.  I might've saw a few dozen people there, not bad for one of the least consumer populated malls in Bangkok (nicknamed "Central Empty," I've heard).  There were more people throughout the mall too, hundreds of them; maybe it is finally catching on with a target consumer base.

Small cafes have been cropping up here and there more and more for years.  Then again some fail as businesses too.  There was a pu'er themed shop in Sathorn near where I worked, that's now gone, and the closest specialty tea shop, general in form, also went out, I think even prior to Covid.  There was a specialized Liu Bao shop nearby; I never did get around to checking that out, and it could still be there.  My favorite Tae Tea outlet shop closed, the one in Belle Condominiums, and another relocated, the one in IT Square, if I remember right.

I see notices for some places, new form cafes, hosting 2 or 3000 baht per person special tea type tasting events (($90 or so, on the high side), and if a local market audience could support that expense level specialty tea would be doing ok.  Peace Oriental, the main local hybrid-culture style place from years back, opened a relatively opulent branch in Gaysorn, essentially the highest end mall here, on the Central Embassy level, and kind of around the corner from it.

No one would ever know to what extent general specialty tea awareness and demand are picking up now since most sales would occur through an outlet like Shoppee or Lazada, the Thai versions of Amazon and Ebay.  I just reviewed two amazing green teas selling from there, and I would imagine that many of the outlets in this tea event would have online shops in those places.  

It's hard to get any feel for business level for sales channels like that.  Yunnan Sourcing, a main US vendor based there and in China, has a related Facebook customer interest group, and many vendors host Discord servers (groups), so you can tell, a little by the discussions, what the following is like.  I suppose if a vendor expands offerings over time they're doing ok, and if they go out of business they weren't.

It was odd not seeing teaware producers represented there; there was at least one of those at the last coffee and tea event I visited, last year.  Then again it's odd just seeing this kind of event being held anywhere, as the first and only tea specific event I've heard of in Bangkok, beyond tastings and such.  It's a good sign.

completely unrelated, a vlog style video Kalani (my daughter) made about it raining hard, more to show her take on it than the weather event

Vendor promotion through social media channel creation

 

First published in TChing here.

I've mentioned a very successful pioneering case of social media channel creation before, the Yunnan Sourcing Fans Facebook group.  This post is focused on that kind of thing, versus a vendor creating good information content that can support sales in a recent post.  Of course any given vendor can do both; Farmerleaf is a good example of that, with only the content creation really clearly successful so far.

the feel of those groups is familiar, but the functional structure is a bit limited

The prompt for talking about this is being invited to a Farmerleaf Discord server (group), and hearing a nice audio interview there with a friend, Anna of Kinnari Tea, about development issues in Laos.  There are other vendor-specific tea-related groups there.  I don't buy enough Farmerleaf tea to talk about them in a group, or enough of any one vendor's tea (except maybe Moychay; they send me more than average for review).  I suppose that's one drawback, that a premise for participation is based on consuming a lot of one vendor's products.  Some people do that, or maybe even only buy tea from one source.

What other channel forms are out there?  Vendors using open form social discussion themed channels for promotion tends to be heavily restricted and moderated, for obvious reasons.  In the Facebook group I run, International Tea Talk, mostly populated by vendors, content about products is allowed but not explicit sales information.  For whatever reasons it's hard for vendors to adjust to talking about their products without moving on to sales range (mentioning a special, emphasizing contact information, utilizing marketing content that looks like obvious marketing content--ads).  Discussing background in other types of social media settings is an option, it would just require carefully working around restrictions.  Adagio created and hosted Tea Chat, really the former main old-style tea forum, but activity dropped off when they tried to play a more direct role in leveraging that for marketing.  Way off; one part of that upset some of the forum members so much that they created a spin-off forum, Tea Forum.

But what else, like Discord, or that Facebook group?  A Facebook page can work for a contact point, or providing information, but it wouldn't provide the same function.  Crimson Lotus has been developing a cool variation on these themes, doing a podcast series on Youtube.  They're a pu'er vendor (mainly), so it might be a conflict to have another similar pu'er vendor as a guest (eg. the Bitterleaf or Yunnan Sourcing guys), but even that might still work.  It's not as if their customers don't know about source options.  One episode had the Liquid Proust vendor Andrew Richardson on; he sells pu'er, but the business theme is a little different.  Making a podcast work can be hit and miss, but it would work to have really interesting people on, and do a good job of asking the questions people would want to hear answers to, just the basics.  It's quite indirect as marketing goes, and not so interactive, but live streaming versus posting edited video can give it a little more of that feel.

What else?  Due to covid lots of forms of online seminars and conferences are turning up; participating as a speaker could work.  This really assumes that the vendor has something to say beyond "I sell such and such tea."  Not all vendors are further through a learning and experience curve than an average social media group participant.  Someone having been to a tea production area in China--or anywhere--only one time could be used for all its worth; it would be enough.  Elyse of Tealet seems to do both seminar style events and informal streaming group talks, all really seeming more social than business-networking oriented.

I recently participated in a small Malaysian vendor holding an online meetup session to discuss this issue, hosted by Bigfuller Foong (his profile name), what would work for marketing or sales approach in the new business and social climate.  We didn't get so far.  Related to his own tea business he was expanding tea types, embracing a new Japanese tea interest there, and exploring cold brewing, so sharing that online could indirectly lead to sales.  The point related to this theme is that even without a group or channel base online video meetups could fulfill a similar function, with people networking to set up contacts to join those in any way that works.  He was doing more conventional tea enthusiast meetups too, not just talking among vendors and tea professionals.

Rather than arriving at approaches, in that discussion, we ended up discussing the context, how tea perspectives and very local cultures vary.  It makes a huge difference where you are and what you are trying to sell.  That Malaysian vendor was trying to move beyond the most conventional and in-demand Chinese teas that are popular there.  Another prospective vendor in Sydney, Australia was considering how to initiate and develop a Gongfu practice sub-culture there similar to what she had experienced in Austin, Texas.  It could work, it would just take some doing.  A one to one mapping of interest form and perspective might not work, actually, but with the right approach a similar theme and practices might be adapted.

One theme that often comes up:  it's a real challenge to try to replicate the effect of in-person tastings online.  Of course related to the main end-point you just can't, handing over someone tea to try.  You can mail it, but that still skips the brewing part.  A novel initiative combining training and online group tasting themes sold tasting sets and allowed participants to try a variety of Japanese teas together, a set they sold prior to the meetings, along with content presentation and discussion (the Tea Creative Japanese Tea Marathon).  That's different.

these online meetups used to be more about sharing tasting experience

No matter what the approach is it seems critical to identify a point of connection.  Going after existing customers who already have the existing product interest could be a challenge, given some sources have already taken steps to solidify a relationship with their customer base.  There would have to be an angle, something new to offer.  Regardless of channel format or approach if a vendor is sharing their own passion for a tea type that could help, some of it would come across.  

To my limited awareness--which must be missing more than I've caught word of--Yunnan Sourcing is the only success case in setting up a really active channel, on par with a main social media group for activity level, that ties back to developing sales so far.  Many others have had some success but aren't quite there yet (excluding podcast and seminar cases, many of which may have been successful, and I wouldn't know for not really following any).  A number of Discord channels could change that in short order, with those already in existence now.

To switch over to fortune-telling mode it seems likely that vendors who can provide the best source-neutral content and develop a shared-interest community theme will be most successful.  In one sense that's the opposite of the Yunnan Sourcing case; you can't even mention another vendor in that FB fan group.  To cite a possible example, once pandemic impact settles a bit doing local events could link together online connections and a meeting in real life theme, which would be helpful for an experiential subject like tea.  Now only vendor-neutral groups fill this kind of space, as far as I'm aware, usually local area themed.  A vendor being open to broadening discussion restrictions in running such a group could work, or just shifting what YS is doing to include real-life contact scope might, keeping that scope restriction.  That's back to the theme that most successful vendor I mentioned uses, Moychay using shop based tastings and events as a very successful tool to promote awareness, just using social media contact as a catalyst.

a Chinese IT vendor hosted a tea ceremony that helped me get started into tea

I'm guessing this, that a vendor hosted but vendor-neutral approach might work in the long run, because few other sources will be able to match the single-source loyalty of Yunnan Sourcing.  Related pu'er-themed vendors might, outlets like Crimson Lotus or Liquid Proust, or maybe even Bitterleaf, but somehow this group contact function doesn't seem to match with the White 2 Tea theme, to me.  

It's nice how this sort of function can seem to work out based entirely online (maybe in part now since so many people are stuck in isolation).  The main Discord tea community, Communitea, successfully shifts old forum style and FB / Reddit post comment discussion connection to a number of chat channels instead, covering some of the scope that had occurred in real life or through private messages.  It's promising.  All sorts of meetup circles seem to be initiating from lots of different starting points.

That Farmerleaf Discord server / group may mix vendor promotion and community / awareness themes, or it might not take, and limited early activity isn't a clear indication either way.  It's interesting how that location and form invokes gaming and tech interest, just related to being there, and to some extent excludes more people than it includes (like Reddit group sub-culture patterns, which can be rough).  Then it's odd thinking through how other permutations might work, how other social media channel biases might combine or prevent combination with a tea shared interest theme.  Communicator app versions, like Slack or Snapchat groups, might have as much potential as other forms, and for sure those forms will keep evolving.