Taiwan and Japan 2011

Once again, another action-packed trip! Over the years, in addition to developing our relationships with tea producers, we have explored more and more of the fascinating world of pottery. This year, my 9th trip to Taiwan, began with the discovery of some quintessential white porcelain while visiting New Chi. This company specializes in high-end teapots and cups created by Mr. Wang, a multidisciplinary artist, who really raises the bar when it comes to form and originality. A few examples are available in our stores, I highly recommend you take the opportunity to pass by and admire them.

In another, more affordable, category, I worked on finishing our 500ml teapot project! This elegant porcelain teapot of our design, with a cracked white glaze should arrive this fall.

As for the tea in Taiwan, it was an excellent harvest. The cold spring slowed growth, giving more time for the leaves to gorge themselves with "flavours". In the news from the field: this year M. Yu Nen has a new garden in Shan Lin Xi (in my opinion the most beautiful place in Taiwan to grow tea) this year's tea comes from a very young garden (very young trees, 5 years old ...). We have a new charcoal roasted Dong Ding from Ms. Lin (moderately roasted), simply delicious. With Nicolas, one of my colleagues, we also explored the areas of Lishan and Dayulin. These 2 regions are important to keep an eye on as the limited quantities they produce are becoming increasingly popular in China which will doubtless affect future prices and availability.

We continued our trip to Japan. Naturally we were anxious to visit our producers to get a feel of the situation following the terrible events of last March. For more on this read the blog articles on the field and on the testing protocol.

A good year for quality in Japan although the quantities available were low, mainly due to a rather cold spring, which did not help Japanese producers (unlike Taiwan).
Among the memorable moments of this trip was having the chance to make tea by hand (Temomi cha). Hard work but very satisfying. See the article by Nicolas on the subject here

As the trip drew to a close I went to meet several Raku pottery artisans. I finally got to see all the steps behind this 450 year old technique. I established links with two of them, M. Sasaki and M. Kawasaki, (respectively 4th and 8th generation master potters) and you can now admire more of their bowls in our stores.