Friday, June 13, 2014

How tea and culture can help promote Taiwan? (6/8/2014@SBTPC)




We are invited by our good friends, Simon and Christine, to their church, SBTPC in Lomita City on 6/8/2014 to share our experience on:
"How to use tea and culture to help promote Taiwan in our community? "

Josephine has done a great job of presenting the TOST program that we have conducted since 2008.  It is an Ambassador program for Taiwan, not only in tea but true friendship.  She prepares so many good photos showing our tea friends' hands on studying Oolong in Taiwan.  Although I have seen those pictures a few times, yet they still refresh my good memory...and touch my heart while she explains them.  From the way our audience react, I can tell most of them are thinking how they can come up different programs of their own to help our mother country.

Since we have offered Tea-One Tasting Class at this church in the past, so I decided to offer a different tea class this time... Something new, something more adapted to our current lifestyle with tea.

Josephine and a few volunteers are busy serving tea that we've prepared in advance while I am talking about how Taiwan Oolong to be classified and how these teas are processed...

Those two teas we share with everyone - one is Alishan Jade Oolong in chilled and one Formosa Bonita FB-47 in room temperature.  A full demonstration of how we do our proper infusion...get them filled in bottles and to be chilled or cooled down to room temperature for serving.  This is indeed a new way of enjoyment with fine Taiwan Oolongs, a bit different from the traditional hot tea or iced tea service.  Most importantly, foods pairing now made really easy.  I know to see is to believe.

We love tea, we also enjoy sharing our passion in a creative way - before we end our program, I have great fun to lead all our participants to sing a tea song and sign-dancing...
It is about Wenshan Pouchong -
       step by step... we fluff the fresh leaf carefully and gently...
when the tea leaf's edge turns red... the luscious floral aroma will arrive...


Thursday, June 12, 2014

OOLOONG SOMMELIER - Post WTE 2014 Workshop for TOST friends on 6/1/2014

Back in early March, Josephine and I had thought of having a reunion with our TOST friends while World Tea Expo 2014 takes place in Long Beach and expecting a few of our friends will be in town this May.

After further working on this project, we got a much better idea.  First of all, include a full day training with "Theory" review (which we think is so important, actually it should be the center piece of our tea education.) Then, we will do a group cupping but with individual cupping log on the 6 teas that classified in Taiwan Oolong (based on the oxidation level: Pouchong, Jade Oolong, Classic TungTing, Amber Oolong, Oriental Beauty, and Formosa Bonita.) Following with a session of brainstorming on the tea serving...based on various occasions... as our cases study to help design your own tea menu and tea programs.  After the training in our office, the whole group will be moving over to the restaurant where we have made arrangement to have cuisines pairing with Ooloong.  This will give everyone  a good experience and to sum up this OOLOONG SOMMELIER training.

The following slide has documented this Post WTE 2014 program.  It is our first ever OOLOONG SOMMELIER training, and we believe it is a good experiment and the pattern can always be modified.  We thank our participants - Chris, Karen, Lisa, Lynn, Susie and Tania.  Also we are grateful to our staff: Dr. Liu and Karen Shu for helping out.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014