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The answer was not in the cup

After seeing an article saying that a machine worth 40,000 $ was able to make the perfect pot of tea, I wondered what a perfect pot of tea.
This question came back to haunt me while I was having a cup of tea with @Chakaiclub (check her website, even if it is for now only in French and for France).

“What is a perfect pot of tea? Or rather what is a perfect cup of tea?” This question came back again and again into me as if it was asking me to find an answer.
A first obvious answer is that it had to do something with tea ceremony as I had defined them in a previous post ”For this post, I will define it as a sort of tea ritual, as an unique way of making and drinking tea over and over again”.

After all, if you do something in an unique way over and over, it must be the way to do, which means that if you look at the different tea ceremonies be they British, Chinese, German (yes I know I have offended the most traditionalists here be it is also a tea ceremony) or Japanese or … you will find quite easily what is a perfect cup of tea.
For the British one, the method is quite easy and was defined in 2003 by the Royal Society of Chemistry (see there).

If I oversimplify things (and once again I am sorry for the most traditionalist readers), one of the Chinese tea ceremony Gongfu cha or “”making tea with effort” like the Japanese tea of ceremony or “the way of the tea” are ritualised ways of preparing tea in order to make a tea that taste good but also as a way to enlighten your soul directly or indirectly (through others).
As such, they follow elaborate rules to really get the best of a cup of tea.

As for the German tea ceremony, I described it here (with a video) and it is the way to make the perfect German cup of tea.

If you look at it, you will see that every country/tradition thinks it has an unique way of making tea that is is so good that nothing else could be better.
The problem being that they don’t do it the same way and that depending on your tastes, you might find the results a little bit disappointing or not suiting them, which is somehow a paradox as if its results is a perfect cup of tea, there is no way you could be disappointed.
Or it could be worse and you could thinking that the way you make your tea is what makes your cup of tea perfect for you.

And this is when I was struck by the obvious.
The answer was not in the cup but in philosophy and in Aristotle who wrote that is perfect which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better but also which has attained its purpose.

The purpose here is to drink a tea that suits your taste and to make the best of what you have used to do it. So you can use whatever method, technique… that you prefer for making your tea as long as it enlightens your, makes you feel better and brightens your day turning a “normal” cup of tea into the perfect one.

Don’t get me wrong, I do know that to make a good cup of tea, good ingredients are needed turning it into an even more enjoyable experience but what I wanted to point out here is the relativity of “perfection” and that we should all make our tea the way we like it and be open-minded and curious about how other people make their perfect cup of tea.

With a little help from my friends

No, this blog is not about musics or whether or not the Beatles, Joe Cocker and some others ever drank tea.
This title is a thanks to @thedevotea for helping me finding a topic with one of his latest posts (http://thedevotea.teatra.de/2014/03/13/hypocrisy/) and also a hint to what my post is really about: boycotts or rather whether according to classical economics (and the different research papers I read),  boycott is efficient or not.

A boycott is when someone or a group of people decide on their free will not to buy, use… anything related to someone, to a company or to a country as a form of protest (be it for political, environmental or social reasons).
Is this linked to tea? In a way. Do you remember the Boston Tea Party, throwing away tea in protest for a tax rise (to be honest, it was also a problem of smugglers wanting to still make money and merchants being afraid of an increase in the monopoly of the East India Company).
You could also protest because of the working conditions in some estates or because you think that such or such country doesn’t or does support something you don’t like or find unethical.

The real question is whether or not this has any efficiency not from a moral point of view or in the real life but for economics.

The first issue is whether people will get along the movement. When someone hears about the boycott, he can decide to follow it and not consume the said good or he can go on and do as before. Why? Apart from the moral/political sensibilities, boycotting a product has a cost because you give up consuming a good with a certain utility for you and substitute it with another good with a lesser utility for you (since it is not as perfect as the one you consumed before) or with none. In both cases, it has a cost.
Furthermore people know that one people more is unlikely to have much effect and make things change. This is the free ride problem: people are likely not to boycott while wishing it succeeds.

A second issue is scattering. A lot of people are needed to start a boycott, to make it last and to win but how can you coordinate people around the world or a country?
Now with the Internet, forums, Twitter, Facebook and such ; it is easier than before but it could still be a problem when trying to bring more people who are not active in the right media channels in the game.

In a way, boycott is an attrition warfare between people minimising their utility and companies/countries… seeing their sales and benefits go down. Who will stand at the end of the day? The side with more “resources”.

What makes a boycott successful?
The first and most important factor is the market structure. Is this a monopolistic market with only one producer of a certain good? If the answer is yes, the boycott will face difficult times. Is it easy for the consumer to replace these goods? If the answer is no, there again the boycott will be in troble
From the producer point of view, there are three questions to answer. The first one is it diversified enough, i.e. does it have access to a lot of markets or only one? The second one (which is linked) is whether or not this boycott is a huge phenomena or just an isolated one. The last question is how much does it cost to change what is targeted by the activists?

Because you are all polite people, you will not have boycotted me for not tea ranting but here it comes.
So how does it work for tea? My analysis is that thanks to a huge number of companies, it is easy to boycott one  specific company and turns to others with “similar” products.
For gardens or estates, it might become a little more difficult as one tea is not another and although you will have the same utility, the taste and personal preferences might lead to a difficult experience if you can’t find a substitute.
And for countries, it is even more difficult as if you go for the boycott, you will not have any access any longer to a whole type of teas. It might not be a problem if you decide not to buy anything from one of the small tea producing countries but what about the big ones?

In the end, against companies, boycott could work but against the biggest tea producing countries in the world, I think that even “with a big help from our friends”, we would lose much more than we might win.
Think about it, there are plenty of customers ready to buy from them and if not, it is the small producers, those with less power to influence what you are against that are most likely to be hit.

Drink me I’m famous

I must confess that for none of us it was a night party but when thinking about this nice event, those were the first words that came to my mind.
But perhaps I must first get back in time so that this all story makes sense to those who weren’t there.

Last year sometime in November, I went to Paris on a Saturday and since I had time before going to what I was waited, I had decided to go to Theodor shop near the Eiffel Tower.

By Theodor

I had a full list between what I wanted for me (or for my experiments), for people really close to me and some for the people of Teatrade.
I had asked what they liked but without any clear answer I had to decide for myself and I went for two flavoured teas; the two being a kind of signature teas for Theodor (at least for me), Thé du Loup and Je t’aime.

I sent them by the snail mail and I was glad to hear and see that people were receiving it.
Then came the tricky part when Rachel asked me if I wanted to  participate in a tea tandem testing with my teas.
I agreed to do so but living on the other side of the Atlantic, the tricky part was to find a time that suited everyone. In the end, we managed to find what seemed a rather good time for almost everyone (except for Geoffrey who had to work).
It seems that everyone was as excited to “meet” me as I was to “meet” them.

The day came and I logged on. After solving some technical issues with my microphone, which would have been a real problem, since my accent was supposed to be part of the show (at least this is what I had understood before getting on line), I managed to hear, see and speak.
To me, it was something new but all these ladies (Rachel, Jo, Nicole, Darlene, Jackie and Julia) made me feel comfortable and we began to speak.
About what? For example, how to pronounce the names of these teas. Since I was the native speaker, it was easy for me and hearing so many people “loving” me was a great moment of fun.
Geoffrey was another topic for our tea meeting (from we missing him to his love of teabeers and similar experiments).
We also spoke about tea in France with me trying to answer questions about the market here, the flavoured vs. non flavoured teas or the bagged/non bagged ones…
We also had guest stars with appearances of Rachel’s children (it seems I impressed the elder one or that I caught her tongue).

But in the end, we exchanged our appreciations over the tea that was being tested (I didn’t have it but I was drinking another tea from Theodor).
I will try to remember everything as I didn’t take any notes. Thé du Loup was noted for its chocolate, vanilla and almond aromas with vanilla being the most noted and almond coming as an after taste.

Thinking about it, it seems a little bit surprising as when I drank it, the chocolate taste had more strength but such is the beauty of tasting and sharing; each one of us has a different approach, different feelings and opinions.

In the end, it was a really interesting and nice experience.
Meeting online my fellow teatraders and talking about tea and other things was really great and something that I might try to do again.

And here are my fellow tea drinkers for this “Drink me I’m famous” event
Jackie, Cups Of Tea With Jackie
Rachel, I Heart Teas
Nicole, Tea For Me Please and her post on this event
Darlene, The Tea Enthusiasts Scrapbook
Julia, Bingley’s Tea
Jo J, Scandalous Tea and her post on this event

The missed Geoffrey, Lazy Literatus, who nonetheless wrote something.

We grow old because we stop playing

Yunnan…

Yunnan? Yes I know, you know everything about this region and its teas.

But let me surprise you. I am not going to talk to you about this but rather about a game named Yunnan, a game about tea, trade and merchant houses (yes trade and merchant houses why else would I be interested in a tea game?).

 

This game is about running a merchant house on the path of success along the road of tea and horses.

It is not an easy game and it seems so complex that after going two or three times through the rules and making everything ready, we did not play it.

 

But first things first. Here is the board with everything ready to play and you will notice the cups full of a Yunnan Imperial Tea ready to be drunk during the game.

Yunnan boardgame

Yunnan board game

Yunnan boargame with rules

Yunnan board game with rules

Now here are my thoughts on this game.

It is a complex game with almost no luck involved (I say almost while you do have a little bit of it in the way you find out who should play when).

You have to select carefully what your merchants (which are more or less the people acting for you) will do: travel (bringing in tea), buy improvements (which will allow you to be more efficient in a specific field).

Then you have to connect your merchants, trading posts… to avoid paying logistical costs when they bring back the tea to the main town but at the main time, you should try to avoid the ever present inspector or neutralise it thanks to your political influence.

 

From what I understood there is not a simple and unique path to victory. It depends on what all the players are doing and this is what I find really interesting in the concept.

 

After going through Internet and looking at different websites, it seems the game is best played with 3-4 players, even if rules for 2 are provided.

This might be what we missed in our game.

 

If you want to look for yoursefl, here is the game page http://www.argentum-verlag.de/yunnan_en.html and then the Board Game Geek one http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143401/yunnan

All that glisters…

Following the guest post on my blog, I wanted to have a little more quantitative approach to the evolution of the American tea market.

So I looked for data from some sources and found something quite interesting at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): all the tea imports between 1986 and 2011 for 5 countries (Canada, France, Germany, UK, USA).

Why these countries? To compare things between countries that are perceived as similar in terms of consumption but not in terms of history and relationships to the tea.

I reworked the stats a little (for example starting in 1991 to get the same data from all these countries) and here are the first results.

041 - 5 countries

The USA imports more and more tea (43,000 tons more or over +50% in 21 years) whereas these tea imports drops in the United Kingdom (-13% but only a little over 23,000 tons less).

Even if their tea imports increased overtime, the 3 other countries I selected don’t play in the same league. With a little under 55,000 tons imported each year, Germany plays in the second league while with under 20,000 tons each year, Canada and France are obviously in the third one but all of them share something with the USA: the increase over the years ranging from +38% (France), +44% (Canada), +118% (Germany).

From this first analysis, we can conclude that the USA is a big tea importer and that if everything goes well for them, it could really soon beat their only rival, the United Kingdom.

The next question is what they make with all this tea.

And to know the answer (or a part of it), the question is where does all this tea comes from?

Below is a map that shows every country that exported tea to the USA even once between 1991 and 2011.

041 - US tea imports

Seeing some rather exotic countries in the list like Greenland or some other small one is the joy of statistics on international trade.

This problem coupled with the low frequency of some of these trades doesn’t help us a lot. So I decided to eliminate those who had traded for less than 10 years over the period 1991-2011.

041 - US tea imports 10 years

This map is a little more interesting but displays the countries where some companies are located or countries that re exported tea to the USA.

When focusing on those with an average export level of more than 1,000 tons per year, only a few countries are left with two kinds of countries: those re exporting what they brought (Great Britain and Germany) and those exporting directly.

041 - US tea imports 10000 tons

These 11 countries exported in 2011 118,260 tons to the USA with Argentina being the first (50,034 tons) followed by China (26,335 tons) and India (12,564 tons).

What can we deduce from these elements?

Probably something that you all know that in spite or because of their huge imports, people in the USA (as a whole) do not drink high quality tea (I read that Argentinian tea was mostly used for bags and iced teas).

This is not a scoop but I suspect that there is a trend under this for higher/more exotic teas that could really change the way tea is perceived/drunk.

This will probably the next step in my analysis: find some value statistics and try to link them to those I already collected so that I can get a complete overview.

Tea time in America

I was asked by people at Seattle Coffee Gear if I was interested in a post by them and among the subjects they were thinking of was “Tea in America”.

Since this topic is of interest to me, I gave a go ahead and I began searching myself to provide later a complementary look at it.

In other words, stay tuned but first let’s leave the floor to my guest.

 

“But the kettle’s on the boil

And we’re so easily called away

Hands across the water

Heads across the sky”

– Paul McCartney

 

Greetings from America, where it looks like we may (finally) adopt tea into our daily routine. Tea has come and gone from our culture several times based on availability, fashion and, of course, politics. It is time to dust of granny’s teapot, from all indicators, tea is here to stay.

 

With the recent purchase of the Teavana chain of stores, Starbucks is betting they can do for tea popularity what they did for coffee popularity. Teavana has over 300 stores in the United States, Canada and Mexico located in popular shopping mall locations. Starbucks has plans to expand and triple that amount. Currently Teavana sells teas and tea ware and some locations are being revamped to sell prepared food and beverages.

 

According to NPR, the wholesale value of tea has grown from $2 billion to $10 billion over the past 20 years. Currently there are about 4,000 specialty tea rooms and retail stores in the U.S. There are many demographic factors that indicate a continued economic boost for tea sales including aging baby boomers and an increased Asian population. The time is ripe for tea.

 

The preference here has always been for black tea, preferably iced, which makes up 85% of the U.S. market. This is why McDonalds offers Sweet Tea (water, sugar, orange pekoe and pekoe cut black tea) nationwide, not just in the Southern states where the iced drink has always been popular.

Caution: What falls on the floor after roasting could end up in your 32 ounce iced tea

While this tea revolution is being led by corporate giants McDonalds, Starbucks, Pepsi (Brisk) and Coca-Cola (Honest Tea), small specialty tea shops are quietly doing more business. With increased awareness of tea comes increased demand for premium teas, because a rising tide lifts all boats (and teacups).

 

Some die-hard tea enthusiasts have a hard time welcoming the onslaught of new tea drinkers. Tea blogger A.C. Cargill laments there is ‘Too much emphasis on fancy tea rooms and fancy flavorings, not the real tea experience.’ A similar phenomenon happened with coffee, Starbucks was established in 1971 but the Third Wave of coffee did not take shape until 30 years later. Right now is a great opportunity for tea educators to expedite the evolution.

 

Shiuwen Tai, a tea shop owner and tea educator in Seattle, offers classes about how tea is grown, harvested and processed. She specializes in Taiwanese Oolong teas and leads annual trips to meet the producers. Her enthusiasm for quality tea is contagious and she shares her knowledge during tea tastings, general interest classes and lectures on advanced topics. She says people who appreciate fine coffee or fine wine will have an easier understanding when she talks about what makes a fine tea.

 

The East Coast is also seeing more shops devoted to fine tea. Tea server and blogger Nicole Martin reports, ‘Most in my area are brand new. Radiance Tea House in New York City is probably coming up on 8 or so years though. My favorite is definitely Tea Drunk’ (in the East Village). Both of these shops offer classes and tastings to further educate customers about fine teas.

 

Fresh roasted tea from Floating Leaves Tea in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington

A little more tea education and it is possible some Americans may trade corporate tea’s quantity for local business’ quality, and a 1 liter cup of Sweet Tea for a 100ml gaiwan. Either way, tea is here to stay!

 

Samantha Joyce is a writer for Seattle Coffee Gear in Seattle, Washington and enjoys sharing her knowledge of all things coffee and tea. Currently she enjoys steeping Oriental Beauty Oolong in a gaiwan to impress her coffee-loving friends and family.

One cup of tea for each tag I receive ;)

It appears I have been tagged twice by Robert from thedevotea and Rachel from IheartTeas, so I need to be twice as convincing and concentrated when answering these questions on my not so sacred garden, aka tea and me.

But first of all, what I do enjoy here is that I decided to drink an extra cup of tea to celebrate all those that tag me.

First, let’s start with how you were introduced & fell in love with the wonderful beverage of tea.

In Norway, I don’t know why but my brother and I were given for our 4 o’clock tea with a lot of milk. Perhaps it was because of the cold, perhaps…

As for falling in love, it was only several years later since I had stopped drinking tea and began once more when I started working. I don’ remember well how I made it from the yellow bag to the loose leaf side but perhaps my answer to question 2 is a hint.

What was the very first tea blend that you ever tried?

It was a long time ago but I think it was Indian Spice from Lipton. A blend for which I always had a nice memory and I was saddened to see that it was no longer made. And I never tried any Chai blend since or even before that. Not that I am superstitious or afraid but I never felt the urge to give them a try.

When did you start your tea blog & what was your hope for creating it?

I started my tea blog on… wait May 2011? I can’t believe it. It seems like this was yesterday.

My hope in creating it was bringing added value to you dear reader by having a rather specialised and unique approach blending tea and economics into teaconomics (even if thedevotea thinks I stole the name from him).

List one thing most rewarding about your blog & one thing most discouraging.

Only one thing? Looking for new stuff and ideas to write about is perhaps the most rewarding things since it allows me to read and search a lot.

The most discouraging thing? That I don’t have enough time to write about all the things I have in mind.

What type of tea are you most likely to be caught sipping on?

All kinds of teas. I am always eager to try new things be them unflavoured, flavoured, white, green, black, blue… from strange and unknown gardens/countries. The only things I don’t try are those with ingredients and things I dislike (mint among others).

Favourite tea latte to indulge in?

I had to look up at what a tea latte is. And my answer is none since this product didn’t seem really appealing to me.

Favourite treat to pair with your tea?

With my special one. Those are my best tea moments.

If there was one place in the World that you could explore the tea culture at, where would it be & why?

Everywhere where I have tea friends because they are all special, unique and I can learn something from them while sharing a good cup of tea with good people.

Any tea time rituals you have that you’d like to share?

I like doing tea for my colleagues. I enjoy selecting some of my best teas for them and making a nice kettle before going from desk to desk and helping them taste and discover new things

Time of day you enjoy drinking tea the most: Morning, Noon, Night or Anytime?

Tea in the morning is perfect

Tea in the afternoon is more than alright.

Tea in the night rocks.

Tea at anytime is the best.

What’s one thing you wish for tea in the future?

More people, more places, more gardens.

Who do you tag?

I will open this to others so I tag our dear @lahikmajoe, a French blogger and tea lover @Melle_The and someone with a hat and some tea @Mad_Hatter_Tea

Average? Average? Do I look like an average?

We recently had on one of the blogs hosted here at Teatra.de the beginning of a discussion regarding what is the tea community like in the USA or in the Old World (I really like using some “strange” place names from time to time).

My mind immediately jumped on the strange idea of defining an average tea drinker in the USA and in my own country and those I travel to on a regular basis.

I then gave this idea a little more thought and with my good old mathematical background, I found this was a silly idea for several reasons.

Don’t leave yet, you shouldn’t be worried, I won’t begin to focus on concepts such as mean, average, central tendency… I will leave that your former, actual or future maths teachers.

I just decided to go along with my thoughts and give you some ideas of why I came to that conclusion.

Let’s begin with some data provided by the UK Tea Council.

According to them, 165,000,000 cups of tea are drunk in the UK everyday and with 63,181,775 inhabitants, each of them should drink 2.61 cups a day.

This doesn’t seem much for a so-called tea loving country, does it?

Since 96% of all cups of tea drunk daily in the UK are brewed from tea bags, this implies that either 0.11 cup per day and per capita is made of loose leaf tea or that around 2,528,735. 63 people in the whole UK make their 2.61 cups a day with loose leaf.

I then decided to focus on my own market (so to speak) and I looked at different information sources on the French tea drinkers.

The first I found was in a market intel file on green and black teas in France made by the CBI (Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countries, a Dutch Agency).

As with wines, French consumers are looking especially for “Grand Crus”.”

The extending tea market also involves a growing emphasis on factors such as traceability, employee working conditions on plantations and sustainability, as well as production in specific regions. French consumers want to know where their tea comes from and how it was grown and blended. Customers love to feel a connection to the source; it adds to their sense of enjoyment and pleasure and increases their understanding of their cup of tea.”

The second intel source was some information provided by the Ministry of Agriculture which basically said: tea is made in majority with bagged teas (with almost twice as much black tea being drunk as green one) and the main drinkers are in the Ile-de-France (Paris and the surroundings) or in the Western part of the country.

When you try to define a profile of an average French tea drinker, with these two different sources you get obviously nothing as they seem to be speaking of two different countries or groups of people.

Why is that? Because there is not such thing as an average tea drinker.

We all like it in a different way that might be completely opposite to our neighbour, and be far from this average picture of tea drinkers.

Does this make us an unworthy tea drinker? I don’t think so. Tea is about all of us being different and there are so many things to discover, experiment…

So next time someone tries to tell you what an average/normal/typical tea drinker is/should be, just tell him/her “Average? Average? Do I look like an average?” and then drink your favoured tea the way you want.

What is in a name? Simplicity or rather simplicitea

I had plans to write about a specific topic but last week-end, I spoke with a really nice old lady.

She asked me if I had any hobbies and among my answers was tea (the others wouldn’t really interest you, would they?).

This was the beginning of some questions regarding tea and its colours, the different producing countries, the plant… as she told me she didn’t know a thing about tea.

And as I began explaining things like that green and black teas are made of the same plant or that the different tea colours are “just” the result of different fermentation and oxidation processes (to make it real simple), I thought to myself “what is with tea that makes people so confused?”

I gave some more thoughts to this question and I had several other coming to my mind.

Why is tea so complex? Or rather why does it appear so? Isn’t this a way for us tea lovers to be a little mysterious and have a certain aura around us (the one of the guy or girl that knows how to do something the others don’t)? What is so different between coffee and tea that makes people think that tea is produced by several plants?

I think there is a need for more simplicity around our favourite drink. Why? First of all, being able to explain something in a simple way is a proof of one’s mastery of the concept. The poet Nicolas Boileau said (the translation is mine and mine alone) “What is well thought is clearly stated/and the right words to say it come easily.”

This must be our goal when speaking about tea because (and this is the second point) non knowledgeable people will get confused about complex explanations and since we are all both enthusiastic and full of knowledge, we will always be eager to say more than less.

And this might scare a lot of people. While going for the KISS (or Keep It Simple Stupid) rule will help us explain our hobby and passion to a lot of people and you might even make them try this strange thing we are drinking.

The second reason is that we (as tea drinkers but this also happens to anyone who knows) might be a bit haughty when dealing with other people that are true beginners as we know how to do it right (and sometimes more than some people trying to sell us tea)

I know that you, dear reader, do not fall in this category (no not at all) but let me tell you there are some people that do.

What will they achieve with such behaviour? Frighten people, make them unwilling to learn more. In other words, they will go against the “spirit” of tea as we all know that tea is not only a drink but something you share with people, something to enjoy be it alone or with other people.

So from now on, I will try to do that and also here on my blog: speak in a simple way but not with simplistic ideas.

I hope you will join me in this quest for simplicitea.

What could we all read?

I don’t know how you react when looking at a tea industry magazine but I know how I feel: frustrated. Why? To answer that, one must understand what is really a magazine and what is not one.

Magazines, periodicals, glossies, or serials are publications that are printed with ink on paper, and generally published on a regular schedule and containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magazine)

Know that we all agree on what a magazine is or isn’t, I can keep on telling you why I am bothered by these publications.

The ads do not disturb me at all, after all if I get them for free, someone has to pay for it.

What is more “annoying” is the content as sometimes:

  • it is free ads under disguise while they mainly speak about their products,

  • it is mixed quite often with coffee/spice/other drinks news,

  • the topics are sometimes too industry oriented and focusing on some obscure tools/techniques…

What would I want to see in such a magazine?

I don’t think tea reviews as nowadays with Internet and so many people doing that, it is not really worth it and could be easily skipped.

Articles focusing on explaining the industry in its complexity and organisation (all along the value chain) could be really interesting and could provide useful insights on how things work for the tea-lovers and also what works or doesn’t.

Another important point would be articles on countries and their specifics, be it in the way they see or produce tea.

Reports on new and actual trends would also be interesting and could foster some debate.

I know that what I describes makes this hypothetical magazine something between a generalist or for the general public magazine and a trade journal (one focusing only on the industry as its target), something that would make it difficult for it to find its target.

I know I am a bit partial here but I think it could be useful to allow all of us to better understand tea.

A lot of other things could be added and since this is just my opinion, I open the debate here on what you would like to see in a tea industry magazine but one focusing on you and me.