Meet The Team / Brandice Schnabel

This is the first interview in a series of interviews called Tea Company Spotlight that I'd like to do with tea owners from all the tea companies around the world.

My first interview is with Mike Morton, the owner and founder of TeaFrog, founded in 2006 and based online out of Oakville, Ontario with distributors throughout Canada. I've spoken with Mike through reviewing many of his teas for the STeaP podcast since late 2007, and he was all too happy to answer a few questions about his company.

BRANDICE: Tell us a bit about starting your company.

MIKE: I have been a tea drinker for all of my life, and until about 4 years ago, the only tea I knew was Orange Pekoe Tetley Teabags. :) My daughter visited Japan in 2004 and the family that she stayed with sent back a gift package of good green tea. At the time I had no idea how to brew it, taste it, etc, and we could not even read the packaging because it was all in Japanese! We figured out how to make it eventually, and were surprised at how amazing it was compared to the teabag store bought that we had been drinking. As I started to research and explore tea, I grew a passion for finding good tea, and sharing what I knew with friends and family. As I grew evermore - lets say, *obsessed* with it, I started to notice that tea was getting more popular, but the outlets for different varieties and flavors for experimenting with were limited. I just naturally took what I knew about business from previous experience, paired it with a passion, and lo and behold, TeaFrog was born! :)

Chris Cason is Tavalon's tea sommelier, and in this clip, he explains out to create simple syrup infused with tea, which can then be turned into a tea soda that sounds really quite tasty! I'm looking forward to trying this out on my own at some point. Have any of you created a unique beverage with tea?

[Source: Tavalon at Viddler]

Are you a writer who also enjoys tea? There's a contest going on over at Felicitea that offers an opportunity to showcase your writing talents for free tea and other prizes. There's only about a week left, so don't waste any time if you read about the contest and want to participate!

Here's the overview, straight from Felicitea's site:

Write: We're looking for poetry, prose, whatever you like. Feel free to haiku or make up a limerick, or write out a concise little paragraph. Just write about tea and it's relationship to you, your friend, or your last cup of coffee.

We want to connect new drinkers to tea, convert a coffee drinker (or other non-tea drinking people) or two over (at least get them to try good tea!) and reconnect tea lovers with what it is they love about tea.

• Tea drinkers it is your responsibility to help the coffee drinkers of the world. You are charged with helping them understand the joy of tea. If you are a convert tell your story. If you love tea, but still enjoy an occasional cup of coffee it's okay, but what about the tea keeps you coming back to the pot all day? Share with the Internets why they should kick that coffee habit. If you have a friend you're nominating, be specific.
• Coffee/Non-tea drinkers this is your chance to tell us why you drink coffee (or something else) instead of tea. This is your chance to tell all us tea drinkers what it is that makes you go for the espresso instead of the Earl Grey. Did you have a bad tea bag experience? Convinced all green tea is bitter? Are you willing to give it a shot but don't know where to start?

For the detailed rules and the prizes, click to read on!

Rishi is putting Milwaukee on the world tea map

Rishi took home seven first place awards at the recent World Tea Expo. They are definitely doing something right, and I personally recommend their Jade Cloud tea.

Cup of tea may ease memory problems

It turns out that the flavinoids in tea may actually help ease symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases, and there seems to the possibility that flavinoids in tea may help repair the damage, not just stop it.

A test in the art of gimhae style tea bowls

Teaware geeks will enjoy this write up by MattCha about Korean style gimhae tea bowls, complete with a brief history of this teaware style and several pictures of some very nice bowls.

32 Gongfu Tea Tables

This is a great article on gongfu tea tables, with in-depth comparisons that you really won't find anywhere else. It's very cool of the author to share all the info collected while on his own quest for hte perfect gongfu tea table. Bookmark this one if you ever want to get into gongfu tea preparation!

When I first began to dabble in green tea, I absolutely hated it. It was bitter, drying to the mouth, wretched taste, and I was left for a long time feeling that green tea just wasn't for me. Many people I knew who drank black tea felt the same way, so I concluded that green tea was for the few who had the palette for it.

Of course, this was during a time when the only other tea drinkers I knew were buying Bigelow or Lipton bags and, like myself, just throwing them in some boiling hot water and coming back whenever we remembered to take the bag out, squeezing the bag thoroughly to get the last drops into the cup.

I shudder these days when I think about how badly I was scalding my first attempts at green tea, and I marvel that I enjoyed any tea at all, considering the way in which I was preparing it. This is a predicament many novice tea drinkers find themselves when it comes to anything other than black tea: you're scalding (and probably over-steeping it).