Seven Cups News Category

Plagiarism and Tea Ecommerce

Last week a fellow tea entrepreneur emailed us with a question.  We had never spoken before, so he wasn’t sure how to approach us about a very sensitive issue. He had been searching for a map of Shi Feng Mountain and noticed that some of our photos and content appeared to have been lifted from… // MORE


Why am I writing this blog?

I was looking at our archives, and I have been writing something on a pretty regular basis since 2003. Of course it hasn’t been all me; there have been others that have contributed. In the beginning it was just monthly emails, and the actual blog didn’t come into existence until around 2005. Still, that is… // MORE



Buying Gu Zhu Zi Sun

Purchasing Tea: Gu Zhu Zi Sun This is the favorite part of my job: buying tea. Guzhu Zisun (Purple Bamboo Shoot) is a very special tea; it was the first tea to be distinguished as a tribute tea during the Tang Dynasty, and was produced under the watchful eye of Lu Yu, China’s tea saint,… // MORE


Lincang County Yunnan Black Tea

A few days ago I was in Lincang County in Yunnan taking a short trip before the first tea tour begins as well as seeing about the Dian Hong black tea harvest. The good news is that a pre-harvest rain has come, thus avoiding a repeat of last year when drought conditions left the spring… // MORE


First stop to get to 2011 black tea crop

Kunming April 2011… I am hear to get a first had version of the weather, and visit Lincang county to see the first grow and assess the coming crop. Some of the best black tea that is produced in China comes from this area, and it is one of our best selling black tea


Qing Ming Long Jing 2011

Qing Ming Festival | Honoring the Ancestors

Qing Ming In Hangzhou   April  2011. Yesterday was Qing Ming Festival in Hangzhou. The day was cold and rainy but the tea harvest is well underway: it started late but, unlike last year, there wasn’t a false spring that resulted in a damaging cold snap that destroyed the new growth on the bushes. Harvesting… // MORE


Shamian Island pigeon on a plate

Late Tea Harvest Musings

Guangzhou, Late Tea Harvest, and the World Tea Expo   The spring is late in coming this year because it has been another very cold winter in China. Even here in the south it has been unseasonably cold. I have been in Guangzhou (Canton) for a few days researching changes to the Chinese export laws… // MORE


Brewing tea for hardcore tea drinkers

I was prompted to talk about brewing tea by a Twitter conversation with @michaeljcoffey and @joiedetea. I am kind of a part time lurker in the social networking world, and I’m often surprised by the level of sophistication in the discussions about tea. I think that is really great, and am thrilled to see it. That… // MORE




Da Xue Shan Sheng 2012

New Year’s Musings on Tea

Amazingly enough, I am sitting here on New Year’s Eve with all of my work done. It feels great. Everyone else has gone , their work done as well. I am drinking some remarkable puer, Da Xue Shan Sheng, a green puer that was transported for one week by mule…


Anji Bai Cha withering

Early Spring Green Tea Arrivals

I am a green tea lover, so there is nothing that gives me more of a thrill that the arrival of the first green teas. For the last two years I have been here in Tucson waiting like everyone else for the tea to arrive…



Austin drinking mao cha loose green puer tea in a village house.

Mediocritea

I’ve just returned from a whirlwind trip to China. I was sent a ticket by a Chinese corporation that is thinking about opening a chain of retail tea shops. Their plan is to create a ‘tea beverage’ and they want a trustworthy supplier…


Shi Feng Dragon Well - Master Weng Shang Yi

Shi Feng Long Jing – Dragon Well country

We recently visited Hangzhou, which has become the modern national capital for trade groups and various governing bodies. Hangzhou is completely different than the bamboo forests we’ve been living in these past few days. It’s cosmopolitan and reminds us of France with tree-lined streets. In the morning, we watched Mr. Weng Shang Yi (Shi Feng… // MORE




Puer Tea Cakes

An Answer to a Question About Puer

This was a question that was posted as a comment that I thought deserved to be elevated to a post. Puer is a hot topic and pretty controversial because of the wide variation in price and amounts of money some Chinese and Japanese collectors are willing to pay, mysterious even mystical qualities ascribed to puer… // MORE


A gai wan cup is commonly used for Chaozhou gong fu tea, instead of a yixing pot.

A Response to an Email

As if Friday weren’t exciting enough for office-bound tea drinkers on the 9 to 5 worldwide! I will be posting an excerpt from one of our more informative email responses. This way our readers can get easy insight into the answers to questions that tea drinkers just like you have posed. So, please draw yourself… // MORE