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The World Wide Web of Tea
Story by Nick Obourn . Illustration by Lydia Hess

The tea retailer is in his or her office after a day of talking with customers and selling tea. Feet are tired and sore, a pot of freshly brewed tea sits to the left, a mouse cupped in the right hand. The computer before the curious retailer displays one Web site after another: www.teausa.com, www.teacouncil.co.uk, www.tea.ca. Scrolling down the page, the retailer reads into an ongoing discussion on Teamail, the Web discussion group hosted by the Cat-Tea Corner Web site (www.catteacorner.com). Perhaps www.teahealth.co.uk reprints a newly released heath study, or the supplier informs the retailer via e-mail that the new harvest of frozen summit oolong is in. In this tea retailer's world, the Internet is fast becoming the new silent business partner.

Beyond Google
Not only are tea retailers finding it important to sell their tea over the Internet by establishing Web sites with welcoming shopping carts, they are using the Internet to learn more about tea. "I'd say what we have 'learned' about tea from the Internet is confined primarily to where the market is headed and how we can position our product to serve the emerging needs of the tea drinking public and retailers," says John Davidson, co-founder and co-owner of Davidson's Tea, based in Reno, Nev. My interview with John Davidson was conducted via e-mail. He responded to my questions while sitting in an Internet café on vacation in Spain. Over the past two years, Davidson's has been converting its entire line of specialty teas to certified organic, no small task when the company offers over 400 teas. In the process of switching to certified organic, Davidson often referred to the Web sites of the Organic Trade Association (www.ota.com) and the Pesticide Action Network of North America, PANNA (www.panna.org). The Organic Trade Association Web site offers a link to the National Organic Program home page (www.ams.usda.gov/nop), a United States Department of Agriculture, USDA, Web site (www.usda.gov), which describes regulations, lists certifying agents and has consumer information about organic products. The Organic Trade Association, as a third party organization, offers its own reflections on the organic movement with helpful hints and background information in less bureaucratic language. The PANNA Web site concentrates primarily on the effect of pesticides on agriculture and humans. As Davidson puts it: "For a truly scary experience, look at the PANNA site." It's important for tea retailers, despite pesticides' hard-to-swallow results, to be knowledgeable about these topics in relation to their tea supply. Davidson also recommends the Web site for the Organic Center for Education and Promotion (www.organic-center.org), an offspring of the Organic Trade Association. The site is mainly a repository for articles and news stories about organic agriculture.
   The Internet represents today what the earliest tea trade routes once were: a way for information to travel, a method of communication between supplier and client. "[The] Internet has of course sped up whole processes having to do with vendor and customer communications," says Davidson. Information from the tea-growing countries once traveled with the earliest trade ships, clinging to the commodity and arriving in Britain, Holland or Portugal along with the product. The Internet has given a path of its own to the information that had traveled with cargo ships. It allows tea information to travel faster than tea itself. For the tea retailer, this leap is a key to success.
   One of the most influential changes the Internet has brought to Stratford, Conn.-based SpecialTeas' business is the ability to e-mail farmers from which the company buys tea, says Juergen Link, president of SpecialTeas. He can easily get updates on weather conditions, humidity, expected yields and pricing. His pricing online and in the company's catalog can be adjusted quickly to reflect any changes in quality due to these influences. Link can then notify his customers immediately with accurate information.
   SpecialTeas now has two in-house employees devoted to working with the Web, and the company outsources some of the Web responsibility to a company that helps with what the industry refers to as "search engine optimization." Companies such as the one SpecialTeas employs are ubiquitous and it is their unique duty to ensure your company pops up in all the right places on the Web.
   SpecialTeas launched as an Internet-based company in late 1995, and Link recalls receiving e-mails from growers and farms soliciting his business as the Internet really began to have global implications yet warns against this "double-edged sword." Even though the Internet has given voice and opportunity to those in tea-growing countries, it can compromise the overall quality of specialty tea sold in importing countries. That is why, even with the positive impact the Internet can have for the tea industry, it is still paramount to know whom you are dealing with and what you are buying.
   "It [the Internet] certainly can bring awareness to a certain level but I think the bottom line is, as a buyer in the industry, you still have to get the teas in your hands and in the cup and taste them and sort through that," says CEO of San Rafael, Calif.-based Mighty Leaf Tea, Gary Shinner, who cautions against the same potential slump in quality. "And you have to work with the knowledge of the importer you are working with or the broker you are working with, or sometimes, if you are working with the estate itself.
   "[The Internet has] always been a very important part of our business," says Shinner. Mighty Leaf got into the Web just before the boom, before the Internet was accepted as a viable means of profit. "I think it was maybe 1997," he remarks on the companies Web-savvy timing. Mighty Leaf's Web site is a testament to the hard work it has put into the Internet. It's a slick, clean series of pages with impressive pictures of the company's tea framed in some cases by its signature tea pouches.
   Shinner uses the Internet for a variety of tea-related reasons. He cites the importance of the tea association Web sites-the British, the Canadian and the U.S.-and likes how several tea-blogs or discussion groups on the Internet can give retailers a feel of what is going through the consumer's mind.
   When retailers do want to research and possibly contact tea farms, contrary to an e-mail blast from an anonymous tea farm or broker, a few sites in particular can be helpful. "[The] Tea Board of India has a very detailed site describing actual growing methods (particularly with respect to chemical spraying)," says Davidson. Unfortunately, as of the writing of this article in late November, The Tea Board of India's Web site (www.india.org) is temporarily unavailable. With hope it will be back up by January. The Tea Council's (www.tea.co.uk) "Tea Industry" link is another way to find the names and Web sites of tea organizations and companies. The companies and organizations listed here are only Tea Council members, which can seem a bit limiting, but the array of members is actually very diverse. Links on this site can bring you to the home page of the Sri Lankan Tea Board (www.pureceylontea.com) or to the home page of James Finlay & Co. (www.finlays.net), a company with a stake in several tea plantations, as well as trading and buying offices. The links provided by the "Tea Industry" section also give a brief description of the company it highlights. Along with contact information under the listing for the Nairobi, Kenya-based tea company Brooke Bond is a description of the company's business interests and flavor profiles of the teas produced at those farms.
   The Darjeeling Planters Association Web site (www.darjeelingtea.com) offers a look into the steep hills of India's famous northeastern growing region. Tea retailers interested in buying some of the prized "champagne of teas" can investigate the area farm by farm and learn about the history of Darjeeling tea. The Darjeeling Planters Association Web site is a good example of the onus felt by tea growing regions to get organized and present themselves as an established entity. A clear Web site is an extension of this. It increases the appeal for tea retailers and brings the tea community closer as a whole. In accord, the World Green Tea Association (www.o-cha.net) has a good Web site spanning the gamut of green tea information. For those who don't speak Japanese be sure to click the English translation button at the top of the page. The World Green Tea Association differentiates green tea types on its site and lists downloadable PDF's discussing green tea at every sector of the market. The Himalayan Orthodox Tea Producers Association (HOTPA) site (www.nepaltea.com.np/main.html) is another example similar in sentiment and geography to the Darjeeling Planters Association. The nonprofit organization represents the interests of small farms and lobbies the Nepalese government on tea-related policy matters.

There is no "I" in Tea
The Cat-Tea Corner's discussion group Teamail is a Yahoo group with 1270 members as of late November 2004. To participate in the ongoing tea banter one must register. Go to the Cat-Tea Corner Web site and scroll down until the "Talk and Chat" link is visible, click on it and then click again on the Teamail link, the first item on the new page that pops up. Simply follow the directions after that. Yahoo will ask a series of questions and send you a series of e-mails confirming your registration, and once accepted by the moderator of the group, you are ushered through the pearly Internet gates into a land of tea lovers ready to dispense questions and wisdom at the drop of a hat.
   Scanning through the endless queries and responses, humorous interjections and business advice, I came across a retailer who had posted a question about whether or not it is necessary to rinse tea leaves before steeping them. The quandary inspired multiple answers coming from all sectors and levels of the tea industry. These threads of conversation have a focused momentum and the maelstrom of responses to the "rinsing the leaves" question ranged from the poetic (rinsing is a way of opening the leaves and releasing some of the aroma) to the peremptory (rinsing is a tradition once used to clean dirty tea leaves, now unnecessary but still practiced). A member named Michael Plant posted this response: "Points well taken, especially about the opening of the leaves. The aroma after that first rinse can be heaven. Yesterday I was drinking tea with a friend who pulled out his private stock Taiwanese oolong, some of the best I've ever tasted. He did a quick rinse, transferred to rinse water from teapot to holding pot, and moved toward the sink to discard it. The aroma filled the room. We stared at each other for a few seconds. The rinse never made it to the sink." Member Candy Heflin, co-owner of Ashland City, Tenn.-based Three Sisters Tea Room, posted this flattering testimonial after introducing herself and her tea room to the chat group: "Thank you for allowing me to share and be part of something I love-Tea!" I e-mailed her for permission to use some of her postings in my article and she built on her previous adoration of the Internet and Teamail. "The Internet for me in the tea biz is very helpful in so many ways, in fact, without it I would be lost! Being part of a chat board [such] as Teamail is so useful because any doubts a person may have can be solved just with the click of a button to sign on, ask your question and wait for the answer."
   The personal opinions of tea people from all over the world make Teamail work. Traditions vary by region, experience and mentality and anyone can post from the most benign to the most controversial topic, without diffidence. The woman who posted the question about rinsing leaves now has a host of options from which to choose.

Virtual Health
It is impossible to search the Internet for information about tea and not come across health studies and news reports about the curative or detrimental properties of tea. Tea and health have become synonymous in the eyes of the Internet, and in many ways, of the tea retailer and the consumer. "I've found that the best sources for information are two-pronged. It's bifurcated," says Shinner. The first tenet being the aforementioned tea associations: The Tea Association of the U.S.A., the Canadian and the British. Secondly, Shinner indicates the importance of the Internet as a good search source for health information. "When consumers are looking for that sort of information, I think the Internet is a wealth of information because you tend to pretty easily get to all the current studies that have been issued on all the different teas." As it happens, the Web sites for the various tea organizations serve as good resources for health information. One of the best is a site hosted by the Tea Council, www.health.co.uk. The site provides explicit information about the differences between types of tea, what flavonoids are, the nutritional components of tea, its effects on cancers and heart disease and even oral health. The site draws its conclusions from closely cited studies, most of which have been conducted in the last 10 years. Davidson and Link both reinforce the importance of the health studies published online, perfect fodder for the tea retailer. Davidson says he is able to "keep track of trends, particularly on the health side, which is an area that was difficult to research prior to the Web."
   The Web site for The Tea Association of the U.S.A. (www.teausa.com) has a section devoted to the potential health benefits of tea. In it, the organization delves into "Tea and Caffeine," "Tea and Bone Health," "Iron Absorption" and "Tea and Cardiovascular."
   Health journals, such as The New England Journal of Medicine (http://content.ne.jm.org) are available through the Web, to a certain extent. Article abstracts are available online with the entire articles available with a subscription. The site for The New England Journal of Medicine does have a "search" tool and it retrieves 61 articles about tea when asked; the Web site search engine for Science News online (www.sciencenews.org) found 15 articles about green tea, 10 on black tea and one about white tea. One of the disconcerting problems with using the online versions of these medical journals is the unavailability of the entire articles. But many times, these articles can be found at local libraries. If one does have a subscription to a journal like Science News it can be very helpful for customers to print out these articles and leave them at the counter for perusal.

Moving the Mouse
The Internet has become the voluminous dark ether that connects us. Information, pictures, directions, memorabilia and almost anything in between can be found on the Internet today. Although imposing to some, navigating the Internet is all about knowing where to look, how to look for it and having some helping hands along the way. And when it comes to tea, representing only a small segment of the overall Internet database, the information is out there and the success of your teahouse relies on the movement of the mouse.