Happy Birthday to RateTea:
This past monday, the 19th, marks the 2-year anniversary of RateTea. This is a rather exciting milestone for me, and I feel rather silly having missed it.
Some of the biggest accomplishments related to RateTea lately involve a series of subtle and a few not-so-subtle changes to the visual design of the site, which I am hoping to continue, with the help of Sylvia, who is now working with RateTea on both the look and feel of the site, and as an editor. These changes include making a professional logo so that the site can have a consistent presence across the web, and printing business cards with the logo. And of course, attending World Tea East was also an important milestone.
My 500th Review:
Yesterday marked my 500th review on the site, which was a review of Maya Tea's Tulsi or Holy Basil. I've become quite a fan of this herb, having sampled 5 commercial blends of it. It is relatively tough to find 5 different commercially-available sources of Tulsi, although I currently have only 6 different sources listed on RateTea's page on Tulsi. I also have had tulsi grown myself...both fresh and dried...so add 2 more to that mix.
I find it interesting that my 500th review wasn't actually tea. Of those reviews, 92 of them are of herbal teas. I certainly am very interested in herbal teas and one of the things that I want to do is to convince people that just about any plant can be as interesting as tea, if you put as much effort into carefully cultivating it, and then appreciating it. But of course, most of my reviews are about tea--and pure teas, not flavored ones (276) so this is still where my focus is.
Happy first day of fall!
Another interesting milestone is the changing of the seasons; today is officially the first day of fall. I began the day today with a cup of Caykur's Earl Grey...this is a tea produced in Turkey, and the brand, Çaykur, is fully-owned by the Turkish government. This particular tea, although broken-leaf, was quite good, especially for its very low price. I hope to write more about Turkish tea, as the tea itself, and the economics of it, are both rather interesting topics.
But, for now, I must conclude this post...I have a busy day ahead of me, and it is raining. (I love rain.)
Food for thought:
What are some of your recent milestones in tea?
Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteMy recent milestone of tea is that I tried a Tie Guan Yin black tea for the first time of my life! A bigger milestone is, we are going to have Petr Novak tea ware in the store!