Tea discussions online

Today’s focus is on flora (well, foliage, anyway) and fora – over the last couple of weeks I’ve managed to find a number of interesting places to chat with like-minded people about the joys of tea.

Firstly there is the forum available through Felicitea (click the link on the right hand side to enter the forum). This is a fledgling forum at present, but with luck it will grow. Summer Plum at Felicitea also has a blog and she makes and sells loads of interesting products, including tea cups with hand-written haikus on them (why didn’t I think of that, it’s a brilliant idea). I would love to try some of her teas, they look delicious.

Then there is the rather better-established TeaChat which is run by the people at Adagio Teas. They cover a very broad range of topics from the teas made by Adagio (which all sound delightful and I wish they shipped to Australia), to tea-room planning and management, to tea recipes and much more. I’m looking forward to reading more of this one!

TeaMail is another of the hardcore sites. This is one you have to sign up to through Yahoo! Groups, which is a little bit of a pain, but on the other hand there appear to be a lot of very knowledgeable and passionate people who are part of it. The public homepage also contains a number of interesting and useful links on the left-hand side - including a page which gives you all the references to tea in Sherlock Holmes (how I’ve managed this long without knowing, I have no idea), how to fold an origami teapot, a guide to tea rooms around the world, and a link to the Tea Entrepreneurs Association. Handy!

For all your tea-and-biscuit discussion needs (mainly British ones, but Tim Tams get a mention every now and then too) check out Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down… now these are people who take their tea and biscuits very seriously. Make sure to take a look at the polls which they have running, as these are invariably hilarious… I am longing to get my hands on a copy of their book and have been dropping some not so subtle hints to my husband about it which will hopefully bear fruit in the not too distant future, heh.

(With any luck he’ll be reading this now and will know that the entire internet is now expecting him to purchase it for me, thus hopefully increasing his sense of obligation to do so.)

And finally, if you are hanging about on Facebook wondering what to do with yourself (aren’t we all), there is the abundantly enthusiastic group A Cup of Tea Solves Everything – lots of friendly tea banter to be had there, indeed.

Enjoy!!