HEAR THE HEADLINES – Tea Retailers Brace for Recession | Kenya Tea Prices Rebound | Pakistan Asks Citizens to Cut Back on Tea 

| GUEST – Tracy Bell, co-founder of Millennia Tea in New Brunswick, Canada

| FEATURE INTRO – Millennia Tea in New Brunswick, Canada, sells raw tea leaves as food. The leaves are washed, chopped, frozen, and sold by major grocers to be brewed as fresh green tea or formed into cubes to be blended in smoothies.

Farm to Freezer – Millennia Tea co-founder Tracy Bell explains that “instead of picking the leaves and then withering them and processing them in a number of ways, like your conventional dried teas, we work with farmers to pick those same organic tea leaves, and then we wash them and we treat them like frozen fruit, just like frozen blueberries and strawberries. We believe that tea is food, and we want to give consumers the opportunity to enjoy it in its most real, raw, and naturally powerful format.”

HEAR THE HEADLINES – Bottled Tea is Bouncing Back | Honest Tea Co-Founder Seth Goldman Will Launch a Rival Tea Brand | Tea Parcels Contribute to Record Carrier Volume

| GUEST – Suzette Hammond, tea educator and founder of Chicago-based Being Tea 

| FEATURE INTRO: This week Tea Biz correspondent Jessica Natale Woollard travels to Chicago, where Suzette Hammond, founder of the Being Tea school, describes an expanded eight-month course on how to be a brilliant tea educator. Hammond recognized a gap in tea training: tea professionals are not taught how to teach how to deliver meaningful programs in a small group or one-on-one.

Teaching the Tea Teachers – Small business owners are a large percentage of Suzette Hammond's students. Tamina Monchi, who is the founder of Mythaga tea in Nairobi, Kenya, is someone who came to the program as a certified tea sommelier, one of the first in East Africa. So she has a really deep tea background; a lot of it was in field research and understanding tea cultivation, says Hammond. She didn't intend to create a small tea business, but it just kind of happened in the pandemic. "I remember her saying to me that when she was getting started, it hadn't occurred to her how important education would be, how in order to actually sell the tea that she would have to train people. It was something that had not come up for her. She was just so excited to make these learnings, these connections happen in real time. And so seeing that light bulb moment go off — that at every point she'd be training people — that was really awesome to see."

HEAR THE HEADLINES – Food Safety is in the Spotlight | Tea Bushes Globally are Taking a Beating this Spring Due to Climate Change | The UK Tea Academy Announces “The Leafies,” a Whole Leaf Tea Competition

| FEATURE INTRO – This week, Tea Biz is at home in Winnipeg, Canada celebrating the 6th Anniversary of the magazine’s launch and asking readers, ‘What comes next?’

Learning by Listening - Six years ago today, after a sleepless night, I learned that Kickstarter donors in 36 countries had pledged $128,107 in donations to fund Tea Journey magazine, making Tea Journey the third-highest of 1,098 Kickstarter crowdfunded periodicals. 

Hundreds of articles that have since appeared in the print edition, smartphone app, and website enabled tea enthusiasts to travel to tea gardens from Argentina to Zimbabwe, walk the terraces, watch tea being made, read the sampling notes of professional tasters, study the latest medical findings, and download culinary recipes. 

“Think of us as a digital caravan that travels to the tea lands and returns laden with artisan tea and stories to tell,” I wrote, describing Tea Journey as a magazine for tea enthusiasts, embracing the story of tea in every language with authoritative, elusive, exclusive articles, photos, and videos to help readers discover their tea destiny. 

Tea Journey has charted a course with lots of advice from a loyal following, but we need additional insights to expand our audience. Therefore, we ask that you complete a 2.5-minute online survey available on the website and social network and via email. Your response will guide the design of an online portal revealed in the next few weeks. - Dan Bolton

HEAR THE HEADLINES – Coca-Cola Discontinues the Iconic Honest Tea Brand | The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization says that Embracing Sustainable Agriculture is Essential for Tea Smallholders | Starbucks Exits the Russian Market after 15 years, closing 130 locations

| GUESTS – Denise Atkinson and Marc Bohémier, co-founders of Tea Horse in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

| FEATURE INTRO – Jessica Natale Woollard travels to the northern shores of Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada, where Anishinaabe tea blenders of the First Nation’s Obijwe clan combine locally harvested wild rice with imported Japanese sencha to create roasted wild rice genmaicha. They call the roasted rice blend manoomin cha (wild rice tea).

Canada’s Version of Genmaicha with an Indigenous Twist – In Japan, it’s called genmaicha; in Korea, hyeonmi-cha. Canada’s version of tea blended with Canadian wild rice is called manoomin cha. Jessica Natale Woollard chats with Tea Horse proprietors Denise Atkinson and Marc Bohémier about their new Canadian version of roasted rice in three flavors: ManoominCha, ManoominCha Dark, and Manoominaabo Tisane.

HEAR THE HEADLINES – Let’s All Celebrate International Tea Day | The Tea Day Sofa Summit is Monday, May 23 | Global Instability is Suppressing East African Tea Prices 

| NEWSMAKER – Sneha Balasubramaniam, Head of Marketing and Innovation at Tata Consumer Products

| FEATURE INTRO – This week Tea Biz travels to Montvale, New Jersey to the headquarters of Good Earth Tea a division of Tata Consumer Products that is celebrating its 50th Anniversary with a revival of two beloved teas.Good Earth Tea Celebrates 50th Anniversary – The Good Earth brand was founded in 1972 by a Santa Cruz-based herbal tea company that supplied tea to a local restaurant that expanded into a chain of 50 franchises. The brand experimented with herbal blends during its first two decades, producing more than 40 varieties. Tata acquired the company in 2005 and relocated offices to New Jersey.

HEAR THE HEADLINES: Tea Value Surges as Production Slows in China | International Tea Day is May 21. The Sofa Summit is on May 23 | Dan Bolton explains People’s Picky Preferences in Tea at an International Tea Day webinar hosted by the European Speciality Tea Association on Wednesday, May 18. Register free: https://specialityteaeurope.com/webinars

| NEWSMAKER – Ian Chun is a Japanese tea merchant, marketer, and CEO of Matcha Latte Media in Tokyo. 

| FEATURE INTRO – Japan set a record for tea exports in 2021. This week, Tea Biz travels to Tokyo to discuss with Yunomi Life founder Ian Chun Japan’s resurgent tea export market and the remarkable story of the hand-rolled green tea that brought two million yen at auction.

Japan's Tea Export Strategy is Working – Ian Chun founded Yunomi Life, an online platform showcasing 170 small-scale Japanese tea farms with a mission to put Japanese culture into the hands of consumers around the world. Farmers recently auctioned a kilo of Saemidori sencha for a record 1.96 million yen. In this segment, Ian describes the handmade needles and taste profile of the Saemidori cultivar, a Yabukita cross first bred in 1969 and registered in 1990.

HEAR THE HEADLINES – India Resumes Tea Shipments to the Russian Federation | COVID Surge Makes Tea Packing Unpredictable| Special Report: Beyond Tea Cuisine

| GUESTS – Brand owners Nikita Mittal, Dhiraj Arora & Priti Sen Arora, Anubha Jawar, tea producers and industry veterans, Jagjeet Kandal, Vikram Gulia, Atul Asthana, Ajay Jalan, Raj Barooah, and Rajah Banerjee

| FEATURE INTRO – This week Tea Biz returns to Bengaluru where South Asia Editor and Producer Aravinda Anantharaman concludes a two-part series on Realigning the Marketing of Indian Tea with the questions needed to solve the mammoth task of rebranding the industry as it coaxes consumers in the domestic market to drink higher quality tea.

Realigning the Marketing of Indian Tea – In Part 2 of our story on Realigning the Marketing of Indian Tea, we speak to various stakeholders in the industry, including brand owners and tea producers and industry veterans. We also have Ramya Ramamurthy, author of Branded in History offering her views on nostalgia as a marketing trope in tea.

HEAR THE HEADLINES – Health Symposium Reveals a Plethora of Science-based Benefits of Tea | COVID-Influenced Consumer Behaviors Present New Opportunities for the Tea Industry | Sri Lanka Tea Exports Decline 10%

| GUEST – Jagjeet Kandal, country head, IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative

| FEATURE INTRO – This week, Tea Biz travels to Bengaluru, where South Asia Editor and Producer Aravinda Anantharaman begins a two-part series on Realigning the Marketing of Indian Tea.

Realigning the Marketing of Indian Tea – India produces 20% of the world’s tea. Production, however, has stagnated for years. Costs are up prices flat. Professional tasters report sharp declines in quality. Marketing tea to domestic consumers is complicated -- but promising. Indians consume 90% of the tea grown there but mainly purchase lower grades. Per capita consumption is modest at 840 grams due to a preference for tea in blends, but tea is stocked in every household, and Indians drink two cups per day. Until recently, India exported virtually all its best teas. Tea discovery is discouraged as imports from China, Taiwan, and Japan are expensive due to high tariffs, but rising affluence is overcoming these obstacles.

Indian legislators are currently considering a draft Tea (Promotion and Development) Bill to remove colonial-era provisions regulating tea and re-direct the Tea Board of India’s resources to expand existing markets and promote tea domestically.

HEAR THE HEADLINES – Snarls in Logistics and Cool Weather Slow China's Tea Harvest | Crisis in Sri Lanka Worsens | Shizuoka Hand-Rolled Tea Brings a Record 1.96 million Yen at Auction

| GUEST – Jane Pettigrew, BEM, author, educator, consultant, and founder of the UK Tea Academy

| FEATURE INTRO – Jane Pettigrew describes the remarkable evolution of the UK Tea Academy into an innovative global tea education resource that has emerged from the chaos of COVID-19

Online Adaptations Enhance and Expand Tea Education – By Dananjaya Silva | PMD Tea The United Kingdom Tea Academy is recognized as a world authority for online tea education. Staffed by professional tutors, the Academy offers courses from beginner to advanced. I sit down with the Director of Studies, Jane Pettigrew, who is a leading author and speaker on tea, along with Suranga Perera, the chief instructor of the Ceylon tea program, who counts over 20 years of experience in tea and is the former CEO of Ceylon tea brokers PLC.

HEAR THE HEADLINES – The Heightened Urgency of Earth Day 2022 | Smallholders Now Own Rwanda’s Largest Tea Factory | The Mombasa Tea Auction Completes its Switch to Digital 

| GUEST – Maksym Malygin, owner of Ukraine's Zhornyna Experimental Tea Garden 

| FEATURE INTRO – This week, Tea Biz travels to Ukraine, where tea grower Maksym Malygin produces tasty oolongs from cold-resistant plants whose ancestors survived decades of heavy snow during prolonged winters at temperatures as low as 26 degrees below zero Celsius.

Ukraine's Cold Weather Tea – Virtually all the world’s tea is grown between latitudes 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the equator. Rising temperatures in this narrow band threaten tea yields and force growers to consider planting “upslope” at higher elevations where cooler temperatures prevail. Unfortunately, subtropical tea cultivars perish in a hard frost, expected above 7,500 feet. At the Zhornyna Experimental Tea Plantation in Western Ukraine, Maksym Malygin successfully grows tea plants under forest cover that have survived heavy snow during prolonged winters at temperatures 26 below zero Celsius.