Tea Tasting Fun!

Last night was the first Cam City WI meeting of 2013, and what could be more exciting that a tea tasting session. I absolutely love tea so couldn't have been more excited about this meeting.

The tea tasting was led by 'The Kandula Tea Company' that was founded by Jane and Gail two local ladies from Cambridge. The start of the evening was a presentation of how the ladies founded the company (which was extremely inspirational) followed by a history of tea and Sri Lanka. It was great to hear the company support numerous initiatives in Sri Lanka for women including a group who are widows due to the Tsunami. Then we got on to the lovely elephants (this is the point at which my heart melted), which they support through the sales of their tea. Anyway I could go on but now to the tea.......

We started the evening by looking at the contents of teabags - which was quiet shocking to realise what I am actually drinking dust, when we opened a generic tea bag it looked exactly like a fine brown powder. We then opened a cheap earl grey teabag (which was horrifying) when we looked at the contents it contained white specs which we found out were flavour enhancers. Then we came on to the Kandula earl grey teabag which contained actual leaves - this really made me appreciate the difference in quality of what I am drinking and will definitely give more consideration to this in the future.
We then went on to tasting the teas which was lots of fun, there was 12 teas in total, greens, whites, herbal, fruit infusions and black. I really enjoyed tasting with a group as it was interesting to see what other people saw to be important when tasting teas. They had a pink tea which was even more surprising when we added water to realise that it actually was pink in colour......
My favourite teas of the evening had to be Chai (long time favourite and will never be beaten), strawberry hibiscus and Moroccan mint.
I have to say I am now going to give more serious consideration to the tea I drink and will definitely be a long term Kandula Tea drinker.

4 comments:

  1. It was very interesting wasn't it! I too have been eying my tea suspiciously today. I too liked the Moroccan mint but have decided that I definitely do not like any fruit infusions however pretty they look.
    Thanks for a lovely evening CamscityWI

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  2. Great blog post and I have to say even though I don't drink tea much I really enjoyed experiencing new flavours and I think it has made me appreciate tea drinking a bit more!

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  3. Ooh I love trying new tea, but I find the fruit infusions to be a bit samey - what were these ones like?

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  4. I'm not normally a fan of fruit infusions and I was really surprised that I went away with a packet of one in my bag - but they were really tasty and actually tasted of strawberry. The strawberry infusion was a really nice summery tea and I thought would be really nice iced

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