A Product of the Place: Creating Teaware and Ceramic Art, with Willi Singleton
Talking Tea
Willi Singleton is a Pennsylvania potter who's well-known among students and teachers of the Japanese way of tea as a maker of beautiful, lustrous teawares that are joy to use. Today we're sitting down with Willi in his Kempton, Pennsylvania studio, at the base of Hawk Mountain, to explore his creative process and the techniques and philosophy that go into the creation of his unique teaware and other ceramic art. We chat with Willi about his introduction to clay art and especially Japanese clay art, his time in Japan studying and working with traditional Japanese potters, and his transition...
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Balhyocha, A Uniquely Korean Tea
Talking Tea
Balhyocha is a tea unique to Korea - it's not produced anywhere else - and its rich and varied flavor profiles are also unique, not quite like any other teas we've tasted here at Talking Tea. But for many tea drinkers, even afficianados of balhyocha, it's also rather mysterious. What exactly is balhyocha? How is it processed? What gives it its unique, lovely complexity? To explore these questions we're chatting with Eric Glass, who, with Arthur Park, runs the annual TeaBuy Korea at Morning Crane Tea. Eric talks with us a bit about his own tea journey and how we came to discover Korean tea and...
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Turkish Tea: An Introduction
Talking Tea
Today on Talking Tea we're exploring a tea origin and tea culture we haven't yet visited on the show. Turkish tea isn't widely known outside of Turkey, even though Turkey is a significant tea producer and has one of the largest per capita tea consumption rates in the world. To introduce us to this unique tea and tea culture, we're joined by Aimée Lévesque, owner and founder of Le bruit de l'eau, an online and brick-and-mortar tea house located in Rimouski, Quebec. Aimée tells us about her own tea journey and the impetus for her starting a tea house in her home town of Rimouski, located on...
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Tea as Daoist Meditation, with Robert Coons
Talking Tea
After nearly a year hiatus from releasing new episodes, and nearing what’s hopefully the end of a worldwide pandemic, we’re very happy to welcome back Robert Coons to talk with us about tea as a medium for meditation and health, from a Daoist viewpoint. Robert is a well-known teacher and writer on Daoist meditation, a tea vendor, an acupuncturist and practitioner of qigong and martial arts, and was our guest two years ago in our episode “Tea & Daoism: Adjacent Connections”. He’s about to launch an online course on tea meditation, so we took this opportunity to get an overview...
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Lakyrsiew: Unlocking the Magic of the Leaf
Talking Tea
Today we're continuing with our periodic series of shorter episodes focusing on one tea, one producer or one region that may be new to the tea stage or that we're excited about and want to explore further. We're joined by our frequent guest Kevin Gascoyne, co-owner of Montreal's Camellia Sinensis Tea House and one of the world's leading experts on Indian tea, to explore Lakyrsiew, a young boutique tea garden in India's very wet Meghalaya state. Kevin chats with us about the history of tea growing in the Meghalaya region, from its origins in the mid-19th century to its revival in the...
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Emptiness in Tea Practice
Talking Tea
When a friend who's a longtime Buddhist meditation teacher asked me recently if "emptiness" comes into our study and practice of chado, the Japanese way of tea, I didn't quite know how to answer. On Talking Tea we had chatted a bit about emptiness in a Daoist context, and its relation to tea, in our episode Tea & Daoism: Adjacent Connections, and we touched on some of the connections between tea and Buddhism in a few of our earlier episodes. But I hadn't thought about how, or if, emptiness comes into play in the specific practices of the Japanese way of tea. To explore this question...
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Bamboo Pu'er, Beyond the Novelty
Talking Tea
There's a certain novelty factor to bamboo pu'er - sheng or shou pu'er packed and (usually) aged in a bamboo tube. It's not the way we usually acquire our pu'er, and it can be both challenging and fun to crack open the bamboo log and see what's inside. But aside from the novelty, are bamboo pu'ers worth exploring for serious tea drinkers? To look inside the bamboo log a little more deeply, we're joined once again today on Talking Tea by John Wetzel, founder and owner of Stone Leaf Teahouse in Middlebury, Vermont. Specifically we're focusing on one bamboo pu'er, a 2016 sheng from Naka...
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The Korean Way of Tea, with Brother Anthony of Taizé
Talking Tea
For quite some time we've been wanting to explore Korean tea culture on Talking Tea, so we're very happy to be joined in this episode by Brother Anthony of Taizé, a prolific writer, translator and teacher and co-author of two notable books on Korean tea, The Korean Way of Tea and Korean Tea Classics. Brother Anthony chats with us about the roots of his own passion for tea and his connections with the modern revival of Korean tea culture, and how that revival was spurred on in large part by the initiatives of the Venerable Hyodang, a Buddhist monk and tea maker at the Dasol-Sa...
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Tea & Daoism: Adjacent Connections
Talking Tea
Today we're exploring connections between tea and Daoism, the millenia-old Chinese religious and philosophical tradition that has had such a profound influence on culture and history in and beyond China. We're joined by Robert Coons, who straddles both the tea world and the world of Daoism. Robert is a well-known tea vendor based in Canada and China and is also a writer, teacher and podcaster on Daoism, qigong and Daoist meditation. Robert tells us a little about his own journey from martial arts and other Daoist-related activities into tea culture, and then we delve into the...
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Sensory Immersion Into Tea
Talking Tea
In this episode we're at the 2020 Toronto Tea Festival and its kick-off event, Kevin Gascoyne's Rare Tea Tasting. Kevin is an internationally recognized leader and innovator in the tea industry, a co-owner of the Montreal-based Camellia Sinensis Teahouse and a frequent guest on Talking Tea, and this is just the second time Kevin has presented a tasting in this format. Kevin's Rare Tea Tasting was the most unique tea tasting experience we've ever had, and we think it's safe to say, probably unlike anything experienced before by most everyone attending the event. We were able to chat with...
info_outlineToday Talking Tea is in Middlebury, Vermont, at Stone Leaf Teahouse, a unique tea space in this bucolic town. Joining us is John Wetzel, founder and owner of Stone Leaf.
The town of Middlebury may be best known for being the home of Middlebury College, but since its founding 10 years ago Stone Leaf has also become well-known in and beyond Middlebury for the quality of its teas and for the warmth and tranquility of its teahouse. We chat with John about Stone Leaf's origins, how he developed his vision for the space and for the company, and how he drew on both US coffee culture and tea culture in Asia and Europe as influences for his design. The teahouse sits partially underground (it's built into a slope), and though John half-jokingly calls it a sort of "tea cave", he also explains how he used this feature as part of his design, to create a space well-suited for the storage, preparation and enjoyment of tea, a space that allows for both focus and connection.
Stone Leaf carries a wide variety of teas, and we chat about one of their newest teas, a hongcha (red tea, known as black tea in the West) from Alishan in Taiwan. Alishan is usually known for its oolongs, and this tea is in fact made from the oolong Jin Xuan cultivar. We talk about the use of this cultivar in making a hongcha, the influence of cultivar and terroir on the tea's flavor, aroma and appearance, and about emerging trends in making new styles of teas from cultivars and regions traditionally associated with different varieties.
More information about Stone Leaf, including the location of the teahouse, its online store and special event info, is at its website, stoneleaftea.com. You can also find Stone Leaf on Instagram at stoneleafteahouse and on Facebook at Stone Leaf Teahouse.
Talking Tea is produced and hosted by Ken Cohen. You can follow Ken on Twitter @kensvoiceken.
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The views and opinions expressed by guests on Talking Tea are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Talking Tea or its staff.
This podcast features music from “Japanese Flowers” (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii/japanese-flowers) by mpgiiiBEATS (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii) available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Adapted from original.
Image of interior of Stone Leaf Teahouse, courtesy of Stone Leaf Teahouse.
Header image “Raw Puerh mid 1980 Menghai” by Cosmin Dordea, used under a Creative Commons CC By-SA 2.0 license. Adapted from original.