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I am not only a great lover of tea. I also relish European style board games. I spend much of my free time placing meeples, rolling dice, and collecting lumber, wool, victory points, or whatever resources that are in play that day. My passion for tea complements my pursuit of board game domination. For this week’s blog, I share my favorite teas to drink while playing my favorite board games. Tea: Mana Organics Whole Leaf Assam Black Tea Board game: Lords of Waterdeep In Lords of Waterdeep, players undertake the roles of secret powers vying for control of a city,...

I grew up watching Star Trek. As a kid, my dad took me and my friends to conventions where adults would dress in full Klingon garb in forehead ridges and carried bat'leths. While I certainly enjoyed DS9, Voyager, and some Kirk-Spock-McCoy shenanigans as a child, Star Trek The Next Generation (TNG) made the largest impression on me. Star Trek TNG taught us that different cultures did not need to be feared. That brains, courage, and perseverance can overcome challenge. And that most adversaries could become allies given understanding, patience, and time. Star Trek TNG did not contain lessons for tea...

Introducing Mana Organics Assam CTC Tea Today, we happily introduce Mana Organics Assam CTC tea. We drink this tea every day at Chota Tingrai Tea Estate. In fact, most of India drinks CTC daily because of the tea’s affinity for milk, sugar, and spices.  From the humblest alleys of Kolkata to the ritziest hotel of Mumbai, you will find CTC serves as the base for any masala chais. We make this tea through a process called Crush, Tear, Curl ergo the name CTC. You can see video of CTC being manufactured at Chota Tingrai below. The result of CTC manufacture...

  There was a time I craved coffee and nothing but. I would drink six cups of a day. I didn’t care if the beans had come direct from the shady slopes of Ethiopia and roasted by hand in Seattle by a guy with a six-foot-long beard, or it was crystals of instant. I just wanted that bitter black stuff in my gut to keep myself upright. If I could have taken it intravenously, I would have. Then I met Avantika. She introduced me to real tea. Not that stuff collecting dust in the back of mom’s cupboard. Whole Leaf...

At Chota Tingrai Tea Estate, we constantly experiment with new methods in cultivating tea. Our latest experiment, taking place in a small portion of MP 9, will utilize Japanese planting and machine plucking. Meet Tani-san, a senior tea agronomist from Japan. He has come to India for the first time to learn how Assam grows tea, and teach us how Japan grows tea. Together, we are trying to adapt the Japanese planting style to Indian tea cultivars. Through this strategy, we hope to increase our per bush yields, and make them appropriate for machine plucking. Tani-san speaks Japanese. Our field...