Talking Tea

When we serious tea drinkers start to broaden our knowledge of tea, we often encounter two terms that can seem mysterious or confusing: cultivar and origin. What is a tea cultivar, and why is it important? And what exactly does the origin of the tea refer to, and why should we care? To begin looking in depth at cultivar and origin, we're joined today by Austin Hodge of Seven Cups Fine Chinese Teas. Austin is a prolific tea writer and blogger in addition to being a seller, and he's also the founder and director of the International Specialty Tea Association, a non-profit focused on developing quality standards for tea. We chat with Austin about his background in tea and his views on the importance of tea standards, and then we look in detail at two of those standards, namely (you guessed it) a tea's cultivar and its origin. Austin talks with us about what "cultivar" means and how it relates to issues of biodiversity, tea production, the value and pricing of tea,  a tea's authenticity and transparency in market