The NYTS Tea Studio, Sharing Gongfu Tea and Community

We’re very excited to be at the New York Tea Society’s new Tea Studio in midtown Manhattan, chatting with NYTS’ founder Roy Lamberty. 

Roy was a guest on Talking Tea in 2018 and he’s back today to talk with us about how NYTS has evolved since our earlier episode, and how its beautiful new Tea Studio came to be. Roy tells us about his experiences around gongfu tea tables in China, and his vision of building those experiences into a tranquil, communal tea space in New York City. We chat about the studio as a space to have tea on your own or around a communal gongfu table, its aesthetics and design elements, the studio’s location in New York’s Koreatown, and Roy’s very successful work in building community through tea. We also delve into the sourcing of some of NYTS’s very unique tea offerings. Roy talks with us about the lineup of events and themed sessions at the tea studio, and the NYTS tea education programming at the studio and through the NYTS online virtual tea group and its programs. We also discuss NYTS’ optional membership plans and its online tea market.

NYTS teas and teaware are available for purchase at the tea studio and through its online tea market.

Information about the tea studio, directions, hours and reservations, and the NYTS online offerings are on the NYTS website

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Talking Tea is produced and hosted by Ken Cohen. 

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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.

Episode image of the gongfu tea table at the New York Tea Society Tea Studio,  by Roy Lamberty. Adapted from original.

Header image “Raw Puerh mid 1980 Menghai” by Cosmin Dordea, used under a Creative Commons CC By-SA 2.0 license. Adapted from original.

A “Tea Cave” in Vermont

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Today 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.  Read the full show notes

Pairing Tea and…Cheese?

 

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Most everyone is familiar with pairing wine and cheese, but pairing tea and cheese is much less well known and less understood. (By the way, that’s tea in the glass in the photo above, not wine.) Some tea drinkers may even find the idea of tea and cheese pairing a bit counterintuitive, if not a bit, well, odd. But at Talking Tea we’ve experienced some delicious pairings of tea with cheese, so we wanted to explore the issue more in depth.  Read the full show notes

Chaxi: Harmony, Art & Expression in Tea

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We’ve been wanting to explore chaxi on Talking Tea ever since we visited the Tea Institute at Penn State University back in 2016. Tea was prepared and served to us by students in the Chinese tea track at the Institute with a degree of artistry and calm precision we had never quite witnessed anywhere else, and when we asked some of the students where they learned to prepare tea in this way, they suggested we speak with one of their teachers and mentors, Stéphane Erler, to learn more about chaxi, an artistic expression of tea originating in Taiwan.  Read the full show notes

Dark Tea Comes Out Of The Shadows

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Today we’re chatting with Zhen Lu and Phil Rushworth of Zhen Tea about a category of tea that’s not widely understood outside of China or even within China, and that’s heicha, or “dark tea”, hailing from outside the pu erh region. You may remember Zhen and Phil from our earlier episode “Lapsang Souchong – Beyond the Smoke”, and today we’re chatting at the Zhen Tea headquarters in Ottawa, Canada.  Read the full show notes

Choosing Teaware for Flavor, Aroma and Experience

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Today we welcome back to the show Kevin Gascoyne, of Montreal’s Camellia Sinensis Tea House, to chat with us in depth about how our choices of teaware impact the flavors, aromas and overall experience of the teas we drink. Kevin is often seen sporting his signature Royal Albert teacup, and that prompted us to ask Kevin what’s the deal with this oh-so-English-looking cup. His initial answer inspired us to want to explore more fully how our choice of cup and brewing vessel affect our enjoyment of tea.  Read the full show notes

Tea Cocktail Experiments

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Today on Talking Tea we’re doing something a little different from our usual format. A few weeks back we were invited by the folks at Tea Dealers and the 29b Tea House (featured in our prior episode Ambassadors of Tea) to join them in conversation at an evening of tea and alcohol experiments they were planning and record the event for Talking Tea. We did just that, and we’re pleased to bring you the event as a Talking Tea episode.  Read the full show notes

Bridging the Gap Between Tea and Coffee

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At Talking Tea we’ve long wanted to explore the seemingly deep divide between tea and coffee, and between tea drinkers and coffee drinkers. But lately we’ve come to realize that the divide might not be very deep at all, and that there might be more similarities between the two beverages, and the two communities, than we ever imagined.   Read the full show notes

Innovation in Indian Tea

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Today on Talking Tea we welcome back Kevin Gascoyne of Montreal’s Camellia Sinensis Tea House. If you’ve heard any of our earlier episodes with Kevin, you’ll know that Kevin is a specialist, and one of the world’s leading authorities, on Indian tea. Kevin returns to the show today to chat with us about some of the challenges currently facing Indian tea production, and how an innovative new project in south India called the Tea Studio is attempting to address these challenges . Read the full show notes

Growing a Tea Meetup

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One of our guiding principles here at Talking Tea is that conversations about tea and tea culture have the power to deepen our understanding and enhance our experience of tea. Today on Talking Tea we’re exploring one of the ways people are increasingly coming together to share and talk about tea: tea meetup groups. We’re joined by Roy Lamberty, founder and organizer of the New York Tea Society, a popular tea meetup in New York City.  Read the full show notes