Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/491377
18 STiR tea & coffee industry international / Issue 2, 2015 (April/May) Tea Report: Jane Pettigrew HOLLAND Dutch Tea Champion In January Karlijn Dapper won the 4th Dutch Tea Championship held during the 59th Horecava show, an exhibition for hospitality professionals at the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre. Dapper presented three teas – a white tea from Yunnan, an Oriental Beauty from Taiwan, and a Japanese Gyokuro – which were judged by the jury for her preparation of the teas, the tea quality, her use of brewing vessels, and her knowledge of each tea's origin and story. There were 17 entrants at this year's competition. Second place went to Danny Koreman and Björn Cocu placed third. The Tea Championship is organ- ised by Dutch Cold Concepts and was sponsored this year by BWT Water & More, Solis, and Brita Professional. Dapper is a tea sommelier and owner of a bed & breakfast business called La Vie en Rose where she uses tea in her cuisine and serves fine teas to her guests. INDIA Café Coffee Day Matcha Cafe Coffee Day (CCD), one of India's largest coffee shops chains, has launched two new teas infused with the Japanese matcha. Matcha Frappe is a creamy cold frappe blended with matcha and laced with vanilla. Matcha Lattea is a steaming hot tea mixed with matcha and lightly flavored with vanilla for a sweet after taste. CCD says that consumers are always looking for new and varied tastes and experiences and the two new teas are designed to do just that. CCD's first café opened in 1996 in Bangalore and is one of the city's favorite venues among young consumers who like to relax, chat with friends and hold meetings here. The company now also has outlets across India and in Austria and the Czech Republic. The two new tea-based beverages offer both a great taste profile and come with all the benefits of matcha, a healthy beverage option. The new teas are expected to appeal to both tea and coffee lovers alike. The two new teas are available at all CCD outlets across India priced between INRs 70 to INRs 100 ($1.60). Learn more: www. cafecoffeeday.com the bushes is between two and three months. The bushes that are not devastated by the chill temperatures are stressed by weather, accumulate metabolites such as pyruvate, acetalde- hyde, and ethanol in their leaves and this gives the teas a sweet aroma and taste, sometimes similar to barley sugar. This year's honey notes are very unusual. Learn more: http://tea'n'teas.com or email info@teanteas.com Kumaon Tea Launches With funding through Kickstarter, Young Mountain Tea, founded by Raj Vable and Keith Pennington is develop- ing commercial tea production in the Kumaon Region of northern India, in the foothills of the Himalayas with Nepal. The British first planted tea here in the 1820s, but abandoned the project because it was too difficult to get the tea from the mountains to the ports. The tea still grows wild across Kumaon 190 years later and there are now roads to connect to the rest of the country. Young Mountain Tea is working with Rashmi Bharti of Avani, a local non- profit seeking to create sustainable tea farming here and to improve local family's income. Young Mountain will produce an organic, delicately sweet White Peony tea from this spring's crop. Other tea types will follow, starting with green. The aim is to have three villages on board by end of 2016 to create 400 jobs for more than 60 households and produce 2000 lbs. of tea annually. The company is partnering with Indi Khanna, tea grower and consultant who provided the seeds for the project. The tea is being grown organically, inter- cropped with plants for natural dyes used by local weavers supported by Avani to make scarves, shawls, jackets, etc. When the project was launched on Kickstarter, the company raised $26,000 to achieve its goal and was the most popular out of 725 food projects. Learn more: www.youngmountaintea.com or email raj@youngmountaintea.com JAPAN Suntory Green Tea Liquor Suntory, a Japanese brewing and distilling company group and distribu- tors of alcoholic beverages in Japan, in April released a green tea liquor, Maccha Kaoru Osake, meaning 'green tea-scent- 2015 Nilgiri Frost Tea Indi Khanna of Tea'n'Teas in the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India reports that this year's peak season winter teas from the Nilgiris have an almost honey undertone never experienced before. "How or why that has crept into our present offering is a total mystery which I know we'll never be able to unravel and, more than likely, we'll never be able to replicate," Khanna said. "It has all to do with the winds and the weather patterns – never the same in two seasons!" The 'frost' teas are produced during the coldest season in January and February each year when many of the bushes are 'burned' by frost and lose their crop of new leaf shoots. Some growers lose 20% of their crop and the recovery period for