Talking Tea: Montreal’s Tea School

What did Talking Tea do
this summer? We went to summer school, of course. Tea summer
school, that is. In August we attended one of the English-language
Summer School workshops offered through the tea school at
Montreal’s Camellia Sinensis. After the workshop we sat down with
Kevin Gascoyne of Camellia Sinensis to chat about current and
emerging trends in tea education.

Kevin talks with us about
Camellia Sinensis’ model for tea education, how its tea school
began with a goal of giving consumers better access to tea
knowledge and how it’s evolved to include programming oriented to
tea industry professionals as well as consumers. We discuss the
Summer School and the benefits of small, seminar-style workshops
where students and instructors have the ability to share first-hand
experience. Kevin also shares his perspectives on what students
should look for in choosing a tea education program, identifying a
student’s goals and finding a program to fit those goals, the pro’s
and con’s of certification and the ability of tea education to
empower consumers and industry professionals for their own tea
journeys.

We also sat down in the
Camellia Sinensis tea house with four participants in the Summer
School workshop to chat about their perspectives on tea education:
Tea researcher/educator/author Selena Ahmed and chef Noah ten Broek
talk with us about increasing awareness of the nuances of taste and
sensory experience, and tea sellers Zhen Lu and Phil Rushworth
discuss addressing misinformation within the tea industry and the
importance of educating tea vendors as well as
consumers.

More info about
Camellia Sinensis and its tea school is at the Camellia Sinensis
website, camellia-sinensis.com. To
inquire about next year’s Summer School, contact Kevin Gascoyne
at info-en@camellia-sinensis.com

More on Selena Ahmed,
her work and publications, are at Montana
State’s Food
and Health Lab website. More on Zhen Lu and Phil Rishworth’s
company, Zhen Tea, is at the Zhen Tea website, zhentea.ca.

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episodes, visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/talkingtea.

To inquire about being a guest or having your
organization featured, please email us at talkingteapodcasts@gmail.com.

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Talking Tea is produced and hosted by Ken Cohen.
You can follow Ken on Twitter @Kensvoiceken. 

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.