News
04/01/2024
I’ll be away in Japan for a couple months. I will be walking in Shikoku, Japan for all of April and maybe a bit of May, and spending some time in Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo among a few other places until the end of May. I’ll be back with new teas and friendships by June. I will participate with Carino in the Lilac festival on June 2nd. Please come visit if you’re able. There is other big news — I expect to open a shop relatively shortly after I return. The location will be in the east end of inglewood, near the playground zone. I don’t have a name solidified yet, and the shop will be very small, not much larger than an ordinary homes master bedroom. It will however be a space for us to meet and enjoy tea, and I look forward to meeting you there too.
Due to myself being the only person running this online shop, please excuse the inconvenience that this trip may cause you. I will leave the shop open to browse and purchase from, but I will be unable to fill orders until I return. Cafe Jindo stocks some of my teas on their shelves, if you’re interested in purchasing something I hope he has it there.
Bless you all! See you after my adventures. If you want to follow along, my instagram is @sommerier, it should be fun. Cheers
03/05/2024
As you may notice, the shops inventory will shrink and shrink until it is replenished with the fresh 2024 new harvest. The tea season in some parts of the world has already begun, and my scheduled trip to Japan in April and May will prevent me from getting an early taste of my usual Chinese tea. I suspect my inventory for 2024 will revolve around Japan (due to these circumstances) — as I’ll have the ability to taste and meet a lot of people while I’m there for 2 months.
The prices of several green teas have been heavily reduced so that I can make room for the new seasons fresh products. Please purchase some tea if you’re interested and able. Thank you!
01/02/2024
Happy New Year!
I restocked some popular items in the shop. Milky Oolong, Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, Lavender Tea, Great Snow Mountain Pu’Erh, Jasmine Pearls, and Old Bush Dian Hong. I’m going to focus on doing some labels in the coming days, pushing this brand to the edges of acceptability! Thank you for your support!
11/28/2023
My second last tea order for 2023 just arrived, it was from China containing 2 important black teas. Neither of these teas have nicknames yet, but in common market tongue would be called Golden Pagoda and Golden Wire. As I’m just about out of my supply of jin jun mei for the year (I have 1 bag left) these teas will replace my icon until I can get a new batch in late April. Golden pagoda has hit the shop already, but I still have some extensive tasting I have to do with both teas before their articles can be considered finished.
The other inbound package is coming from Japan, and will feature a gyokuro from one of Japan’s highest ranked tea appraisers. There will be an interview with him that I hope to publish here, I am still having my questions translated. I will also get 4 new tencha that I can grind to its powdered form (matcha).
I have several bookings this month for private events, so if you plan to visit me at Carino please ask if I’ll be there. My schedule is a bit wonky!
Cheers everyone, let’s have a happy December.
10/03/2023
It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally got a red shinoyaki tea bowl to use at Carino. I’ve decided to enter my matcha bowls into this online shop. While technically they’re all for sale, I don’t have much desire or hopes to sell them. All the matcha bowls are used, the reason to list them in the shop is to give me a place to share them online and write some things about them to help deepen my connection. Of course if you feel strongly about them, you’re welcome to buy them, but they’re expensive even for me, so I don’t think they’ll go anywhere fast. The fall season and drinking tea outdoors was just awesome (not that it’s over yet) and I spent the day wandering the streets of Chinatown to see if there’s any chance I can score a new location for a physical shop. I did see a couple cool spots but nothing that I’d pull the trigger on yet.
07/11/2023
New Japanese greens in stock! ‘The Angel of Takeshita’ Okumidori Sencha and ‘Ray of Hope’ Yamakai Sencha are both excellent, a-typical incarnations of premium Japanese sencha. A few more Japanese teas are en-route (mostly bancha’s) including a special competition grade sencha as well. I happened upon a large cache of old Pu’Erh, though it’s going to take me some time to categorize and properly taste through it. I don’t know if it’ll ever make it into the online shop, so if you’re interested in vintage pu’erh, do send an email my way. I spent the day mostly adding product photos to the shop, there shouldn’t be much more to do other than focus on selling what’s in stock. Right now the shop is in a very good state, I hope I can help you discover something great! For the locals here in Calgary, I can deliver free to Carino! Ciao!
06/06/2023
The lilac festival was a great success! It was hard work but I met some great people (hi Kelly) and learned a lot about what doesn’t work in a stall. Thankfully I was able to adapt my business model in time. I wrote an article on the blog section of this site that goes into this a bit deeper. A new product to this shop is the hand-ground matcha ‘SaKa’. I put a lot of effort into writing the article for it, it should be an enriching read for anyone interested in matcha. Not sure where my giant order of tea is! Hopefully it won’t be too long before I’m able to get back to my studies and fill this shop up. In the mean time, if you missed me at the Lilac, here’s a short video of what we were up to at Carino!
05/22/2023
In the coming days, a lot more products will be arriving in this seemingly empty shop. The things I look forward to the most are this years LCDZMLX and Jin Jun Mei. Please check back soon, by the end of this week I should be ready to take on the year almost in its entirety. I wanted to make a post here to thank all of you who attended the tea dinner at Rouge. It was a special day to me, here is our photo.