By Dan Bolton
The International Tea Cuppers Club (ITCC) opened a training center for pandemic-constrained tea professionals in Mexico. For 25 years, ITCC founder Dan Robertson has led tours for tea professionals that provide “hands-on” training on-site at tea gardens worldwide. Since traveling to the tea lands to learn about tea is no longer practical, Robertson built a tea training facility with guest rooms to accommodate 10 on the beach south of Cancun and Cozumel.
During his years operating World Tea Tours, Robertson befriended hundreds of accomplished tea makers, many of whom own gardens or worked for decades perfecting the skills required to produce specialty teas from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, and China.
Selecting fine tea is challenging for retailers, Robertson explains. The combination of flavor, mouthfeel, and aftertaste of authentic artisan tea that appeals to discerning consumers makes them more demanding. “Right now, a lot of the tea merchants will buy from a broker who will buy from somebody else and maybe buy from somebody else. The consumer doesn't know who produced the tea.”
Buyers who negotiate directly with producers and those with tasting skills can offer greater value. A professional tea taster who's got a certification and gone through training programs can attest to the tea quality and its provenance is one possibility. Or you can learn these skills yourself. ITCC hires experts to teach these tasting skills, bringing one to many instead of many to one, said Robertson.
“Whether you're a tea producer, manufacturer, or retailer, you need to have the skills to make good decisions,” he said. “There are four criteria to focus on: you have the smell or aroma; the taste; the color; and the shape of the leaf, which can be examined both as the dry leaf and infused tea,” he said.
“It's important to be able to master your skills of evaluating all four of these parameters, and so we will taste hundreds and hundreds of teas until you can blind taste, test, and evaluate which tea is which and determine its quality. It is largely a matter of simply doing it over and over again until you have the confidence required to make good choices,” he said.
“You could either hire someone who has taken these programs and is knowledgeable so you don't have to have the skills, or you could take the training yourself and make better decisions for your own business,” he said.
ITCC tea training center holds courses on all major tea-producing regions under one roof. The secluded facility is safer, less expensive, more efficient, and closer than traveling to distant lands and enduring lengthy flights. The center is in a gated community immediately next to federally protected coastline inhabited by sea turtles, a vast array of marine life, and inspiring beaches. Robertson says the week-long immersion leaves plenty of time to visit the Mayan ruins nearby or simply soak up the sun in their spare time.
The facility is a four-hour flight from Chicago, followed by a 45-minute drive to the beach. Courses begin at $1,000 per week inclusive of food and accommodations.