Wherein I get to indulge my passion for tea

Who knew there is a tea growing estate in New Zealand?  As Arlene and I planned our day trips around our base in Hamilton, we learned there was, indeed, a tea plantation just 4-5 miles outside the city. So there had to be a visit. Zealong Tea Estate offers tours, tea tastings, high tea, a restaurant, and a gift shop.  Since high tea is a bit far off my bariatric diet, we opted for the tour. First off, let me say it is a good thing I’m packing light, or I would be bringing back lots of tea, tea accessories, tea pots, and tea cups!

Tea originates in China, but I didn’t know that of the over 250 species n the genus Camellia, all are poisonous except for Camellia sinensis. So don’t harvest any leaves from your garden variety camellia, please, as I value your friendships!

Founded by Vincent Chan in 1996, the Zealong tea estates started with 130 plants. Vincent had the advice an encouragement of a NZ farmer, Harold Nielsen. Tea’s first history was written by Lu Yu, The Classic of Tea, in the 8th century. Tea was an important trading item long before the British popularized it. So much so that it had it’s own equivalent of the Silk Road - the Tea Horse road. Some pictures from the tour

It is hard to see but in the second collage on the upper right photo, there is a black spot on top of the tea plants. That’s a native NZ bird, the pukeko, which has the territorial nature of an angry goose! This picture deserves a place in my blog because it was the only native animal I got a shot of outside of a zoo!😄

The tea ceremony was fascinating and I’ll demonstrate some of what I learned when I’m back home. Let me simply say that it was enlightening, I learned I like green tea (I still prefer black), and the tea ceremony has lots of stuff I would have brought home, but then I’d need a second tea cart! Our tour guide, Sarah Moss, was our hostess for the tea ceremony, too. We followed it by having a snack at the restaurant. Your mouths should water over the pistachio macrons. 

One last item. Arlene needs to be a PR rep for the various artist journal artists she follows because she made a second convert to artists journals during the tea tour. As she pulled out her travel journal to put in her tea leaves cutting, the journal fell open to some image from our Denmark trip. Our guide, Sarah, oohed, so Arlene started showing it to her, and now Sarah wants to start artists journaling, too! Proof: