Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/48160
TRENDS TEA REACTING TO RADIATION Soon after Japan's mid-March earthquake and nuclear crisis, reports began streaming through mainstream media that agricul- tural products from areas near the infamous Fukushima nuclear site were testing at dangerously high levels of radiation. The American tea industry, which relies on Japan for much of its mat- cha and other green tea supplies, braced for the worst: large-scale contamination within the harvests that got under way just weeks after the disaster. The nine months since, however, have been marked more by worry than by toxic tea. Many packing companies rushed to buy more ship- ments of Japanese leaf plucked in 2010, ensuring safe stocks through this year. Additionally, testing by Japanese authorities and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has confirmed that dangerous radia- tion levels have been contained to the prefectures immediately surrounding Fukushima—outside the country's most prominent tea- growing spots. Finally, many tea sellers say that while they encountered loads of customer questions about the safety of Japanese product through the spring, over time most consumers have resumed their normal buying habits. "In all honestly, the two biggest challenges we are facing today with the Japanese tea industry would be the bad exchange rate and the poor economy as a whole," says Dan Garbini, owner of Teanobi, a Los Angeles-based company that specializes in Japanese tea. & TEA ALMANAC 2012 ere's your yearly retrospective on the last 12 months in tea and a glance at what may lie ahead. What grabbed the industry's attention the most this year? Three topics stand out: the effect of Japan's nuclear crisis on that country's tea production; the evolution of the tea-and-health discussion; and, of course, the seemingly ever-lin- gering economic recession. The decision to buy long on the 2010 harvest was a bit of a no-brainer for most specialty buyers who deal with Japan, both because of the early uncertainty surrounding the safety of the 2011 output and because of Japan's manufacturing process. "We couldn't have done that with virtually any other country," says Mary Lou Heiss of Tea Trekker in Northampton, Mass. "The Japanese manufacture tea to a stable, half-made point—called aracha. They then refine it later when it's needed. Under proper conditions, the tea can stay stable for years." Other tea companies also took the precautionary step of looking at different regions—and in some cases, different coun- tries—to fill their green tea requirements. Eric Ring of Choice Organic Teas in Seattle says his company bought extra stock from the 2010 Japan harvest and then began looking farther south (and thus farther from Fukushima) when buying 2011 continued on page 20