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AMAZING TRACE continued from page 29 "Companies and governments can't control information anymore," he says. "China is not going to continue to be a black box where people don't understand what's going on. For one thing, there are more people learning to speak Chinese." Once the language barrier is removed, he says, buyers should have an easier time doing what he did: forming relationships that lead to trust and that eventually remove the curtain between the buyer and origin. Austin Hodge anticipates that Chinese tea culture will become more inclusive as language barriers fade and the Internet continues to bring different ends of the world closer together. While sourcers do their part to work on traceability, retailers can also help by simply educating customers. While mislabeled tea is not an easy thing to sniff out, it becomes a little easier with an educated nose. "I think there's a trend to have more consumer education, and through this education I think you're going to get some better appraisals of the teas that are offered out there," says Spillane. "You want customers tasting teas, talking about teas and making comparisons so that they know the difference between this tea and that tea." Traceability in tea is a multi-tiered problem with no easy solu- tion. But in the modern consumer culture, being able to shine lights on as many sections of a tea's journey as possible is fast becoming a key element in determining the quality of a company. "Transparency is not easy," says Hodge. "It's not the most efficient way to do business—we spend a lot of time and money on it. But we do it because we think it's the right way to do business." 30 Tea Almanac 2013 AUSTIN HODGE/SEVEN CUPS