A Trio for You

Three gems for Friday:

first, tea has a long history in Korea. But it tends to get overshadowed in foreigners’ minds by the two tea giants on the sides, China and Japan. So the JoongAng Daily newspaper has a fine history of tea in Korea. Why? To mark the occasion of a visit to Jeju Island, where Korea’s largest tea plantation has rebuilt Korean tea culture.

A pocket history:

Korea’s tea culture can be traced back to the Silla Dynasty (668-935), but consumption declined quickly during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945). During the 1960 and 1970s, the demand for black tea spiked, and producers found themselves unable to keep up. Some even dyed leaves from camellia trees and sweet potato plants and passed them off as black tea. When the incident was reported in the media, it drove consumers toward coffee instead, a trend that has never reversed, leading to the appearance of instant coffee packets in offices across the country.

Check out the whole article.

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Second,

Yep!

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Finally, word has it that they’ve invented a way to decaffeinate tea… using SOUND-WAVES. Sounds ridiculous! Oh, Science…