Interview with Maren Fichter, Tea Educator and Writer
In this episode, cohosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) talk with Maren Fichter, a tea educator and writer whose Substack Tea & all the rest covers farming, heritage, tourism, and education in specialty tea. She has worked with tea in Japan, China, the US, and the UK, develops and teaches the Matcha Power unit on the UK Tea Academy's Tea Sommelier course, and is currently based in Wazuka, Kyoto, where she works at Obubu Tea Farms. Maren thinks about tea knowledge as a web, where a term only means something if there are other terms for it to hang on to, and much of the conversation follows that idea. Topics range from what the matcha boom has changed on the ground in Wazuka, to why single origin means something different in matcha than it does in wine or coffee, to pairing "ceremonial grade" with harvest season and shading duration rather than simply debunking it, and how those same details explain price. https://teawithmaren.com/ https://beingtea.com/teacher-training/ https://savouringbath.com/ https://matchathing.co.uk/
