The interesting blog Tea For Me Please turns 16 years old. We are looking back with owner Nicole Wilson and hearing some nice stories about tea! “Helping people learn more about tea is my biggest source of motivation.”
What are you going to do to celebrate your blog turning 16?
I am going to be running a series of giveaways on Instagram with prizes donated by a variety of tea companies and friends. This is a way of giving back to the community that supported me over the years while highlighting some of my favorite tea vendors. It’s also become a tradition for me to bake a matcha cake.
What book about tea do you recommend and why?
It’s so hard to choose just one book about tea. I have shelves full of them! The book I most often recommend for anyone interested in tea is Tea: History, Terroirs, Varieties by Kevin Gascoyne, Francois Marchand, Jasmin Desharnais, and Hugo Americi. It is a thorough guide to tea and its many varieties but still very easy to digest. You could almost use it as a textbook.
What was your best read post in 16 years? Do you know why?
My most popular blog post by far is a fairly recent one. It is a review of Tea Around Town, an afternoon tea bus tour in New York City. It brings quite a lot of search traffic from Google, but I hope my site also helps those people become more curious about everything tea has to offer. After that, my most popular post is a recipe for matcha whipped cream. It is popular because matcha is still trendy and it is very easy to make.
What keeps you going after all these years?
Helping people learn more about tea is my biggest source of motivation. I love breaking down complex topics in ways that make them fun and approachable. Another motivation is that I am always learning even 16 years later. Tea might seem simple on the surface but it is a deep well that just keeps going and going. There are always new teas to try and things to explore.
How important has tea become for you? Do you have an example?
Tea is so important to me that I struggle to find the words to describe it. One of the most meaningful aspects is the people that tea has brought into my life. A recent example is when I traveled to the Toronto Tea Festival. I had never been outside the U.S. before but I immediately felt at home because of my incredible tea friends in Canada. In many cases, we hadn’t even met in person before but they went out of their way to welcome me to their city.
