A history lesson with Dr Jillian Adams

When AUSTCS co-director Adeline Teoh read a paper by Dr Jillian Adams on the history of tea and coffee marketing, she knew she had found the seminar's third speaker.

The truth is actually a little more complicated than the caffeinated influence of transplanted Italians and it starts with American servicemen in Australia during World War II. Hosting a million Americans with a population of just 7 million at the time meant Australia was susceptible to the needs and wants of its visitors. What the visitors wanted was coffee.

"Australia had to provide roasting for the servicemen and Australian housewives were educated on how to brew coffee through the women's pages in newspapers," Adams explains. This occurred just as tea rationing took place; at the time, most of our tea stock came from Java and, due to the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, we were reliant on what England could provide through its plantations in India. Thus began our love affair with coffee and a decline in tea-drinking.

It wasn't until the 1990s that we forged an Australian coffee identity, Adams states, crediting Lavazza with "glamorising" coffee and introducing barista training across the board.

What about tea culture? "We've got to do what we did with coffee, we have to put tea education into the hospitality schools in the way that we put coffee education in. When I first started in the coffee industry the big question was 'where do you go to get a good cup of coffee?' No one was doing coffee properly. We have to now get people saying, 'where do you go to get a beautiful cup of tea?'"

Adams is an oral historian with a research interest in food and culture and she'll be offering insights into the history of tea marketing, particularly in comparison to coffee, at the seminar.

As well as being a qualified teacher, she is a graduate of Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris, and was the Training and Development Manager of Coffee Academy, a joint initiative of Douwe Egberts Australia and William Angliss Institute. She is an adjunct senior lecturer at Central Queensland University and currently lectures in hospitality at Southern Cross University.

Yes! I would like to hear Dr Jillian Adams speak at the Australian Tea Cultural Seminar.

Tea for Taiwan 

David Lyons meets some Li Shan tea producers at the

Taiwan Festival in Chatswood. 

Saturday 16th September saw Willoughby Council and the NSW Government, along with the Taiwanese community, putting on a day of all things Taiwan. Racing to Chatswood from Canberra for the Taiwanese community could only mean one thing: TEA!

Shelley Liao welcomed me to the event and introduced me to many of the organisers. Next arrived the dignitaries: NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Willoughby Mayor Gail Giles-Gibney and a group of state and national government members. Traditional dancers welcomed the party to the event, followed by the usual speeches to open the festival.

Then it was on to the tea. High mountain grown Taiwan oolongs were on the tasting list for the day. Six different growers from the Li Shan region were there to present and introduce each garden's teas. Beautiful fragrant jade and wiry dark twisted oolongs were placed on the table in a proud presentation by each grower.

I spent time with each producer, listening to their stories and enjoying their passion. It’s wonderful to meet people who are so passionate about their plants, the environment, the tea they produce and their desire to share teas from the pristine mountains of Taiwan.

A couple of really impressive brands were Kumy and Teatoshare. Kumy's owner Joyce spoke with such pride about her tea and her tea garden and I thought the intense and clean crisp flavours of the tea reflected the stunning landscape images of the tea garden she showed me. Teatoshare lived up to its name with Hank and his aunty serving up continuous pots of tea with interested visitors, with the conversation flowing just as much as the tea.

Other cultural traditions from Taiwan were also on show including indigenous tribal dancing, puppetry, paper cutting, Taiwanese foods, candy blowing and a whole range of traditional artefacts were on sale. It was a great chance for Sydneysiders to embrace culture from an island not so far away.  

FAQs for AUSTCS 2017

Q: What does my AUSTCS ticket cover?

A: Your AUSTCS ticket covers the two days of the seminar, including presentations on Saturday and workshops on Sunday, as well as a buffet dinner on Saturday night, a buffet lunch on Sunday afternoon and all the tea breaks in between, of course.

Q: What happens at the AUSTCS workshops?

A: The workshops are a chance to discuss and contribute to an ongoing strategy to introduce and embed tea culture in Australia. First, delegates will choose a topic of interest from tea culture, education and health. Then they will be separated into workshop groups to collaborate.

The workshops will be facilitated and structured in a way that will allow every participant to have their say. At the end of the day all three groups will reconvene to share their findings and their plans, which will take us through to next year.