Tea consumption is growing in the US due to increasing health and wellness concerns. Hawaii islands is well known for her commercial tea cultivations. Other than that there are few tea farms located in the US mainland. Charleston tea plantation in South Carolina is the largest among all. There is another in California namely Golden Feather Tea Company. Surprisingly, this story is about the only tea farm in Alaska initiated just few days ago. This tea farm has started near Fairbanks. And it’s geothermally heated.

Jenny Tse grew up in Fairbanks drinking coffee. But she does drink tea — all day, in fact. Outside her shop she pours a guest an expensive Hawaiian-grown blend. But she didn’t discover tea until she was a student in Idaho working on her athletic training and education degrees. She wanted to save money. Tse is an international-award-winning tea expert, consulted by artisanal growers in Hawaii, India and China And she runs the leading tea manufacturing company in Alaska. Now she has started the only tea farm in Alaska.

She returned to Alaska to work as a trainer and physical therapist, then later as a high school math teacher. But Tse continued her research on tea. She says she learned it could be transformative. She came to the idea after 14 years as the proprietor of Sipping Streams, an artisanal tea store on the west side of Fairbanks. She demonstrate visitors a large bag of dried fireweed blossoms, cranberries and the tea leaves that assisted earn her reputation.

Tse started teaching tea classes, and eventually opened Sipping Streams Tea Company in Fairbanks. That got her to travel to tea farms in China and India.

She has literally written the book on tea. “The Essence of Tea: The Transformational Journey of a Tea Connoisseur” became a bestseller on Amazon.

During COVID 19 pandemic, Tse initiated a podcast interviewing international tea experts and a YouTube channel to reach customers who could not come into the shop. And she continued her online tea certification program with students across the country and in the UK. She sent each student a small tea plant to grow indoors. And that sparked the idea of growing tea in Alaska. Tse thought of Chena Hot Springs and Bernie Karl, the entrepreneur who pioneered sustainable energy projects and year-round food production in geothermally heated greenhouses.

The camellia sinensis trees came from Camellia Forest Tea Garden in North Carolina. It was a little nerve-racking as they were trucked across the continent and flown to Alaska. Tse is hoping to harvest the tea flushes later this summer. She will be teaching a class on tea at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in July at the tea farm at Chena Hot Springs.

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References

1. Main Source: https://www.ktoo.org/2021/06/06/alaskas-first-tea-farm-is-geothermally-heated/
2. Company Website: https://sippingstreams.com/
3. The Essence of Tea: https://www.amazon.com/Essence-Tea-Transformational-Journey-Connoisseur-ebook/dp/B07K8RB6GJ