Dragon Pearl Serves Gallons and Gallons of Iced Tea

We had great weather for the Avila Beach Music Festival, a benefit concert for OPTIONS. This is one of the great things about living here-- lots of outdoor concerts from great bands!

Dragon Pearl served hundreds of cups of iced tea and, of course, it was well loved.

Click for a larger picture


Los Lonely Boys playing Voodoo Child yesterday

OPTIONS is our packaging and mailing service; they provide vocational training and jobs for developmentally disabled people.

Los Lobos & Los Lonely Boys played, with special guest Dave Mason.

Dragon Pearl at the Avila Beach Music Festival!

We'll be serving our incomparable iced tea at the Avila Beach Music Festival, a benefit for Options.

Options is a non-profit organization that provides positive choices for people with disabilities.

An amazing assembly of musical talent ensures this will be a great time.

Buy tickets
More about Options
Printable high-res poster
The music festival website

Dragon Pearl Tea on National Geographic

Now you can see some of our best photos from the tea farms on National Geographic.

You can also try out our way cool tea photo puzzles. They're easy-to-work 100-piece jigsaw puzzles... and other puzzles too! You can play Memory or Slide Puzzle. Check it out at NatGeo: just click on the photo you want to use and then select the puzzle you want to try.

Dragon Pearl Team Represents at Wildflower!

Team Dragon Pearl made an appearance the Wildflower 2009 triathlon at Lake San Antonio. Nick, Julie and Michelle joined the race, a 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike ride and 13.1-mile run.

The AVIA Wildflower Triathlon has a great Exposition area with live bands, food vendors, the latest triathlon gear, race clinics presented by top professionals and more.

Earth Day:

Celebrating Organic Farming Progress

On this day we celebrate the greatness of life on earth! As humans here, we have no bigger concern than keeping the air, soil and water clean… for us, for our children and for generations to come.

Of particular importance are the grains, fruits and vegetables that sustain us, and the freedom we have to pick the foods we put in our bodies.

Some of our produce is grown on large farms, and some on small family farms. But the method of farming is important to consider when it comes to our health and the health of the earth. That’s why Dragon Pearl Tea is produced on machine-free, organic mountain farms.

Our tea is hand-picked in an ancient traditional method and all-natural fertilizers are carefully added to the soil in such a way as to not pollute the pure mountain streams that are the source of water here.

Dragon Pearl Tea is concerned about the new farm bills HR 875 and S 425. We need to protect our right produce sustainable, non-toxic farming! We hope you’ll do your own research on these bills, and then let your senator and representative in the House know what you think of them.

And this earth day, let’s think about the purity of our environment, the freedom to choose organic, and the sustainability of our future.

Tea Feng Shui

A good tea master practices good feng shui. "Feng Shui" is considered by many to be simple superstition. However, there are some very good reasons for many Feng Shui practices, some of which are more scientific than you might imagine.

Feng Shui ('wind-water") is the art of placement of the things that surround your world. Good Feng Shui brings good luck, because the flow of universal energy is properly directed in a balance of the yin and yang.

Here are some general Feng Shui rules and tea serving suggestions:

1. Start with a clean kitchen and clean untensils. An unclean kitchen, especially the stove, is considered very bad luck. Avoid pointy plants in the kitchen, in favor of full-leaf, flowing ones, and keep the counters clear of unneeded utensils and appliances.

2. Use pure water and pure tea, and always serve it in ceramic or glass vessels, never plastic, wood or metal.

3. Pre-steep. The first steeping releases the scent of the tea and primes the leaves to release their flavor. Pour this first steeping out (it is considered rude to serve a guest the first steeping).

4. Give the tea your full attention: smell, taste, and observe, that you never take tea for granted, or the moments in which we are able to enjoy it.

For those of you who are more technical, place your utensils in the part of the kitchen corresponding to their elements: Water to the North, Wood to the East, and Metal to the West and Northwest.

(Thanks to Angi Ma Wong for her suggestions. Buy her book here.)

Making Tea Extract - Tea, Caffeine and Cancer 2009 Study

An interesting study recently demonstrated that caffeine helps destroy cancerous cells, and the article on Yahoo! indicated that soon doctors may be recommending topical caffeine solutions to fight skin cancer.

This brings us to the subject of extracts, which people ask us about often.

There are generally two types of extracts: powdered and liquid. Powdered is much more common since it's easier to make and doesn't spoil or ferment over long periods of time.

Neither is very desirable since A) most of them are made from cheap tea and include chemicals from pesticides and other impurities and B) powdered or brewed tea extract very quickly begins to oxidize and loses its potency and flavor.

Your best bet is to use your own organic whole leaf tea.

1. Powdered Extract
Use a little electric coffee grinder with spinning blades. Make sure it's very clean. In unscented teas, coffee grounds will wreck the flavor. Grind it and use it immediately.

2. A more practical way to make tea extract for most applications is to simply brew it strong.
A) Add hot water to a cup that's half to 3/4 full of tea.
B) Let it get cooled a little, then refrigerate.
C) Use within about 72 hours; keep it in something with an airtight cover

If you're considering expensive skin lotions and so forth, you might try dipping a cotton ball into some chilled organic tea extract instead.

More about the tea and skin cancer article
More about tea and health