I received a newsletter from NBTea and there is an interesting thing in it:
Quote:
"When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground"
African proverb
Particularly true for the tea industry where most of the technology and know how is passed on by example and word of mouth. Very few definitive tea textbooks exist, and the handbooks and planters' manuals in use are decades out of date. Company operating manuals and standing orders are kept secret. Tea research institutes concern themselves with producing academic publications; their once useful handbooks are now mainly unobtainable. William Ukers' two volume masterpiece the "Book of Tea" written in the 1930's has just been reissued in facsimile version as there has never been an updated replacement. Tea experts who learned their craft across countries and continents last century are looking their age, if not already retired. The tea industry should be actively incorporating their skills, not benignly watching them disappear. When their expertise dies unrecorded it will be gone for ever. Can smell burning...?
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