It was a privilege to be part of the Twinings sponsored Mother's Day Afternoon Tea for the benefit of the Nurture Foundation, and no better place to hold it than the revamped ballroom of the Heritage Hotel. For those who don't know, Nurture, through research, are committed to helping New Zealanders have families through the safe delivery of a healthy, full-term baby.
There were a couple of key auction prizes on offer and one was to win an afternoon home cooking/baking class at Allyson Gofton's house with the lady herself. I've known Allyson a little while and she is great, not only a total pro chef but lots of fun and very humble! She is also a committed ambassador for Nurture. We had a right laugh and I of course muscled my way in to make the tea to go with the food. All in a very good cause. The stars of the show though were the ladies who bid for and won the prize, plenty of stories and I was the only guy there!
The other charity prize from the afternoon was a commitment from me to create a bespoke tea blend for the winning bidder. It was very appropriate that Cindy Farquhar outbid all to secure the blend for her husband Geoff. Cindy is Professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the University of Auckland, and a trustee of Nurture. I went along to their lovely Auckland home to interview Geoff and find out more about him in order to create his own very personal and unique blend of tea. It’s just like the concept of a bespoke tailor and Geoff will join the ranks of previous recipients, Allyson Gofton herself, and the illustrious Earl Grey for whom the very first bespoke teas were created by Twinings in the early 1800s.
Watch this space and I'll let you know how this developed......
2 comments:
Personalized tea blends are so cool. I've often thought of what I'd want to do with that for my own tea blend. It'd probably be Puerh with some healthy stuff like coconut in it. Maybe someday I'll get that straightened out with the right tea merchant. Puerh could be a bit challenging for them, but all in all a learning experience and a lot of fun. --Teaternity
Hi Jason,
I agree with you about personalised or bespoke tea blends, I'm still working on the one I mentioned earlier in the blog! I have a friend in the UK, Alex Probyn, a tea-tasting colleague of mine, who started his own online bespoke tea business called "blendsforfriends" you could look him up.
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