Teaviews Profile: Trent

My name is Trent, and I’m a 16 year old from Santa Cruz, CA. I enjoy sports such as skiing, mountain biking, and skim-boarding. Photography is my foremost passion, so I often use my Skis and mountain bike to access more remote, and photogenic areas. I frequently bike deep into the Santa Cruz mountains and ski in the Tahoe backcountry. Additionally, I have always had an interest in gourmet food. Once when I was 7 years old and at I sushi bar, I ordered uni (sea urchin). Our waitress refused to believe that a 7 year old could like uni, so she promised me a free meal if I could finish just one piece of uni. Sure enough, I ate it, loved it, and got a free meal. With this same spirit of adventurous food choices, I began to try tea.


I originally gravitated towards tea because I find the thought of drinking soda appalling. I can honestly say that I have never tried a sip of soda in my life. Whenever I would eat at restaurants, I was on the lookout for an alternative to that sugar laden drink. Like nearly every other tea fanatic, I first tried Lipton and Bigelow bagged teas. I was always enthralled by the fact that I could impart such a strong flavor into plain water without the use of sugar or any artificial flavoring. Eventually, I tried Mighty Leaf’s African Nectar at a ski lodge, and have been addicted to tea since that cup. From then on, I tried a plethora of high quality bagged teas - mainly by Mighty Leaf. For a while, my tea of choice was an herbal blend, but recently, I have developed a love for Japanese green tea.


My favorite tea is definitely gyokuro. I was first introduced to the tea by a Japanese friend last year. He and his family hand picked the finest gyokuro from his Grandfather’s tea farm in Japan and generously gave my family about 200 grams. Before I even tried to brew the tea myself, my friend’s mother taught me how to brew gyokuro in a shiboridashi. From my first sip, I was hooked on gyokuro’s natural sweetness and lack of astringency. After learning how to properly brew gyokuro, I became enthralled with all kinds of tea ware. Currently, most of my teacups and pots are handmade by myself in a school Ceramics class. However, I plan to purchase a few yixing and tokoname pots as I do not currently have access to high quality porous clay.

Trent's Favorite Tea Products

Just4Tea Tie Guan Yin		9.5/10
Indonique Dragonwell		9/10
Mighty Leaf Chamomile Citrus		9/10
Mighty Leaf Golden Monkey		9/10
Just4Tea Jasmine Pearl		8.5/10
Two Leaves and a Bud Organic Orange Sencha		8.5/10
Mighty Leaf Gyokuro		8/10
SpecialTeas Honeybush Vanilla		7/10
Mighty Leaf Rose Pu-erh Toucha		7/10
Zoomdweebie's Check Mate		7/10

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