blog banner

Just the Leaves

Your Tea Journey Begins Here

Learn about the origins of our tea, new recipes to try, how tea can fit into your daily routine, and more.

Read the Latest

Fall 2025 Quarterly - Steeped in Imperfection: Tea and the Spirit of Wabi-Sabi

Fall 2025 Quarterly - Steeped in Imperfection: Tea and the Spirit of Wabi-Sabi

With the rise of the samurai class and the military feudal lords (daimyo) they protected, the next several hundred years in Japan were a period of ...

Summer 2025 Quarterly - A Garden of Herbal Delights

Summer 2025 Quarterly - A Garden of Herbal Delights

Herbs have been with us since the beginning of time. Before recorded history, when humankind foraged as hunter-gatherers, we relied on our ability ...

Spring 2025 Quarterly - The Blue Hills of India

Spring 2025 Quarterly - The Blue Hills of India

A new day dawns over the Nilgiri Hills of south India, the rising sun slowly illuminating the vast swaths of verdant tea fields, terraced into the ...

Winter 2025 Quarterly - A Journey of a Lifetime: Sri Lanka

Winter 2025 Quarterly - A Journey of a Lifetime: Sri Lanka

Join me on a journey to a nation that is steeped in tea history, filled with spectacular landscapes and amazing food, a culture where the people sh...

Fall 2024 Quarterly - The Tea Party Renaissance

On Labor Day weekend, many towns hold parades and festivals, followed by a bounty of backyard celebrations, recognizing the hard work and achieveme...

Summer 2024 Quarterly - Okakura Kakuzo, Part II: Tea with Isabella

Summer 2024 Quarterly - Okakura Kakuzo, Part II: Tea with Isabella

Okakura traveled to Boston when his devotion to Asian art and culture afforded him the opportunity to work for the Museum of Fine Arts. He was firs...

Spring 2024 Quarterly - Okakura Kakuzo, Part I: The Origin of "Teaism"

Spring 2024 Quarterly - Okakura Kakuzo, Part I: The Origin of "Teaism"

Okakura Kakuzo was born in 1863, during the final years of the Edo period in Japan. His father was a silk merchant who formerly worked as a treasur...

Winter 2023 Quarterly - "Boston Harbor a teapot this night!" The Tea Party that Ignited a Revolution

Winter 2023 Quarterly - "Boston Harbor a teapot this night!" The Tea Party that Ignited a Revolution

Tea has been woven into the fabric of history for millennia, being at the center of exploration and trade as well as the cause of war. By the time ...

Fall 2023 Quarterly - Kagoshima in Your Cup

Fall 2023 Quarterly - Kagoshima in Your Cup

Kagoshima boasts a notable tea history dating back to the 14th century. It is the widely held belief that a Buddhist monk, traveling from Kyoto, cu...

Summer 2023 Quarterly - Iced Tea World Tour

Summer 2023 Quarterly - Iced Tea World Tour

According to the Tea Association, Americans consume as much as 3.8 billion glasses of iced tea per year! That means that as a country, we consume f...

Spring 2023 Quarterly - Mindfulness and Tea

Spring 2023 Quarterly - Mindfulness and Tea

Let’s explore a little history on mindfulness. In the nineteenth century, Europeans first discovered Buddhism from the East and started translating...

Winter 2022 Quarterly - A Good Book and a Cup of Tea

Winter 2022 Quarterly - A Good Book and a Cup of Tea

Tea appears in so many beloved classic novels that it is impossible to mention them all! But what about books written on the subject of tea? A good...