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The first-ever World Tea Championship™ (WTC) took place at the 2008 World Tea Expo May 30 – May 31, 2008 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Winners of the championship can be viewed here: Winners of the World Tea Championship
The WTC is an independent competition judged by professional cuppers and industry recognized experts to distinguish the highest quality & best tasting teas commercially available in the North American marketplace.
| World Tea Ratings™ |
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World Tea Buyers Guide™ |
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All entries into this competition received a World Tea Rating™. These ratings provide our industry with a rating system for teas similar to that which brought increased awareness and consumer understanding to the wine industry.
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The finalists' World Tea Ratings were published in a World Tea Buyers Guide™ available at the Expo for retailers and media. Along with tea ratings, the tea's name, supplier, country of origin, year picked, quanitity available and MSRP will be published.
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| Judges- Professional Cuppers |
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Judging Methodolgy |
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Professional Cuppers are defined as persons that have evaluated and purchased tea for a minimum period of ten years or employed by a company with annual specialty tea sales that exceed 5 million USD per year. Professional cuppers can also be defined as widely recognized industry experts by their peers.
The 2008 Judging Panel:
Charles Cain, TeaGschwendner
Joshua Kaiser, Rishi Tea
Jane Pettigrew
James Norwood Pratt, Tea Society
Thomas Schulze, Dethlefsen & Balk
Mike Spillane, G.S. Haly Company
Anthony Tellin, Tazo Tea
David Walker, Walker Tea
All judges were required to sign an agreement to maintain the highest ethical standards during the competition and further disclose any direct or indirect involvement with tea suppliers before the evaluations began.
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Initial Evaluation-
All hot teas submitted were pre-qualified and pre-evaluated prior to the onsite competition. Entries were sent to the judges internally coded by the World Tea Championship™ for blind evaluation.
For Judges who had a direct or indirect involvement with an entrant or entry, their evaluation of the tea was statistically evaluated against the other Judges’ evaluation of that tea and in comparison to all other teas in that category. Any evaluation from a Judge that was more than two standard deviations from the mean resulted in discarding that Judge’s evaluation for the entire category.
During the competition-
Any judge that had a direct or indirect involvement with a tea entry was dismissed from judging the entire category.
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