The year Ku Cha House of Tea opened its doors, President George W. Bush began his second term, Hurricane Katrina crippled New Orleans and YouTube got its start.
Now, 15 years later, much is different, including Ku Cha House of Tea. Our Boulder location changed — four times. We opened a shop in downtown Fort Collins. And last year, we brought Ku Cha to Cherry Creek North in Denver.
We Champion Bitter, Because Without It There’s No Sweet
Like most journeys, opening and running a retail shop introduced a parade of pleasures, pains, challenges, triumphs and defeats. The experience tracks our life’s philosophy, which our very name honors. In Chinese, “ku” means bitter and “cha” means tea. Why did we include the word “bitter” in our store name? Do we sell bitter tea?
Yes we do! Most tea is bitter, in fact. But the best teas, like those we carry at Ku Cha, turn sweet after the initial burst of bitter. It is this evolution of bitter to sweet that guides us, in business and in life.
We believe that only after enduring through bitter — business complications, personal struggles, and so on — does sweet achieve its full glory. Without bitter, we think sweet offers just a shadow of its power. In most cases, the sweet never even emerges.
In other words, sweet takes work. We appreciate this. Like you, we work awfully hard. And when all of that toil produces something heart-stirring and pleasing, we do not forget to embrace it, to treasure it. Doing so honors all of those difficult investments of time, money and mental energy that nurtured the flowering of the sweet.
Fifteen Years of Hard Work, With Sprinklings of Bitter + Sweet
Today we find healthy dollops of sweet when we consider the journey behind us. Fifteen years of moves, of forging strong partnerships with tea farmers around the world, of understanding what consumers desire in tea and of educating guests about tea’s myriad mysteries and joys.
When we contemplate the journey ahead — well, we know it involves plenty of bitter! That’s life, and that’s also owning and managing retail shops. But we hope that in another 15 years, when we celebrate 30 years of business, we once again look back and smile at the sweet stuff.
We plan a variety of anniversary events and specials across 2020. We look forward to sharing this anniversary with you!
Tea Spotlight: Bi Tan Piao Xue
Many tea lovers, including us, savor jasmine tea. We appreciate how jasmine fragrance, from real blossoms, perfumes the tea’s bouquet and enlivens its flavors. The pairing of jasmine with green tea is one of those magical matches, sort of like peanut butter and jelly.
And so we are especially fond of Bi Tan Piao Xue, our jasmine tea of choice. Whereas most jasmine teas use poor-quality green tea as the base, and then overpower the tea with jasmine aroma, Bi Tan Piao Xue uses exceptional green tea buds, harvested in spring. The difference is profound.
The tea in Bi Tan Piao Xue comes from Meng Mountain, in the Sichuan province in southwest China. The name means “snowflakes falling upon a jade pond,” which refers to the jasmine blossoms that float on the surface of the tea, as the leaves sink to the bottom of the cup.
If you already enjoy jasmine tea, this is a must-try. It will sweep you off your feet. And if you have tried jasmine teas in the past and disliked them, Bi Tan Piao Xue invites you to give the style another shot. Chance are, it will turn you into a jasmine tea fan!
