Savvy Tea Gourmet Celebrates 3 Years Next Weekend

Savvy Tea Gourmet will celebrate its three year anniversary over Columbus Day weekend.  The weekend's events include a Savvy Afternoon Tea, an Aged Tea Tasting, Savvy Sunday Brunch, cheese tastings and many other offerings.

Savvy Tea Gourmet in Madison has the distinction of earning the “Best Teahouse in Connecticut” for three years consecutively from Connecticut Magazine.

As Savvy Tea Gourmet approaches its 3rd year anniversary in October, this award underscores the mission of Phil Parda and Judy Guard’s retail teahouse and café. With tea fast becoming the beverage of choice for hot or iced, customers at Savvy Tea Gourmet learn to broaden their choices of tea and increase their tea knowledge, including the health benefits behind tea.

Savvy Tea Gourmet offers 300 loose leaf teas that have been hand selected by tea purveyor Phil Parda from his world travels.

After researching tea for over 30 years, Parda says, “I want people to understand the difference in specialty teas.  Like fine wine, teas can be enjoyed for their flavor, health benefits and category distinction.”

The teas are individually selected based on professional cupping standards each season, carefully packed and inspected, and air freighted to Savvy Tea several times a year.  Parda and Guard make multiple excursions to tea gardens every year.  Customers have the assurance of knowing that the tea is well cared for from garden to cup, Parda said.

Savvy Tea Gourmet also offers daily fresh soups, salads, sandwiches, Panini, smoothies, gelato, desserts and bakery items for dining in the atrium café or for take home.  Custom cheese boards and artisan cheeses are also available for sale.  To her customers, Guard promotes the U.S. artisan cheese industry as one to embrace. “There is impressive growth in local creameries and cheesemakers that are producing premium cheeses from cow, goat or sheep,”  she said.

She underscores the company’s tagline of offering foods “for the healthy epicurean”.

Guard and Parda said their goal is to build a tea community, one tea drinker and one cup at a time.  Their work is to guide customers through their own tea journeys, and to bring awareness and pleasure about the benefits of fine teas.  Parda and Guard say they are committed to making the surrounding area the “most savvy tea community” in the country.

Savvy Tea Gourmet and savvyteagourmet.com, a retail division of WorldSource International is a specialty tea retailer importing and packaging teas from Asia.    In 2004, Philip Parda, Founder and President launched Zhong Guo Cha focusing on loose leaf teas from China, Japan and Taiwan.  In 2005, both wholesale and retail business channels were established. Internet sales through www.savvyteagourmet.com, www.DrinkGreatTea.com and www.BuyGreatTea.com support the Zhong Guo Cha brand.

Parda is a regular guest speaker and teacher at the Specialty Tea Institute; a guest lecturer at a wide variety of tea expos and healthy living seminars throughout the country; and an active leader in regional tea tastings.  He provides expert information on tea, health benefits and Asian culture. Savvy Tea Gourmet opened in Madison in 2008.  Worldsource International LLC is privately held by Parda and Guard with offices in Connecticut and Hong Kong.  Parda and Guard live in Killingworth and divide their time between Connecticut, Asia, and Vermont.

 This article was contributed by Savvy Tea. If you have something you'd like us to run, send it to pem.mcnerney@patch.com.