Tea Masters Cup (TMC) is an international tournament among tea masters, project for people who work with tea or are tea enthusiasts and are willing to expand their horizons, and realize that valuable professional assets are not places, technologies or ideas, but people who can become or already are like-minded. TMC gives all its members the opportunity to interact with tea culture at short range. The diversity, concentration and level of reciprocal influence of tea culture members on TMC is incredibly high — all of that can be used for common and own purposes. The TMC became a professional elevator for many participants of the tournament.
Tea Masters Cup involves people who are engaged in tasting, preparing and serving tea and tea drinks, both professionals and amateurs. TMC has been held since 2013, currently more than 20 countries are part of the TMC system. Once a year, winners of national TMC championships meet at the world finals. TMC Finals were held in Moscow (Russia), Istanbul (Turkey), Seoul (South Korea), Enshi (China), Hue (Vietnam). TMC is held in four categories.
TMC Tea Preparation — in this category, participants compete in the skill of preparing and serving pure tea.
TMC Tea Pairing — in this category, contestants compete in the skill of creating gastronomic compositions based on tea.
TMC Tea Mixology — in this category, participants compete in the skill of preparing and serving tea-based mixes.
TMC Tea Tasting — in this category, participants compete in the skill of memorizing and recognizing tasted teas and ingredients of multicomponent tea-based beverages.
National Competitions
The national competitions of TMC is a mechanism for selecting participants and performances that adequately and vividly characterize the national consumer tea cultures or the author’s interpretations of preparation and delivery of tea.
Despite having clear competition orientation and the winners, there are no real losers in the TMC. In a sense, TMC is a sequence of vivid presentations of interesting tea decisions and high-quality tea specialists.
The modern tea culture is divided into three segments: The tea culture of production, tea culture of trade and tea culture of consumers. Tea Masters Cup is a project that is entirely focused on consumer tea culture, that is, the preparation of tea and its serving to guests.
The specificity of consumer tea culture — because of tea popularity and affordability — is its easy integration into the traditions of the countries, communities and even the families in which it is cultivated. The consumer tea culture is getting closer to that country, this community or this family, rather than to the source of tea, be it China with its ancient and powerful tea tradition, or Kenya, for which tea is a purely commodity-based export.
Many performances on TMC are organically anchored to local cultures but at the same do not move around specific cultural peculiarities. This means that tea professionals and TMC participants are free to operate with the culture of which they are a part of, and using elements of this culture can create innovative solutions that are easily read by all tea enthusiasts.
This approach makes TMC a very important project for the development and presentation of the tea and gastronomy culture of each country or region and for the development of the tea culture and the tea market in general.
Tea Masters Cup is an open project
Tea professionals and enthusiasts, tea companies and associations, tea projects and various types of tea activities are well integrated with the tea tournaments, allowing all subjects in the tea culture to develop together.