This organization relates to tea practice competition (maybe not related to ITMA / Tea Masters training)
To me it’s useful to stay open to appreciating teas across a range of quality levels (a theme that only overlaps a little). Emphasis on only exploring and appreciating the highest, most unique, most rare and sought after forms of some teas could work out even better when coupled with broader interest. To be clear – as an ordinary tea drinker with some background and experience, I sometimes drink good versions of teas but nothing too rare, unusual, or costly. Working from a limited budget makes that choice for me.
I can be more specific about what I mean by type diversity. I think Earl Grey and masala chai are valid, interesting, and pleasant forms of tea even though I focus more on plain, single-input, higher-quality teas. But then I’m a generalist myself — related to tea preference — and of course it’s just as valid and reasonable to focus on one type (eg. aged sheng pu’er, or Dan Cong oolong), and to explore higher-quality-level scope as a main range of interest.
To summarize, it seems that “tea artist” would by necessity mean a broad range of things to different people. Again, tea production is a completely different theme that I’ve not included in this answer (but of course it could be included). Making great tea would require even more knowledge and skill than brewing it.
I don’t reject this or other role or status designations as valid — or potentially quite useful — I just don’t include use of such terms in how I approach tea.
Image from TeaMastersCup.com website
