Brief reflections on the history of my involvement with tea…

My “tea story” is, I’m sure, fairly typical but for a few slight abonormalities. (This could also be said for the story of my life-in-general, I daresay.)  Still, I feel somewhat compelled to tell it due to my reaction to what I’m drinking right now.

I’m feeling terribly under-the-weather just now; I generally feel rather icky at this time of year, as it’s when my allergies are at their worst.  I lose my appetite, have to take antihistamines that make me feel like a walking zombie, my eyes and throat itch all the time–one’s run-of-the-mill allergy irritations.

The losing my regular appetite (I love to eat!) is one of the most troublesome things; I try to eat appealing snacks whenever I can so that I don’t feel weak and growly on top of allergic.  Last night I had a pot of hojicha, good crackers, and two kinds of cheddar cheese, and it was just perfect.  This morning, I was just craving a good, solid black “breakfast” type tea with milk and sugar, along with toast and homemade strawberry jam.

That, as with many people, I’m sure, is the type of tea I started on when I was younger.  I was allowed (and loved!) coffee when I was about ten, in controlled amounts, but was encouraged to drink tea instead–my parents weren’t really tea drinkers to any degree, but felt that some black Lipton was likely better for me than coffee.  As long as I could have more of the warm, brown stuff in my cup that took milk and sugar so well, I was happy, and tea was one of the drinks I was allowed to order for myself when we went out to eat (along with juice, milk, chocolate milk, and water), whereas coffee had to be shared with me.

A simple enough reason to start drinking tea.  As I got older and could drink coffee on my own, I still liked the taste of tea, and my tastes got slightly more sophisticated…I preferred certain tea bags over others.  I’d get teas and teawares (both of strictly the local-coffee-and-gift-shop sort) for presents, and all was well.  I *loved* the teas served at Chinese restaurants and *adored* the green tea served at Japanese hibachi places, etc., but I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was drinking or how to duplicate it at home.  In fact, I wouldn’t *touch* green teas outside of Japanese eateries for years…every time I brewed it as it suggested on the package, I was left with a bitter, awful brew that was hard on my stomache and often made me feel queasy.

In college, I gave informal afternoon teas every Friday for my friends and for whatever guests/professors/wanderers-by might happen to come.  I generally had about fifteen people at these little affairs, which took place in a dormitory common room (Trever Hall’s basement, for the initiated) off a dormitory kitchen.  The fare was simple–store-bought shortbread cookies, iced tea or lemonade and hot chocolate packets as alternatives for the non tea-drinkers, about twenty varities of tea bags for the picky, and pots upon pots upon pots of Lipton black with milk and sugar cubes for the offering.  My teawares were five different patterns of cups-and-saucers (but all in blue, silver, and white just the same) that I’d picked up from Goodwill, along with random soup spoons and my kettle and pots. 

The thing to understand about me and my friends is that we were, frankly (and some of us still are), rather hard-drinking, flippant, “odd,” and trouble-making creatures.  These people were very seldom sober (and/or clearheaded–the college soft-drug trade flourishes!), and here they all were at a Friday afternoon tea.  It was my little offering to the community, I suppose–a time when everyone was expected to engage in reasonably polite conversation with a reasonable degree of substance-free-ness…aside from the tea, of course.  Most people took from the pot of Lipton, which was well-brewed, at least, and learned how they liked it and how much milk and sugar to add, and I even made some tea converts.

That, to me, was tea. 

Then, a shift–my third year of college, when I was visiting my parents and in their local coffee-shop, I found a tin of something by The Republic of Tea that was labeled “White Tea.”  White tea?  I knew green and black…what was this stuff?  I was sold by the tin, the tiny unbleached round teabags, the advertising type…and I bought the damn thing for $15–far, *far* more than I had *ever* spent on an equivalent amount of tea before then.

I was determined to make this white tea work.  At first it was too bitter.  Then it was too insipid.  Time to hit the internet (why hadn’t I done this before?)!

An entire world opened up for me, just like that.  (Keep in mind now that this is only about three years ago–I *told* you I was new at this.)  White tea, new brewing instructions for green tea, more kinds of black tea than I ever knew existed!!!

Thus, a minor obsession was born.  This obsession grew slowly to major.  I started learning to tell the difference between good and bad teas (haven’t quite figured out “good” and “better” yet, not all the way), collected more teaware, started using loose tea, etc.  The obsession became even more major some few months ago when I discovered that a heretofore-unknown-to-me type of tea, “puerh,” existed…along with an understanding of what an “oolong” was, roughly…and with it these brought Yixing pots and gongfu and I came to love these (and greens!)  more than I had ever loved my “traditonal” western afternoon blacks, and so it grew and grew and…

…here I am today, blogging about my learning experiences with tea and craving the milk-and-sugared black of yore.

A quick cabinet search revealed the expected 15-ish samples/tuochas/beengs of shu and sheng, six types of green, Lapsang Souchong, lychee and jasmine scented teas, rosebuds, a camomile, and a few cheap oolongs.

Nothing quite right…a trip to my regular ol’ pantry turned up boxes of Lipton and some other tea bags (I still use these for big pitchers of no-fuss iced tea sometimes)…and a little red tin of Twinnings “English Breakfast” tea.  Perfect!  I tried to remember where the tin came from…remembered a friend had picked it up for me when I specified a loose black…and packed it off to work with me.

Opened the tin…found…well, fannings, I guess, although they looked pretty much like dust to me.  Teabag crud.  Pulverized black coffee-ground looking stuff.  Hrm.  Brewed it (carefully!).  Now the stuff *did* puff up into coffee grounds.  Ick.

Added the normal amount of milk and sugar.  Tried it. 

VILE. 

 Beyond vile.  Horrific.  Aberrant.  Tragic.

I had to add enough sugar to choke a horse to even make it palatable–the bitterness was unbelievable!–and even now the aftertaste is incredibly unpleasant.

Threw out the rest of the tin.  Lipton tea bags are leaps and bounds better than this loose, low-quality nonsense, if I’m desperate–which I am, for some good, plain black to sugar-and-milk up.

The good news is that my fall Upton Quarterly arrived recently.  I already have a zillion greens and oolongs circled to sample…time to turn to the front of the catalogue and re-familiarize myself with good ol’ black tea–of a high quality, this time.  I haven’t the time to really learn well about Ceylons and Darjeelings and Assams right now, as I’m still focusing on learning about oolongs and puerhs, but I am very much looking forward to having some good blacks on hand for when moods like today’s strike me.

Back to the vile Twinnings…actually, those foodservice Darjeeling bags in the office kitchen are starting to look preeeeetty good right now.  Ugh.

EDIT: Strike that.  I’m going to order the black tea sampler set from The Simple Leaf.  Looks like it would be a good way to get some good black tea samplers posthaste.  I’m not in any position to (nor do I desire to) worry about what single-estate-plantation-flush-tippy-district-civet-zamboni-rumyunyunson my black tea comes from/has been in contact with.  Going to concentrate on learning my greens, oolongs, and puerhs first, and just keep some good quality black on hand for these occasional cravings.