be a tea connoisseur

I’ve had…..

English Breakfast/Assam – mmmm gorgeous! (this will always be my favourite. I am British after all!)
Earl Grey – wasn’t keen but I’ll give it another go
Peppermint – for a while I was hooked
Chamomile – I’ve been hooked on this too
Fruity teas – not so keen
Yogi Aztec Spice – omg mmmmmmmmmmm
Lipton’s Morroccan tea – omg mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, sweet and spicy

I too started drinking tea a while ago… being raised in India, tea has always been an integral part of my family members but i never really enjoyed it until now… I love me some sliverneedle with a hint of peppermint…

Over the summer, I visited my sister in Paris, as did my parents. Upon their return, they decided they wanted to be more European. Apparently, that means getting an espresso machine and an electric kettle [I do not mind this].

Since then, I’ve had a slight interest in tea; I drank some stuff from teabags on occasion. Recently, visiting a gourmet food store, I left with … oh, 10 kinds of loose leaf tea. And it’s good. And I need to really learn to appreciate this sort of stuff.

I’m such a nerd about this kind of thing. I drank one of the new kinds tonight – genmai matcha, and took a page of notes on the whole experience. Scientific. I had the amount of water, the amount of tea, the temperature, the time, the date [700mL, 2.5 teaspoons, approximately 180 F, 2.5 minutes, December 4th, 2008]; how it tasted at the beginning [hot! bitter!], how it tasted at the end [warm, smooth flavor, almost… buttery?]...

This is fun!

I’ve taken a deep interest in tea ever since I fell in love with Teavana.

the teas arrived and i tasted them – they are very impressive! Now i have to experiment with different water-types and steeping times.

i contacted a chinese woman who has a tea-store and a very interesting tea-blog. She also sells tea over the internet.
I asked her to give me some recommendations and she wrote a very long blog-entry as response to my question.
Next i ordered some tea at her online-shop – i’m very curious!

I’m drinking and loving tea for years. Now i want to know more about tea and hope to find some extravagant/ special teas to savor.
After reading some tea-blogs i think there must be more than just that “normal” green tea from the health-food or tea shop in town.
I’ll do some research and will order tea online.

my life right now revolves around drinking an enormous amount of tea – sencha, oolong, jasmine, goji berry + chrysantheum. a spot of peppermint tea here and there. an embarrassing amount of very bad instant chai and powdered hong kong style milk tea (!). but mostly matcha. my mother was at takashimaya the other day and picked up a small box of matcha for me – it’s not the best i’ve ever had, but i’m at school and starving for tea-y goodness, so i’ll take what i can get! i whip myself a foamy green bowl every morning at the whiplash of dawn (read: 8 AM). right now, i’m really excited to try true yerba mate for the first time – of course i’ve had so-called “yerba mate” teas in the US, but this spring break will mark my first sip of actual yerba mate! PSYCHED!!

unfortunately, apart from the oolong, i currently have no chinese teas. this is because my uncle, a true tea connoisseur who makes several yearly pilgrimages to nearby and not-so-nearby tea mountains to “have conversations” and hand-select his many purchases, now refuses to buy me tea. apparently my consumption of matcha and sencha makes me a traitor to the cause?

pictured is one of my teapots and one of my cups.

I recently starting drinking Irish Breakfast Tea (which makes perfect sense, being an Anglophile) after I needed to stop drinking coffee. Tea with me was always a now-an-then thing, only now, it seems I really like it. As I was sipping my Twinning’s, I thought, “I wonder what might be a smoother tea? Or a sharper tea? Or a more earthy-tasting tea?” A tea connoisseur is born.

Just no time…