Ah, tea.
Posted by Som Tue, 23 Aug 2005 14:59:00 GMT
I'm sipping the last of my Tiger Hill Nilgiri, and we're all out of my husband's favored Extra Bergamot Earl Grey, so it's time to order more tea.
We first fell in love with tea while we were living in Boston. A co-worker took me to the Tealuxe shop in Harvard Square and bought me a cup of piping hot Lady Hannah, and my addiction began. Like most beginning tea drinkers, I started out brewing one cup at a time, until my husband bought me a beautiful tetsubin teapot and a set of Joyce Chen teacups.
That's when I discovered that half the pleasure in drinking tea comes from the simple beauty of the accoutrements. Since then, I've added a Le Crueset tea kettle, another tetsubin, and a set of canisters to my little collection.
Since we've moved back to Oklahoma, I've been ordering tea through Tealuxe's online shop. Here's my order for today:
- Extra Bergamot Earl Grey, 100g (for the husband)
- Tiger Hill Nilgiri, 100g (my daily cup)
- Puttabong Estate Darjeeling, 10g (supposed to be the best of the darjeeling)
- Dragon Pearl Jasmine, 20g (my special occasion tea; I'd order more, but at $20/50g, it's quite expensive.)
- Victorian Rose Tea, 10g (black tea infused with rose petals; might be a nice, relaxing afternoon cup.)
- Sweet Chamomile Mint, 10g (perhaps a good evening cup?)
- Gyokuro, 10g - "A must try for green tea enthusiasts. Literally translated "Jewel Dew," this full body tea offers unparalleled sweetness."
In the future, I plan to put up reviews of all the tea I sample; it's hard to keep track of what I enjoy and what I don't. The nice thing about Tealuxe is that you can purchase as little as 10g of any of their teas for $1-$4. I usually order a few 10g samples with every order I place, just to give myself a more rounded experience.
When I start off my morning with a pot of tea, the whole day just seems to go right. There's no doubt that I'm addicted to caffeine; if I don't get my morning jolt, I have a headache and severe nausea by afternoon. For someone like me, who doesn't like coffee, my only other option is soda, and all that high fructose corn syrup puts me in a terrible mood for the whole day. So I brew a pot in the morning to start the day off right, and a pot in the afternoon to relax after cleaning house; sometimes, I'll have a pot of mild white tea or something herbal after I put the girls to bed.
Learn how to brew a pot of tea. I suggest purchasing loose tea from a supplier like Tealuxe, Peet's, or Stash.
I prefer to use a tetsubin teapot because the cast iron keeps the tea hot and the enameled interior develops a patina that will, over time, improve the taste of your tea. The Fragrant Leaf has a nice selection, and a search on eBay will yield a wide variety of less expensive pots. My next purchase will probably be a Yixing teapot; they're lovely little works of art, and I'm curious about how the clay affects the taste of the tea.
But for now, there's a cup of Tiger Hill Nilgiri waiting for me...
