so how/when did you get "interested" in tea?

I became a fan of Douglas Adams when I read "Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy" a few years ago. I later read an essay he wrote about tea, where he writes that most americans don't like tea, because they've never experienced good tea. So, I went out and bought a box of black tea bags, followed his recommendations in the essay, and made tea, and have been hooked ever since.

I was thirsty. I drank tea. I liked it.

That's the short story.

I was thirsty again. I drank another tea. Wasn't as good as the first time.

I tried many other teas. Some were very good, Some were very bad. I wondered why.

Never stopped sampling teas. Never got a definitive answer. And... I still get thirsty.

That's the long explanation.

It's that simple.

My father's family was from Russia, and he drank tea all the time. (Not just every morning, but all day long.) But he didn't much care what kind of tea it was, as long as it was hot and wet and brownish. (His tea of choice was Swee-Touch-Nee, with lemon.) I recognized it as an option, but not a favorite.

In college, I spent a summer in the UK, and discovered English tea. It was nice, but way too much trouble to make a regular habit, when coffee was easily available.

I got up to two or three pots of coffee a day. I stopped sleeping. Eventually I made the connection, and on another trip to England stopped at Harrod's and got some tea. Then I read House of Mirth (Edith Wharton), which mentions in passing the superior tea of one of the characters (a Russian caravan), and started recognizing that there was a lot more to tea than just hot wet brownish stuff.

dmh

It was at a time in my life when I hired call girl after call girl every night to pleasure me. Couldn't get enough. Then one very pretty young girl afterward made me a cup of tea and it calmed me down and I was hooked.

English grandfather, Tea drinking family (Liptons), Tea partys with granddaughters and friends, search for tea begins.

Kitty

Thanks, all... After reading these replys it just goes to show how broad the appeal of tea is.

Besides the great tastes & aromas of tea, I'm getting quite interested in tea in oriental literature and history/philosophy/culture. It's an amazing area.

In the early 1970s I aspired to be a snob, and one of the easiest and cheapest ways to do that was to to take up drinking tea and learning enough about it to pontificate. I read a lot of books on tea from the public library, and along the way I discovered I really liked tea. At that time was alternating a year at the University with a year working in the oil business on drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. While this was a heavy-duty coffee environment, because of the Louisiana French workforce, there were a lot of Brits as well because of the North Sea operations going on then. I spent a lot of time in galleys drinking really bad tea with foreigners, and I took to bringing my own tea to work and brewing it. Some of the Brits liked that, some didn't. Apparently Brits at the time preferred Very Strong tea,especially the Scots. In any case, I am still drinking tea, years later, and I am not sure I was ever able to pull off the snob bit

I like the fact that people interested in teas usually has several quite different teas, for different occasions. While most coffee drinkers have only one brand, and don't relly want to try others.

Tea seems to encourage cultivation of ones enjoying it.

Lars Stockholm

I forgot.

Jim

whytebyrd wrote:

It's so much easier to get a wide range of flavors and aromas from different teas than it is with coffees.

/Lew

My interest started back in the late 60s early 70s when drinking Celestial Seasonings tea was the "hip" thing to do in the wannabe hippy crowd. I remember one blend called "Morning Thunder" where the box said "This blend has the power of a thousand charging buffalos, so when your get'em up won't, Morning Thunder will). After my hippy phase, I joined the Navy and traveled to Italy where I migrated to coffee concoctions (usually black espresso variants) for 2 decades. My love for tea was rekindled when I made a trip to Holland one year, I was traveling a lot back then installing factory automation software, and I found good tea was easier to prepare than good coffee when doing the Road Warrior thing. Then back in the mid 90s some eccentric academic types in Chapel Hill recommended a cooked Pu'er mini-tuocha and the rest is history......

Mike http:/

I'm still trying to figure out what I had in my first good tea. I'll keep sampling until I find it again. :)

Aah, Morning Thunder! That is the tea that Jerry Seinfeld was drinking, without knowing that it had caffein in it.

High octane stuff, I gather.

Lars Stockholm

Morning Thunder is/was a blend of black tea and roasted yerba mate. At the time, many people assumed that all Celestial Seasons teas were caffeine-free and "herbal," as most were. It just so happened that both ingredients of MT were *loaded* w/ caffeine.

Lars wrote:

My earliest tea buying venture was "good fortune" tea in a box by bigelow. I loved it. I never see it anywhere maybe not made anymore but that wasa long time ago and had reverted to coffee as a "grown-up" Mama made us herbal teas when we were sick. A few years ago my hubby went to find a box of tea for me when I was sick, I asked for good fortune or jasmine. I got a box of Tazo with different flavors. A friend at work had a bag that had chinese oolong mixed with jasminehat a friend sent to her from California. You know the little rolled up oolongs, and I started my quest. I looked everywhere then had to search the internet, and the rest is history. I wonder is good fortune is still around? My good fortune is the internet cause it has provided me a place to get the best teas I can in an area that is sorely lacking in good tea. Jenn

That said, my wife is a big coffee fan, so for Christmas last year I bought her a few pounds of green coffee beans from various estates around the world and modified a hot air popcorn popper so we could roast them ourselves. It's amazing how much better coffee tastes when one uses good beans, freshly roasted and ground - you can pick up all kinds of interesting flavors: chocolate, nuts, earthy notes, wood. I'm not abandoning tea by any means, and I agree that the range of flavors and styles with tea is astonishing, but roasting my own coffee has given me a new appreciation of just how good coffee can be, properly treated.

Dean

Hi Jenn,

Good fortune tea is still available in the grocery store from Bigelow. I have a few bags left and just saw last night that they have redesigned the box to look more like twinnings new boxes, all one color. Look in the tea section of your supermarket and you should find it easily.

As an aside, Walmart doesn't have as large a tea section as your other local supermarkets might, so try those if Walmart doesn't carry it.

Kitty

Did you build your own because you really wanted to, or because there are no "family size" roasters to buy?

Some years ago I used to roast tea. Just put it in a pot and heat on the stove for a few minutes before brewing I think it was some large leave Japanese tea. Course stuff with twigs in it. Good though!

Lars Stockholm