not proselytizing

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking of how to make tea more accessible for people new to it. I don't want to minimize the importance of knowing how long to steep certain tea or the particular idiosyncrasies of certain types of tea. Those things are certainly crucial and the trial and error that I've gone through discovering these things is part of what I enjoy about tea.

But having said all that, I do attempt to simplify the whole process when I know someone is curious. That's not so hard to fathom. Someone finds out about my tea fascination, and they're curious what it's all about. They ask a simple question, and I go off on a windbag tangent about water quality...well, that's no good. Few people are going to walk away from that situation eager to be a cock-eyed fanatic like me. I don't think it's such a stretch to say that that would even put some people entirely off of tea. Maybe even assume that the tea had done some sort of lasting damage to my synapses.

So, I had some pretty good fortune with all of this during the week. One of my colleagues had shown more and more interest in my brewing, and asked about Oolong. We set aside a bit of time and brewed multiple infusions of a Bao Zhong Imperial Oolong. He quickly admitted that he rarely drank tea without milk and sugar, but was eager to get the full Oolong experience.

And here's the part I liked the most: we talked a lot about tea, but the best part of our conversation had absolutely nothing to do with infusions and tea processing and the like. While the tea coursed through our blood streams, the conversation took all sorts of completely unexpected turns. I'm not saying that doesn't happen with other beverages. But there's something different that goes on when it happens around a teapot. I don't know exactly what it is. Suppose I don't really need to know either.

The tea that got me through

So it's been a long trip for a tea drinker in a coffee drinking culture. Have had my share of Greek coffee with the grounds sifting to the bottom. If you want to be a tea snob on this tiny little island in the Aegean, you have to bring your own. And I did.

Have already written about the teas I discovered in Athens, but there are a few mainstays in my tea chest that got me through.

If I wasn't drinking the new Grand Yunnan first thing in the morning, I was happily guzzling either Assam Khongea or Ceylon Nuwara. Here's the roof terrace where I'd try to have a cuppa before the heat of the day was so strong.


















That took me through to early afternoon where I often switched to either Darjeeling Singbulli or a variety of Oolongs that I'm a bit obsessed with right now. The Formosa Oolong was a fall back if I couldn't decide on another, but often I was dipping into the ones I've been talking about here lately. Especially the Bao Zhong Imperial. I get thirsty just thinking about this tea. And after four, or even five, steepings of the Oolong, I'd move onto some green. More on that later. Off to the airport on a tiny propeller plane to Athens. Then home to Munich.






The above-mentioned transition from Oolong to green often happened while I was watching the sunset from the roof terrace. Nice, eh?