tea for horses

tea horse (photo from chinawatch2050.com)

Song dynasty: the Chinese were vulnerable because they had inferior horsemanship leaving them vulnerable to nomads and conquerors from multiple directions. The solution: tea. The Tibetans in particular fell prey to the power of the leaf. By giving them a taste of the brew, the Chinese of the Song dynasty actually got their adversaries hooked on the stuff.

'...With the burgeoning tea trade, however, China discovered a new weapon (for caffeine addiction is a subtle but powerful, persistent force) in its Sisyphean attempts to appease and bridle the nomads. This was the beginning of the fabled tea and horse trade, which turned the Tibetans into the most copious tea-guzzlers on the planet, opened up some of the world's most daunting trade routes, and remained a cornerstone of China's foreign policy until the end of the Qing dynasty.'

(source: The True History of Tea p.70 by Victor H Mair & Erling Hoh)

This is a fantastic development. You may be wondering why I'm so fascinated with this. Well, it just so happens that I'm visiting family in Texas over the next few weeks and I've just come up with a brilliant idea.

tea for horses

I wonder how much really excellent Long Jing I'd have to part with to get a halfway decent mare. The book keeps mentioning a measurement of tea that I'd never heard of. A 12 3/4 hand horse in China would have set me back 132 catties. How much tea was there in a catty? Could it have been that much?

Now, I'm trying to imagine the conversation I might have in cattle country with a horse trader.

Me: Howdy there, fine sir.

Horse trader: *eyes me with skepticism* *grunts*

Me: I was hoping to do some business with you today...although I must admit it's a bit unorthodox. Might you be interested in a creative transaction involving your livestock?

Horse trader: *raises his eyebrow*

Me: You see, I was reading in a book about the Chinese and their inability to procure acceptable horses. It was the Song dynasty, and it was causing the Chinese rulers a lot of trouble. They were being attacked repeatedly by their neighbours, who were superior horsemen. It turns out the only thing the Chinese had that was worth trading was tea. 

Horse trader: *looks surprised*

Me: You know the phrase 'All the tea in China'? Well, these Chinese had a lot of tea to trade. So my proposition here is that we recreate this manner of trade and I give you a certain number of pounds of tea for one of your better horses. 

Horse trader: Ah don't drink tea. 

Me: Yet! You don't drink tea yet. I was actually prepared for that eventuality. And the truth is that it doesn't matter that you don't drink tea. The Tibetans didn't drink it either when the Chinese first arrived.  But they learned. Eventually, they made up for lost time. Tell me, my good man, do you drink coffee? Enjoy a daily cup of Joe?

Horse trader: Yeah, I drink coffee. What of it?

Me: Do you ever have a cup or two of coffee and feel your heart start to race and your mouth go dry? 

Horse trader: Uh, well actually...yes. I like the taste of coffee, but it doesn't always seem to agree with me. 

Me: Well, that doesn't happen with tea. Not at all. The caffeine doesn't hit you all at once. It eases into your system and makes you both alert and calm at the same time. Here - I just happen to have a flask of hot, delicious tea right here...


And...scene...can you just imagine? Not only am I going to get a horse, but I'll be simultaneously luring someone over to the leaf-side. This is going to be great.

...a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of toast and tea

You know I like luring people over to the leaf-side. It's one of my passions. I've said it so many times here, but it bears repeating: there's no reason tea has to have the stuffy, inaccessible reputation that seems to be attached to it. I gear this teablog partially to the tea newcomer, as well as the tea curious. 

There are some people I meet in social media who're hesitant to tell me that they don't drink tea. As if they think I'll have nothing to do with them after I learn that piece of information. 

I have many interests. If you don't drink tea, well then I can politely accept that. Really. I'm not trying to get EVERYONE to drink tea. Just most of you.

However, there are also some people who're rather boisterous about their refusal to drink tea. Today's guest blogger fits squarely in the latter category. She was very clear from our first interactions that she wanted nothing to do with my tea propaganda. 

Little did she know that it was only a matter of time. I could be as patient as was necessary, but I was relatively sure that there would be tea drinking at some point by her.

And as you're about to read: I was right. Without further ado, here's Amy (to be perfectly candid, I'm an unabashed fan of her blog in particular and her writing in general. You should definitely go have a gander at Lucy's Football. You'll be glad you did).

Oh before I forget, the last few guest blogposts, such as Teascapades of a Tea Newbie, have been from people new to tea. The goal here is to keep encouraging them to try and report on new tea. This is an ongoing project, my fellow tea obsessives. Please read on...

Ken has kindly asked me to guest post. This is exciting because I’ve never done that before. Day of firsts! Day of firsts!

OK, some background.

Ken is one of my favorite humans alive. However, back when I first was introduced to Ken? I wanted nothing to do with him.

Because of tea.

Oh, I forgot. Hi, I’m Amy. And I hate tea.

See, one of our mutual twitter friends, Lisa (@lgalaviz), was always going on and on and ON about this guy who was her tea-friend. And she was all, 'Amy! Have you friended @lahikmajoe yet?' And I looked at his profile. And his tweets. And his blog. Which were all very tea-heavy. And I immediately thought, nope, no interest in this person. Because I hate tea. I HATE TEA MORE THAN CLOWNS. What the hell would I have to talk to this person about?

Luckily, Lisa was persistent, and I grudgingly friended poor Ken, who, come to find out, talks about more than tea.

Now, here’s the tea situation.

When I was six or seven, I was sick and stayed home from school. For some reason, my mom couldn’t watch me. She was a stay-at-home-mom at the time so I’m not really sure what the situation was, but she left me with my grandmother.

Now, I love my grandmother a great deal, but no nonsense is brooked when you are at my grandmother’s house. She doesn’t believe in illness. She’s an old-school farmer’s wife. You WORK THROUGH THE SICKNESS. So she was very skeptical that I was actually sick.

She brewed up a pot of Lipton tea and said, 'This will make you feel better' and put a cup in front of me. I took a sip. I hated it. I told her so.

'Too bad. When you’re sick, you drink tea,' she said. 

She then proceeded to make me drink the entire pot of tea. I was not allowed to leave the table until I did so. There was no milk in the tea. There was no sugar in the tea. Milk and sugar were for WELL children.

I have not had a single sip of tea since. Even the SCENT of tea makes me ill. Except this one perfume I have that smells like white tea, and I have no idea what that’s all about. Is white tea even a thing? Maybe it’s not even a thing and that’s why I like it, I don’t know (ed. note: white tea is a thing)

(By the way, my mother says that a., I’m not allowed to tell this story, and b., it never happened. To that I say, a., I am a grown woman and will tell whatever stories I want, and b., you were not THERE, Mom. You ABANDONED me to the house of forced tea-drinkage).

If a food or beverage item does me wrong, I avoid it for the rest of my life. Other food or beverage items I am currently having a feud with include carrots, most types of beef products, most root vegetables, garlic, liver, onions, and any fried fish at TGIFridays due to the food-poisoning incident of 1999. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID TGIFRIDAYS.

Now, Ken has been very nice about my fear of tea. He is CONVINCED that it was just the Lipton that was the problem, and not tea itself. I am more skeptical, but, as mentioned, Ken is one of my favorite people in all of people-dom, so I decided, in all fairness, to give it another try.

I’ve been promising him for a long time I’d actually purchase tea. I think he thought I was full of hollow promises. Ha! Fooled YOU, Ken!

Last week, I went to the grocery store, which recently has decided to become fancy and carry upscale things, I think to compete with the Trader Joe’s we’re expecting any day now.

And I purchased, per Ken’s recommendation (and please ignore the fact that I can’t take a photo to save my life and what is going ON with the huge glare from my flash, good gravy):

Equal Exchange Organic Rooibos

And, NOT on recommendation from Ken (but it’s not like he told me I couldn’t buy it or anything, I just was excited about it):

Stash Licorice Spice

The Rooibos was Ken’s decision for me, and the Licorice Spice was ALL ON MY OWN. Well, I asked him if I could. He said he wasn’t against it. I decided it was therefore ok.

See, I have a lot of issues of what I can and can’t ingest. I’m like a delicate flower of a lady. No caffeine. No sugar. It’s a whole thing. I’m probably dying, or something, whatever. But since the no sugar thing happened, I am DESPERATE for licorice. I miss it like crazy. I decided maybe this would be a nice substitute, if the tea part of the tea didn’t make me throw up.

So today was TEA DAY. I needed a nice chunk of time set aside for tea-ing.

First, please let me apologize. YES, I realize these are tea-bag-type teas. I don’t have all the fancy infusers and the like. Because I hate tea. Why would I have such things? I also don’t own a teapot. So a microwave was used. Please don’t kick me out of the Special People club.

I decided to start with the licorice tea and work my way up to the other one because the licorice tea seemed friendly and the other tea seemed like it was more likely to give me flashbacks to my grandmother’s house.

So first, like a good girl, I read the instructions. 8 ounces of water in a mug, boiling. AWESOME. I have a measuring cup. I have a microwave. Which needs to be cleaned because ew. So first I took some time and scrubbed the microwave, because listen, it was the grossest.

Then as I started to boil the water in the microwave, I realized you were supposed to pour the water OVER the teabag. Well, shit, I already lost.

So I took the water in the mug OUT of the microwave (oh, I should explain, I don’t own a teacup? Only mugs. So it was in a mug. Am I in trouble for not using a teacup? I’m really clumsy. There’s no way I wouldn’t have broken a teacup by now, were I to own a teacup) and put it in the glass measuring cup to boil. Nice. I’m winning tea already, only a little later than planned. Then I opened the teabag. It smelled nice. Like potpourri. I’m not sure that your tea is supposed to smell like potpourri, but it did. Like floral licorice potpourri. The ingredients list says this tea has a lot of things in it like cinnamon and orange peel and anise and vanilla and cloves and cardamom and licorice. These things are all also present in potpourri, so that’s a little worrisome. Also, it has not escaped my notice there is no tea in this tea. So, I think this isn’t tea. That seems misleading. Can you call something tea on the box that doesn’t even have any tea in the ingredients? (ed. note: this is a huge bone of contention in the tea community. The general opinion among tea obsessives is that it shouldn't be called tea if it doesn't come from the tea plant or its Latin name Camelia Sinensis)

But I pressed on. I’m very intrepid.

After the water boiled all over the place, I poured it over the teabag. Which floated to the top like Rose’s piece of wood in Titanic. I don’t know if that’s supposed to happen. So I totally smushed it down with a spoon and anchored it. That’s smart, right?

Then the instructions said to wait 3-5 minutes so I set the timer on my microwave and proceeded to tear apart my room looking for the software so I could upload my photos. Of course the software was NOT in my room, but in the fridge. Don’t ask.

Then the timer went off. TEA TIME.

Is it normal that none of the “tea” (I’m totally skeptical of this stuff) even made the water turn colors? I squished the bag. I’ve seen that happen before. Nothing happened. I think the water was a little yellow but not really.

I took a sip. It was very hot so I burned my mouth. ALL FOR SCIENCE.

drumroll please...

Please ignore the fact I look like a crazy person today. Well, I kind of always look like a crazy person, but it’s my only day off this week. I didn’t do anything but throw on my zombie shirt. No makeup happened. Who’m I trying to impress, the cat? He doesn’t care.

It tasted...like water. With an aftertaste of licorice. And flowers.

It was not in the least bit impressive.

It tasted like drinking potpourri. I’m not 100% convinced this was not potpourri, thrown hastily in teabags. STASH TEA I AM MAD AT YOU.

So I put some creamer in it and drank the rest really fast. Then it tasted like creamer. 

Fine. Time for the scarier tea. The tea that, when I opened the box? Smelled like tea at my grandmother’s house.

Same setup. Boiled the water in the measuring cup. Poured it over the teabag when it was boiling. This time it said to steep it for 5-7 minutes. The teabag puffed up like a funny little pillow which made me giggle. I did my teaspoon trick again. I’m a quick learner.

Then I waited. I told Ken I had a cup of tea and was waiting for the other cup to brew so I could compare the two. He was duly impressed with my feat of magnificence. I warned him not to be because maybe I did the first one wrong. Unless herbal “tea” is SUPPOSED to taste like potpourri-water.

The timer went off. Here is a thing I learned about Rooibos - it is RED. Cheerily and unabashedly red. I liked that a lot.

It smelled like tea, though. Not like potpourri. Which in a way, was good, but also, super-scary.

I was smart and didn’t take a whopping drink of boiling liquid this time. Instead, I used my handy teaspoon and took some out and tasted it.

It tasted...well, like tea. BUT BUT BUT. Not vomitorious. Not at all. It was...pleasant? Not at all like I remembered. Not at all upsetting. Mild. The tea-taste that I hate so much wasn’t overly present.

I sipped two or three more teaspoonfuls and then decided if I was going to drink the whole cup, I had to add something to it, so it got some milk and Splenda. Ken said to use honey but I don’t even keep that in the house. I don’t use it, so it’d go to waste. I know. Splenda is probably not what you’re supposed to put in tea. When you’re diabetic, I think it is, though.

I drank the ENTIRE CUP. Plus the entire cup of licorice potpourri-water.

Now I have to pee. 

OK, so that was...a success? I think? But mostly, I think it was a success, because KEN WINS. Ken got me to try tea again. And listen, that was NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. What’m I trying next, Ken?

But listen, bub, don’t even try to get me to jump off a bridge. Friendship only goes so far.

Teai Boynoy? Huh?

Teai Boynoy? What's that?

First of all, it's been just a bit hectic here. There was a time when I posted something on the teablog everyday because I read somewhere that if you want to build readership, you should consistently have new content. Although I enjoyed doing it, the result was that I wrote a lot about tea, but I incorporated things going on in my life and how they (often tangentially) related to tea. If at all.

Then there was a time when I posted every second or third day, and that's actually more my goal. The last post about predicting someone's taste in tea based upon their other tastes is going to be a recurring theme. It's something that interesting to a lot of people and that hopefully will create a bit of dialogue.

After writing it, I realised that tea sellers must do this sort of thing all the time. Someone wanders into the shop, says that he's curious about tea, and the tea seller has to decide what might be the best option for this stranger. What does one do in that situation?

So because I write quite a bit about luring people over to the leaf-side here, and because I talk with quite a few non-tea people over on twitter, I get a lot of questions. For example, at the weekend there was an urgent message from a blogger I know called Jim. It read, 'quick! At the store...Name a couple of good commercially available teas for a tea virgin to try.'

I asked him my questions about how he took his coffee and whether he liked spicy food, and he responded with, 'coffee bold/rich cream and a bit of sugar, food spicy'. Now we were getting somewhere. He gave me a list of what was available, and I told him the brand I knew best.

But in the process I mentioned it on twitter, and of course there were people who responded to my query with pleas that Jim not go the way of teabags. That he wouldn't get the full experience and that it'd turn him off of tea entirely.

But there was Jim, standing in the aisle, not knowing where the tea filters were, or if there even were any, and not much more time to bother with hunting for tea. I'd gone to the website of the brand I knew best, and recommended the nicest loose-leaf teas I could imagine from their selection, but ultimately it was just too much. A package of English Breakfast blend was chosen, and I think it was the right choice.

My position on all of this is that the less fussy we are at the outset, the more an individual can develop his own tastes. I've suggested Jim try a sip or two of the tea before he adds any cream or sugar, but I actually think that drinking his English Breakfast blend with a bit of cream and sugar will slowly get him used to the taste of tea.

Why do I think that? Well, that's how I got into tea. I didn't start out by walking into a specialty tea shop and walk straight over to the High Mountain Oolong. Not sure how I would've responded to all that in the early days, anyway.

So the photo up above is something I've written about briefly in you needn't climb a mountain. It's not Teai Boynoy in English...that's actually Greek Mountain Tea. I'm rarely ever ill, but I've had a light cold and held onto this package for just such a situation. Unlike Geoff Norman (@lazy_literatus), who drinks his with proper Greek honey, I've had to settle for good old German honey. With a bit of Vitamin C powder for good measure.

Here's the package turned round to display the script you can likely more easily read:

queries of a tea-drinker profiler

Why blog about tea? Why indeed?

I could easily drink tea and share it with my friends. When travelling, I could visit tea shops/tea rooms and write about them on a travel blog or just keep it to myself. 

Several years ago, I was talking to a friend about social media and blogging. The prevailing wisdom that we were talking about was: blog about your passion. Although I studied music and literature and am quite passionate about both, I couldn't fathom having a blog about one or the other. Or not exclusively about either. 

What was I knowledgeable about? What sort of thing did I feel I had to offer? For a long time I kept telling myself, 'As much as tea intrigues you, you simply don't know enough about it to be a successful teablogger.' I'd read others' work on tea and look at their beautiful photos, and thought I simply didn't have the expertise necessary to add anything. But then my friend made an off-hand remark that in a moment changed everything. 

She said, 'You could make your discovery of tea the focus of the blog. You know, to document learning about tea.' That was the angle I needed. That was my focus. Early on, that and my enjoyment for the tea I'd been drinking was what propelled me. The longer I've done it, the more I settled on my own personal voice. 

When I travel, I search out tea-related things and blog about them. In my daily life, I introduce friends and clients to tea. I joke about luring people over to the leaf-side, but the times I've done so have been truly joyful. Either people who already drank tea but didn't have experience with loose-leaf tea, or even people who had never considered drinking the beverage.

In the process of doing this, I often think of the Lasse Hallström film Chocolat. In it Juliet Binoche's character Vianne Rocher looks at a person and divines what sort of chocolate they'd most like. I have no illusions that I'd be able to do anything of the sort when it comes to pinpointing the perfect tea for a person.

Here's the trailer for the film (you can see Judi Dench go into a moment of revelry around :43-48):

However, I've toyed with the idea for years that I could ask someone a few questions about his or her food/drink preferences and then be able to predict what sort of tea they'd like. I've written about it on this blog a bit, as well as discussed it with tea drinkers in a variety of forums.

Here are some of the questions I like to ask:

How do you take your coffee? little milk/cream or a lot? Sugar/honey? Or black?

Do you like spicy foods? If so, what sort do you like most?

Any vegetables/spices you really adore? That you crave? Or the opposite: any that you loathe? That you avoid?

Isn't that an interesting topic? Can you think of any other questions that might illustrate any more taste preferences?

As my friend Cevie has said, I'm trying to be a profiler of a kind. Not a serial killer profiler, but a tea-drinker profiler. That doesn't sound so bad. I can live with that.

tea awakening in the Chicago Tea Garden

Chicago Tea Garden

Several weeks ago, one of my non-teadrinker friends, who happens to live in Chicago, had signed up for a tea tasting at Chicago Tea Garden. My ears perked up and because I write this teablog partially for the tea newcomer and the tea curious, I asked Sue (@sepilipa) if she'd take a notebook along with her to the tea tasting and record her impressions. Sue, being the eager scientist that she is, quickly agreed. For the sake of science. And my teablog.

So because of her diligence, I can essentially mail it in today. Or cut and paste. Thanks Sue. First of all, here's the inside of Chicago Tea Garden:

Here's what she had to say:
First let me say my expectation was that Tony (Gebely) would be a much older guy, but he's probably younger than I am. He was very welcoming to my friend and me and to the other group of five ladies that attended (they were together). His shop is small but cute and his table was set up so there were essentially two groups; one on either side of the center where he worked. The people were all tea novices and there were no mr-know-it-alls in the group, so everyone was comfortable and friendly.

Tony worked on a tea table and had us use a snifter cup for each tea. He gave us basic tea information as he went along and was quite knowledgeable. He told us what plant tea comes from (Camellia sinensis) and told us that everything that does not come from this plant is NOT tea (I didn't know that). 

He briefly described the leaf and anything significant about it each time we started a new tea (ie, white tea smells very floral because it's withered a long time, oolong leaves are bruised and have 15 processing steps, black is fully oxidized, etc). Overall, it was a very pleasant experience. My friend and I had a very good time and learned a lot....well, relatively speaking, of course.

Below are the 7 teas we tasted. 

1. 

Name: Wu yu 

Type: green

Notes: used a gaiwan to serve

1st steeping @ 175F; tasted a bit like dusty spinach to me. 

2nd steeping @175; a little less dusty tasting but I still didn't love it. 

2. 

Name: Silver Needle

Type: white

Notes: kinda furry,  used a gaiwan to serve

1st steeping @ 175F; light and feathery, not a strong flavor but enough of a flavor to keep me interested. This one was my favorite of the whole bunch. 

3.

Name: Tie Guan Yin (Iron Goddess of Mercy)

Type: oolong

Notes: rolled into little balls, used unglazed clay pots to serve

1st steeping @ 190F for 45 seconds; smelled a bit like a root vegetable; I could barely taste it.

2nd steeping @190F for 45 seconds;; felt "meh" about it.

4.

Name: Mi Xiang (honey orchid flavor)

Type: oolong

Notes: rolled long ways, used unglazed clay pots to serve

1st steeping @ 190 for 45 seconds; darker in color, tasted a bit earthy

2nd steeping @190 for 45 seconds; more flavorful. I definitely like the second steeping better than the first.

5.

Name: Golden Bi Luo (tiny snails)

Type: black

Notes: hand rolled into snail shapes,  used a gaiwan to serve

1st steeping @195F  (instructed not to steep longer than a minute or the tea would be bitter); smelled ricey to me but Tony said "malty vanilla finish".

2nd steeping @ 195F ; sweeter and smoother taste, a nice strong flavor. I liked the second steeping better.

 6.

Name: Chrysanthemum Toucha

Type: pu-erh

Notes: bird nest shaped; Tony said it makes a good cold brew,  used a gaiwan to serve

1st steeping @ 208C for 45 sec to 1 min; Very dark. Tasted like a forest floor. A comment was made from one of the other attendants that it was like "licking the bark of a tree". I did not care for this tea at all. He made another one that was even darker and more disgusting but I didn't write down it's name.

7.

Name: Yue Guang Bai (moonlight)

Type: white

Notes: Hmm. curiously I didn't make one single note about this one except it's name and type. I don't know why.

1st and 2nd steeping @ 175F for 1 minute

Really nice descriptions for a tea novice, don't you think? I think Sue did an excellent job. Although she's still a coffee drinker with a healthy curiosity about tea, I wonder how long it might take us to lure her over to the leaf-side. Thank you again my Cubs-loving, bicycling, outsdoorsy friend.

Tony Gebely and our staff tea reviewer

The Tea Effect over at Indonique

spring flowers for after the hurricane

Wanted to dip into Katrina Ávila Munichiello's new book The Tea Reader last week in the build up to her book party.  But I got distracted by the beautiful weather at the weekend and then Lisa Galaviz and her trip to the monkey-picking tea shop.  If you read Lisa's account that I spoke of here recently, you can see how hard it was for me to stay focused on what I'd wanted to cover.

Nevertheless, I'd mulled over what new treasure I wanted to share from the many I found in Katrina's book and finally decided on The Tea Effect by George Constance.  I should be up front about the fact that this wasn't the first contact I'd had with George and his love of tea.  

Years ago, when I first decided to get more serious not just about drinking tea but writing about it as well, George was one of the first tea people I reached out to.  I knew him only as @Indonique over on twitter, and he was quite generous with advice about what books might help me on my quest of understanding tea better.  

Here I am flipping through the pages of The Tea Reader, and I find an essay that George has written about the shop and Hurricane Katrina and everything before and after those things intersected.  Most importantly, he recounts how they came up with a term for the positive impact tea had had on their community.  

The backstory of the shop was that he'd originally had the idea of selling wholesale tea to cafes in New Orleans.  No-one was interested, so he and his wife/partner Daya opened up their own tea shop/cafe in Magazine Street.  

Slowly, other cafes in the area wanted to be a part of the tea scene.  Over to the leaf-side, as it were. And they wanted tea only from Indonique.  Reading this account, I feel the pull and I'd like to try some of that very tea.

This attraction and desire to be a part of something positive in the community is what they call the Tea Effect.  Now I have to rely on George's words to tie this up:

'Post-Katrina, we considered ourselves fortunate--fortunate that we live in a wealthy nation that offered a place to which we could evacuate, and the help of friends and family to rebuild our lives.  So many around the world don't have these resources.  Tea-producing regions in particular are vulnerable.  The tea industry does little to alleviate this.  Indonique was rebuilt with this in mind.  We pledged to return 10% of every sale we make to the communities that pick our tea through Non-Governmental Organizations like Mercy Corps that can most effectively make change and provide oversight.  Our accounting records are open and our website is dedicating percentages to organizations that fight the trafficking of children.  We believe that if all industries did the same, we could alleviate poverty, disenfranchisement, extremism and the need for large military expenditures.  We're rebuilding Indonique as a cause.  The trick for us is to recreate that Tea Effect, so easily obtained in our shop, and duplicate it in cafes and retailers around the nation, to make the cause as infectious as the Tea Effect.  We're in discussions now with brokers and venture capitalists to do just this.  Perhaps the storm that caused so much misery will lead to something that will alleviate misery everywhere.

Fingers crossed.'

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Another thing I found about Indonique tells the whole story in much more detail.  You can find it here:

Cause Capitalism

If I haven't already said it, you really should get your own copy of The Tea Reader.  Really.

Red Rose Tea memories

Periodically, I'll hear someone ask how I got into tea.  Or it's a common interview question when tea obsessives are interviewed.  Logical question, isn't it?

Because I've written this blog with the tea newcomer in mind, I'm always looking for things that'd be interesting for just such readers.  

I've mentioned Cara in Cleveland before when I wrote Must one study tea to really appreciate it?, and she's told me a bit about a brand I've not yet tried called Red Rose Tea.

The thing is I can't really call Cara in Cleveland a newcomer to tea, because she's shared tea with her grandmother most of her life.  Part of this blog's mission is to lure people over to the leaf-side.  Although she already associates tea drinking with pleasant memories of loved ones, she's not really convinced on this whole tea drinking lark.

I'm rather certain that if we find the right sort of tea, Cara in Cleveland will gladly come join us on the leaf-side.

More on that at a later time.  What I want to do today is let Cara tell us in her own words what tea drinking means to her.  I asked her to tell me about the tea that reminds her of the times she's had with her grandmother.  Here's what she wrote:

I never slept well away from home and Grandma always seemed to know when I was awake and nervous. We would sit in the front room; in the dim light of a flickering orange bulb meant to simulate a candle. She would bring small crackers covered in butter and mugs of Red Rose Tea.

  

I didn't like the tea then; it was strange with an earthy smell and tasted like the oak leaves that got in my mouth in the fall when I jumped in large piles my Grandfather raked but slightly sweeter. I drank it because I got listen to Grandma her tell stories. Sometimes she would talk about my mother as a child or me when I was a  baby but if I was very lucky and she had just purchased a new box she would give me the figurine.

  

Red Rose Tea started in Canada in the late 1800's as a loose leaf tea and came to the States in the 1920's in bags. The company started a promotional give away  in the 1960's; each box of tea included a Wade figurine. These small figurines became highly collectible and my collection lived on Grandma's kitchen windowsill for years. I still get excited now, some 30 years later, when I open a box and find my figurine. My most recent purchase included a miniature Uncle Sam which now sits comfortably in my shadowbox next to a kitten sitting on top of a Jack-o-lantern.

  

Grandma used Red Rose Tea for her iced tea as well, she would set a large container of water and a handful of floating tea bags on the back steps in the summer to steep in the sun. I remember that large container with yellow daisies painted on it and the bright yellow lid. It was usually a blur as I burst out of the back door and skipped down the steps to make my flamboyant entrance in the pool. My summer lunches included that sun tea (with extra lemon and a heaping tablespoon of sugar) and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  

My wonderful adventures with my Grandfather stopped four years ago and tea with my Grandmother is now just a few precious times a year. I have grown accustomed to the taste of Red Rose Tea and drink it more for nostalgic reasons than anything. That strange taste, I've never quite grown to like, on my tongue releases wonderful memories of times I miss.

all the same teablogger

Jo Johnson suggested in a blogpost that Robert Godden and I were the same person.  Here's the whole post: World Tea East - Finale.  She was joking with VL Hamilton, as she describes it, and VL assured her that there was no way that we were the same.  Like I say, I'm sure that this was an offhand joke, but what better place to start off a blogpost.

First of all, Robert and Geoff Norman and I have joked that we're the Beasts of Brewdom.  We not only interact with one another on twitter, but we find ourselves blogging in tandem and doing what little we're able to for the sake of masculine tea drinking.

But I've taken the funny off-hand comment and wondered to myself what sets us apart.

Robert's blog which is called The Devotea's Tea Spouts is a collection of musings and curiosities that he's written and he's particularly good when he's somehow riled up and/or got a score to settle.  One of my favourite of these is Carry On Up the Spout.  Try it you'll like it.

And Geoff has included his explorations with tea, as well as cultural ponderings.  One of his better recent posts was Iran So Far for...Tea.  All about tea in a part of the world about which we get such murky information.  Periodically, he'll go on a tear and write a piece of tea-fuelled prose that is immensely entertaining.  Watch for just such a piece of fiction.  It's worth the wait.

What am I doing here?  What's the purpose of a teablog?  Partly, it's a documentation about my love affair with tea.  It's a place I like to record the minutiae and the tangentially tea-related.  I've also purposely tried to make this blog as accesible as possible for tea newcomers.  I joke about bringing people over to the leaf-side, but it really has been a pleasurable avocation of mine to attract curious people to try good tea.

More on that soon.  Much more.  But in the meantime I'll simply say that to be confused with the likes of The_Devotea or even Lazy Literatus is not such a bad predicament to be in at all.