But first, a word about my tea

  • I’m look­ing at a won­der­ful thing — a real live errand-free Sat­ur­day. Maybe I can relieve the gen­tle pres­sure on my brain by get­ting out all the blog posts that have been back­ing up in my head. Maybe then I’ll know which ones were worth the trou­ble of express­ing and which weren’t. Maybe I’ll be able to make some chicken soup and put left­over cream in it to make it smooth and milky, because Sep­tem­ber has started off a lit­tle chilly here and I’ve been really want­ing some. Maybe I’ll do laundry.

    But first, I really have to talk about the tea I’m drink­ing these days …
    my-tea-and-router.jpg

    My morn­ing start-up tea isn’t so much an option as a neces­sity, and so a sen­si­tive tea would be lost on me. I’ve been really lik­ing the Har­ney & Sons teas. They used to be avail­able through Ama­zon, but for some rea­son they’re not as much any­more. But a trip off to the Web­site proved handy and started me off on a lit­tle expe­di­tion of tea good­ness. All three had dif­fer­ent things going on:

    • Wake up with a flower behind your ear: Supreme Break­fast. I’ve been mak­ing my way through dif­fer­ent break­fast blends for years. I thought I’d always love Eng­lish Break­fast the best, and then, … I don’t know. Did I change? Did the tea change? It was seem­ing a lit­tle rough, not as aro­matic. A quick jaunt over to Irish Break­fast only resulted in a rougher fla­vor and by the time I got to Scot­tish Break­fast, I might have just been too con­fused to know what I thought. So away with the British ref­er­ences alto­gether and just a Supreme Break­fast blend. Good tea, and as aro­matic as I like — strong enough to stand up to milk and sweet­ener with­out los­ing its way. And it has a hint of some­thing that I thought was berg­amot, since it reminds me of Earl Grey. But Har­ney & Sons say that it’s actu­ally Hao Ya ‘B’ Keemun. Sounds like a name from a Chi­nese fairy tale or some­thing. Any­way, very tasty.
    • A taste of honey: Elyce’s Blend. For some rea­son, you can’t get directly to the black tea blends on the Har­ney & Sons web-site, but if you go HERE you’ll see that the page has enough lovely pos­si­bil­i­ties to stop a tea-lover like me dead in her tracks. Which way to go? Palm Court Blend? Queen Catherine’s? His­toric Royal Palaces? How much more time do I have to live? Can I get around to all of them and give them the month it takes to really know your tea? In the end, I fig­ured I needed to aim for the sim­pler proper name teas (Stan­ley, Brigitte, Malachi McCormick(?) ) and just went with Elyce’s and Elaine’s. Elyce’s Blend has been an expe­ri­ence. When I first gave it a whiff, I was non­plussed — it had a slightly funny smell I couldn’t put my fin­ger on. When I brewed it up and took a sip, I couldn’t iden­tify the taste, and I was about to put it in the cat­e­gory of “inter­est­ing” teas that I don’t care for, like Lap­sang Sou­chong with its dis­tinctly smoky fla­vor. But then I re-read the H&S blurb and real­ized that that fla­vor was honey. I don’t know how they did it — I don’t think they infused the tea leaves with honey or any­thing. But it’s true — it absolutely tastes like tea with honey, and an improve­ment on any time I’ve tried to get that result, since the fla­vor of honey is hard to detect in tea unless you add about a cup of it. I admit I’m still mulling over the final effect. This prob­a­bly is a “spe­cial occa­sion” tea. But I don’t know. Once you know what the fla­vor is, it does kind of grow on you.
    • All I ever wanted: Elaine’s Spe­cial Blend. I think the rea­son I had to try this one is because of the intrigu­ing detail on the H&S blurb that Elaine wrote a let­ter to the New York Times in 1983 about the lam­en­ta­ble lack of decent tea in restau­rants. She became a hero to dis­en­fran­chised tea-drinkers and a friend to John Har­ney, who was just start­ing up his busi­ness. This is Elaine’s par­tic­u­lar blend of Dar­jeel­ing, Keemun, Cey­lon and Assam teas, and it so per­fectly embod­ies every­thing I want tea to be that I can’t even describe it. I have to just make prim­i­tive lit­tle noises and move my fin­gers over the key­board hop­ing that that will mag­i­cally do the trick. It has the deli­cious sweet­ness of Assam with­out being fruity like Earl Grey. It’s full-bodied but not rough. It just seems perfect.

    Sigh. My resolve fails. I’ve just fin­ished up a lit­tle teapot of Elyce’s Blend, but now I have to brew up some Elaine’s Spe­cial Blend to make sure that it’s still that good. I’d hate to lie to my loyal read­ers (all four of them or whatever).

    So I’ll make my tea. And then I have to try to get through all the other bloggy things I wanted to say. And there’s soup to cook and laun­dry to do, and prob­a­bly some­thing else I can’t think of.

    But first there’s tea.


    Related posts:

    1. Decaf­feinat­ing your tea naturally
    2. Fri­day tea report
    3. Bush tea and the snif­fles with Mma Ramotswe
    4. Dan­de­lion tea
    5. Decem­ber 26

    September 6th, 2008 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • DebD 09.06.2008

    I’m a tea lover but not nearly as much of a con­nois­seur as you. Thank you for this infor­ma­tive post.

  • Grace

    I’m not sure I’m at that level yet, but maybe I’m get­ting there. I’m surely a tea lover, and I just found to my sur­prise that I was start­ing to get picky about it. Maybe that starts you down the road of being a con­nois­seur, or it just means you’re get­ting fussy. Who knows?

  • Mimi

    My mom and a dear friend are tea con­nois­seurs like you and Deb, I’m more of a cof­fee drinker who will have tea now and then, usu­ally with one of the above peo­ple, or when I’m not feel­ing well.

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required