tea nerd

I have always been a fan of tea. Hot tea, cold tea, I just really like tea. I am kind of picky though. I prefer a nice black tea and never have found a place in my heart for green tea. Years ago, before I started liking coffee too, I found my very favorite tea, Celestial Seasonings Nutcracker Sweet.

It is a scrumptious black tea with a vanilla and slight cinnamon flavor. Much milder than a chai, I like it with a splash of milk. It is a Christmas tea, so every year I would try to buy a large amount to tide me over for the year. Some years, it would be difficult to find and I would get frustrated. Some years I would hit the jackpot and share some as Christmas gifts, because I was sure the rest of the world needed to try my tea.

Not tea.

I almost forgot about my old tea struggles, because for several years my sweet hubby has bought me cases of Nutcracker Sweet Tea for Christmas. It is kind of a funny running gag, he buys a ton of tea under an assumed name, forgets he bought it and wonders who is sending him things under a weird name, then he talks one of the kids into wrapping them and I act like I don’t know what is in the packages. When I started drinking coffee too, my Santa had to adjust how much tea he bought me as I was being drowned in surplus tea. It’s just about perfect now.

Speaking of tea, I’d like to share information about a tea guru I discovered today. Tony Gebely takes tea appreciation to a whole new level. His knowledge of tea, tea cultivation, tea preparation and tea consumption seems to be unmatched. I stumbled upon him while searching for a description of the flavor muscatel (my mind goes on tangents). I was struck by his detailed analysis and when I realized I had found the biggest tea nerd on the universe, I had to read more. He makes me feel like I have been drinking tea wrong my whole life.

https://teaepicure.com/engineers-guide-to-tea-preparation/

While reading his nuanced descriptions of different teas, I couldn’t help wonder what he would think of Summerville’s Sweet Tea Festival where an entire town devotes itself to the sugary abomination of a perfectly refreshing beverage.

Last year my art group The Summerville Artist Guild went to a local tea plantation The Charleston Tea Garden. It was beautiful and intriguing. I spent most of my time painting the sprawling oak trees with a trolley parked underneath. I wish I had made it to the factory tour. I will have to go again and see if I can be a discerning tea taster.

I recently discovered blue tea, which is quite fun.

I don’t know if the Tea Epicure would approve, but it is a lovely bright blue infusion of a pea flower. The color just makes me smile. But wait, there’s more! If you put a bit of lemon in your blue tea the chemical reaction creates a lovely purple drink. After raising kids and playing with kitchen ingredients in the name of science, this sort of thing just thrills me. It’s right up there with Oobleck.

Sounds like it is time for a tea party.