Tea Reflection: Nio Teas

Chinese teas make up the bulk of my tea shelves. As the top tea-producing country in the world, that isn’t much of a surprise. Our shelves mirror the market, and we become familiar with the most accessible teas we can buy. Sure I have some teas from Taiwan, a couple from India, and the other…

Brewing Vessels

Tea has been drunk for hundreds of years. Camellia sinensis is a steady fixture in an ever-evolving world, maintaining its relevance regardless of industrialization, war, or societal drift. What has changed is how we drink it and the culture surrounding it. How people drink tea now is different from how people drank tea a hundred…

Making Matcha

Throughout our tea series, we’ve covered a lot of ground- herbal infusions, loose leaf teas, different processing methods- but fellow tea fans may have noticed a conspicuous omission. This unmentioned tea has had steady market growth for years, once only popular in Japan and now sold at every Starbucks in the US. Its history bleeds…

Tea Bags Vs. Loose Leaf

There’s a big rivalry in the tea world. It’s on par with the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers; the Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin; Goku and Vegeta. While the tea community prides itself on its “chill” status, the mere mention of the rivalry can send even the most zen tea connoisseur into…

From Leaf to Cup: Part 2

Do you have a favorite apple? Personally, I’m a Honeycrisp gal. Golden Delicious and Granny Smith are pretty good too, but, beyond that, I’m ambivalent (unless it’s Red Delicious. Those things can go straight to hell). That said, my experience is limited- there are so many different apples grown across the globe. I’m sure there’s…

From Leaf to Cup: Part 1

Tea’s journey from budding leaf to the sachet in your cup is a long, deceptively simple one. Every tea is made from one plant, the Camellia sinensis, and thousands of tiny decisions affect the type, quality, tastes, and blends. This ends up giving us hundreds of different kinds of tea. So what are these decisions?…

What Is Tea?

Now that the blog has been up for a week you’re probably looking between Instagram and this blog going, “Okay lady, where’s the goods? I got the ‘Reads’, where’s the ‘Tea’?” Fair enough. I’ve focused a lot on the books and reading portion of this blog. It’s time we took a closer look at some…