Tea Reflection: Umi Tea Set’s Colorful Tea

When I started Tea Reads back in January, the first thing I struck from my vocabulary was the word “review”. I had no interest in placing books on a numerical scale or following standard book review formats. To describe my thoughts on the books we read each month, I settled on the word “reflection”. It…

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…

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…