Come out, come out, wherever you are
All you bright tea nerds who fell from a star.”
Many are the parallels between tea and wine culture, but after browsing the T Ching Tasting posts in the Archive, I am thinking that the tea nerds have it over the wine nerds.
Both are extremely knowledgeable and capable of great care in the preparation and serving of their respective beverages, but I had no idea that so much care was taken in water preparation and pot preparation when making tea. Temperature is important to both wine nerds and tea nerds, but tea nerds also are concerned with small degrees of temperature, and where the water came from, what it was exposed to before it became tea, and how long the water is heated before brewing. Like a wine-lover insisting on only drinking out of the proper Riedel glass, tea-lovers make a distinction between how the tea tastes after brewing in a silver versus a stoneware or enamelware pot. I would not be surprised to find that barometer readings were taken by some tea nerds prior to tasting. Just as wine nerds pay particular attention to the growing region a wine comes from, so do tea nerds distinguish teas from their respective regions, and so on.
Nerd culture, as we all know, involves a passionate immersion into a subject, often to the exclusion of all societal norms around it. You can’t be “in the flow” and be worried about what other people think; the two states are exclusive of each other. Nerds push the envelope of our understanding of a subject, often leading to a broader enjoyment of it—where would the internet be, for example, if not for the early tech nerds?
We need our nerds. They raise the bar, enrich our lives, and bring the wonder of their worlds to the rest of us. Somewhere inside of us all lurks a nerd. What was your nerdiest moment with tea?
This post was written by Anne Lerch and originally published on T Ching 22 October 2007, titled “Are You, or Aren’t You?” On Fridays, T Ching is delighted to publish a post from our archives. Watch this space each Friday for a look . . . Back Seven.
The first managing editor at T Ching, Phyll Sheng, was both a tea AND a wine nerd. Here it is, seven years later and the world has more of both! Have you noticed that the writing about tea has taken a page from the writing about wine? “Hints of honey and dried apricots linger on the palate long after . . . ” Thanks for a post as relevant now as it was in 2007!
My pleasure! Seven years down the line, and I’m still curious about people’s nerdiest moments. My own nerdiest moment with tea was probably when I finally learned how to pour it out of a pot s-l-o-w-l-y, so as not to spill it all over the table (I know, some of us are less patient than others)–but after years of tea drinking, I still consider myself a tea novice rather than a tea nerd. And, I very much enjoy my tea. So, now I’d also like to know what tea nerds have learned from their nerdy moments, and especially if they feel they’ve enjoyed tea (or wine) more for being nerdy about it. My observations from pouring wine for the masses over 22 years suggest that the enjoyment factor can go either way–some of the happiest sippers are those who claim to know nothing about wine, while some of the nerdiest wine-lovers are fraught with their obsession to the point of neurosis. C’mon, folks–tell me I’m wrong!