If we’re here as contributors, readers or both, it’s most likely because we are fans of tea. Chef Wemischner loves to be creative with tea in recipes. Ifang Hsieh enjoys traveling and finding new tea experiences. Michelle Rabin appreciates the health and relaxation benefits of tea. Rajiv Lochan loves to promote great tea from India and to support small family estates and tea workers. And so on and so on. But we all are passionate about tea in one way or another.
Tea is the neutral in all of this. It allows each of us to build on it whatever we choose to build. We can steep it, brew it in a machine, infuse it into candy or cookies, and nowadays into cocktails or beer, blend it, grind it to a fine powder, oxidize it (or not), put it in soap to bathe with, lotions to soothe our skin, extracts, vitamins, and so much, much more. Tea is a leaf and will never be more or less. It’s what we choose to do with the leaf that has brought about such a huge, multi-faceted group of businesses and people for whom it is the focus.
Tea is white, or green, or yellow, or oolong or black . . . or pu-erh. Or matcha. It is delicious to some, a turn-off to others. It makes some extremely happy, others it just leaves cold. It has become equal to coffee in foodservice sales, mainly iced and black. It is an ancient plant with a current surge of trendiness. As Mintel Global Market Research says: Tea is hot.
Our grandmothers made us drink it when we were sick, usually with honey. Now many drink it to stay well and feel good, with great enjoyment. It has lived in bags for too many years when it would rather be swimming free. It has been studied by great scientists who have proven what those grandmothers already knew. Tea is not only good — it’s good for you.
What do you love about tea? There’s no right or only answer. A relationship with tea is what you make it.
Photo “茶芸” is copyright under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License to the photographer “snak” and is being posted unaltered (source)
You are so right Diane. It doesn’t matter where our interest lies, tea is definitely being noticed and consumed here in the U.S. Beyond my daily morning ritual, tea has come to mean comfort for me. When I’m stressed or anxious about something big or small, my first instinct is to make a pot a tea for myself.
My daughter had been here last friday, waiting for news that her divorce was final. The call finally came. I immediately held her in my arms for an especially long hug and then said, “let me make you some tea”, which is exactly what I did.
Hi Michelle, I hope all will be well with your daughter in this difficult time. Just the comfort of having her mother make her tea will be something she may remember, as it represents caring on your part in a tangible way, it represented wanting to provide comfort and love.
On a much less important side, when I hurriedly shaved my legs improperly and ended up with itchiness and redness (men call it razor burn), I Googled remedies for the burning and found putting black tea bags in the refrigerator and then putting on the red areas as one of the natural remedies.
You and I could probably relate many stories and articles and testimonials of the benefits of tea, both emotionally and physically. It is truly a unique plant in its’ varieties of uses, and we have only begun to scratch the surface. God has put so many things on this earth that each one provide studies that can take a person’s entire focus and career to try to begin to understand.
You are so right Diane. Sandy is an herbalist and I remember hearing him talk about the herbs that grow around ones home. The belief was that they were specifically meant for the person living in that house and what they needed to restore balance in their lives. I had originally thought that was far fetched but over the years, I’m now beginning to see the wisdom in that philosophy. Plants are indeed medicine and tea, as an important plant, is powerful medicine.