Drinking Many Cups of Tea Forever
Hello you lovely blog readers,
I was a bit melancholy through January and I found it very hard to sit and write anything that seemed coherent. This is a purely self-indulgent blog post that serves mostly to help make myself feel better and get some ink onto a page. I hope you still can enjoy it.
I thought it would be nice and easy to write a bit about tea. Tea is all taste and memory and warmth in your hands, important for this time of year. I have had many cups of tea in my life and luckily some of them bring back some memories. Here’s a little bit about some specific teas and why I love them (or don’t) and what they make me think about.
teas ranked based on their flavour when served hot, sans milk/sugar/any other things, unless indicated
Some teas from my least favourite to my most favourite:
Earl Grey
Let’s get the negative out of the way. Earl grey is my least favourite tea by a very wide margin. I find the taste to be too sweet for a black tea and I am not a fan of the smell. This tastes like the colour grey in a cup, which means it is generally unappetizing. I don’t want to dwell on this one for too long but I do wish to condemn all institutions that offer only earl grey as their sole black tea option. Please add another one. Any other one.
Black Currant
As a child I used to always say that I didn’t like tea because I wasn’t a fan of any slight flavours added to water (this includes lemon sparkling water, MiO, etc). I figured if I was going to drink something with flavour it might as well be juice or a milkshake or something. I was a mildly picky eater up until the age of 12 or so but if there was one place where I would try new things it was at other people’s houses. One of my dear childhood friends used to grow black current plants at her cottage and one summer day her dad decided to prepare some black currant tea and to give me a very large, very strong glass. It was so deeply not attuned to my liking that the memory still lives very prominently in my brain as one of the most intensely bad tastes I have ever experienced. The dark, liquorice, herbal flavour was very disgusting to me and yet out of politeness I finished the entire cup of tea. I couldn’t say no to the kindness of my friend’s family, so at the very least there is a bit of positivity wrapped up in this sense memory. I just realized that I was grimacing the entire time I wrote this paragraph. I cannot recommend this tea.
Oolong
Oolong is very middle of the pack. I don’t have any strong opinions on it. I probably wouldn’t pick oolong if given any alternative options to it (barring the two mentioned before this. Though maybe that would be my own personal hell, a place that can only provide earl grey or black currant tea). I have yet to be very impressed by an oolong tea but I am open to the possibility of being further enlightened.
Mint
Now we’re starting to get to tea flavours I would say I like. Mint is inoffensive. Mint is perfect for the morning, it’s usually uncaffeinated so you can drink it before bed, and it works great after any meal. The only strike against it is that I personally am mildly allergic to mint. However, the tea is so soothing that I can ignore the fact that it creates sores in my mouth while I drink it. Thank you, mint tea.
Hibiscus
This was one of the first teas I thought about putting on this list which is why I’m kind of amazed it’s gotten pushed so far down the ranking because it is genuinely a great tea. I think that it’s even better when iced, so check that out in the summer. This tea reminds me of drinking agua de jamaica and the flavour instantly makes me feel like I’m sitting in the sun on a beautiful day. This is like the ONE tea i might add a bit of sugar to, and I always bring it back to Canada with me whenever I travel down south, so I have no clue if you can actually find it here. I always get this one for maximum nostalgia reasons.
English Breakfast
This is the most reliable tea, and I want to commend it for its versatility. You see, when you are served a tea, unless you are at a tea INSTITUTION, it is unlikely that the person giving you the tea gives two shits about the temperature of the water or the steeping time of the tea. Many of you tea people will know that these things will affect your enjoyment of the tea. English breakfast tea is completely resistant to anything that affects its flavour. You could steep the tea bag for one minute in cold water and it would be fine. You can leave the bag in for three hours and it would be fine. You can put a litre of milk in it and it will still be palatable. You could probably throw an english breakfast tea bag out on the street in the slushy snow and run over it with your car repeatedly and then throw it in some eighty degree water and it would still taste good. The English really did a good job with this one.
Chamomile
A good friend of mine, who shall remain nameless for the blog, would offer me tea whenever I stopped by his apartment and would only ever have chamomile in his tea cabinet. I find this to be a bit funny only because you would think that someone who drinks tea would tend to have at least two types of tea in their home. This friend was also the first person who ever added honey and lemon to my tea which I really enjoyed, despite rarely doing it for myself. It makes it more of a treat. And now, I tend to associate chamomile tea with good chats with my good pal. I like to buy my chamomile as manzanilla (I swear, when the box says Manzanilla it tastes better), and this is the one I usually bring back to Canada.
Chai Lattes / Matcha Latte
I’m ranking these as the same because I couldn’t pick one over the other and also because they are tea beverages that technically are cheating because they have milk in them. Is it unfair to put these here? A perfect chai latte is the right blend of spices and it reminds me of being a little kid trying to bake, just because of the cinnamon and the cardamom. Chai lattes are my go-to beverage whenever I’m having a rough day and I always find it really hard to get something that matches my (very sweet) ideal taste when I can’t rely on my usual spots. When I was hanging out in Brussels for a while in 2023, I was beginning to lose my mind without having found a good chai latte. I went to like four different places and then found BarkBoy, this cafe that managed to serve me a great chai latte after many months of being deprived of one. Good matcha also gets a shoutout for being a great comfort beverage! My favourite matcha latte in the whole world is located at Tart & Soul in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was really yum and I miss it.
Cold 911
RIP many of DavidsTea’s in-person stores. I am thankful to the powers that be that I can still buy cold 911, a mint, juniper, and eucalyptus tea that tastes good even when you’re not sick. I think I started drinking this in high school and it is honestly a miracle cure for every illness. I bring it on trips with me in case I get ill and even if I’m not ill, I’ll just drink it as my morning tea.
Sleepytime
I was not introduced to the delights of sleepytime tea until I met my old university roommate J who used to always drink it before bed. I have since become a regular sleepytime fan. Every cup reminds me a bit of the early part of my undergrad, sipping tea in a little sunny apartment, waiting out the pandemic storm. More recently, I found a version with melatonin in it at Publix in Florida while visiting my brother. All of us had a large mug of it in the evening and immediately passed out. I can’t seem to find the Melatonin one in Canada so pls hit me up if you find it anywhere though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was was banned in this country for some reason. It seems too powerful. Like it’s infused with magic.
Strawberry Green
A little something about me is that my favourite island is Prince Edward Island and I am very lucky to have some cool friends from there. This strawberry green tea with Island berries from Lady Baker’s Tea was given to me as a gift early in my undergrad by one of my dear friends. I love drinking it because it reminds me of the island and also because it reminds me of some of my favourite people :) Am getting misty-eyed just writing about it to be honest…. The tea itself is not overly sweet but it is very tasty and refreshing and the nice thing about loose leaf tea is that you can make it precisely as strong or as weak as you want. (Bonus: I also really like supporting small Canadian businesses). Great to serve people. It’s like pure delight in a cup.
Jasmine
Jasmine tea is my favourite tea in the whole wide world which also means I’m very picky about it not steeping too much and not getting burned by super boiling water. I love the smell of jasmine and I try to pick it as a perfume note whenever I buy perfumes. I love that it makes me feel like I’m a little flower in a forest. I once had a blueberry jasmine tea that was also really good. I just think Jasmine makes everything better. I drank the most jasmine tea in my life when I was doing my undergrad, so I have very fond memories of getting this tea first thing in the morning, after my first class, before my third class, and then again right before the student cafe would close. Best moment of my life was the cafe manager who made a jasmine syrup for us to infuse in the cocktails at the bar I worked at. I absolutely saw God in those drinks. This is a great reminder for me to make jasmine syrup. I’m nearly drooling while writing this. The specific tea I used to drink was this one.
I’m excited to experience more teas in my future.. Isn’t it lovely that the next new flavour you try could be the best tea you’ve ever had in your whole life?
I would love to hear your stories on tea, and your recommendations :)
You can reply via my contact page or over on my Guestbook <3 Or hit that little heart emoji :)
Love and hugs,
sam
p.s: this is what i listened to while i wrote this. very excited about florist’s new album coming soon!