Today is International Tea Day.
My husband took me to High Tea at the Empress Hotel on our honeymoon. What an experience (even if, since we were camping and wearing jeans they put us out of sight behind a big pot)!!!
I come from a family of coffee drinkers. Even as a young girl I preferred café au lait
My husband was a coffee drinker also but his doctor told him he had to cut it out. He had a hard time with it, trying chicory coffee and other pretend coffees. Blech!! One day a guy told him to try tea. Not your everyday tea in a teabag, but real tea, like rooibos. He bought some and loved it! Especially after he read all the good things about drinking it. Well, my darling XY gets a one track mind. He visited many tea shops, talked to tea merchants, and read about all the different kinds of tea. He experimented with many kinds, some caffeinated some not. Green teas, black teas, Indian teas, China teas, Brazilian teas. Each tea uses a different temperature water and seeps for different times. He bought a $99 kettle that he could set to boil to the exact temperature for the specific kind of tea he decided to drink after his meal. Then set the timer. He tried different methods of making the tea - tea balls, tea filters, etc. He bought cute little tea tins, all neatly labeled, that have taken over my kitchen cupboards.
He has become the Tea Master of the Neighbourhood. After trying and tasting he has settled on a few favourites - rooibos, yerba mate, a black tea from India and a green tea from our local tea merchant's uncles farm in China. Once in a while he will make a ginger or cinnamon tea. I like the honey bush tea once in a while, but I'll stick to my coffee for now.
If you have an ancestor that was a tea merchant, you may find his name and listing in a trade directory. Some of the directories from Asia have names and information on tea merchants, check the links from the related post and type "tea" in the search box.
Relevant Links
Tea: and the tea trade, 1850
Tea producing companies of India and Ceylon, 1897
A sketch of the growth and history of tea and the science of blending particularly adapted to the Canadian trade, 1881
James Finlay Collection
Related Post: Who's who in Asia
Once when my mom came to visit me in NYC, she took me for tea at The Plaza Hotel. I felt very chic.
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