My love affair with Tea

It is funny that one of the big things about being Indian is drinking tea (coffee if you are from the South). It is funny to me, since I was never into tea or coffee back home in India. My mom was extremely afraid of caffeine and addiction and strove to keep me away from those demon drinks. I vaguely remember drinking “adrak chai” early morning on a cold winter’s day in Bombay and thinking this makes my throat feel so good. My dad occasionally snuck me some sips of his tea, but over all I never developed a taste for it and remained extremely proud of my non-coffee-and-tea drinking habits.

It was sometime in 1999, in San Francisco at the best dimsum place in town that I had a chance to revisit tea again - this time albeit in the form of green, jasmine tea. I was hooked by the clear taste of not-over-brewn green tea that doesn’t overwhelm you while the jasmine adds a little tang. It was not truly love at first sight, but that first taste was enough to persuade me to get a few more to the point if you now looked at my cabinet in my cube at work, at current count you will find - 15 boxes of tea. Any addict will tell you that is it is hard to pinpoint the exact moment when like turns to love and into obsession, but all I know is that I am now a tea-drnker for life.

Even if I do chug down 4-5 cups of tea/day usually, 80% of the tea I drink is white or green - I drink black tea very rarely. I am going to offer up my reviews of some of the teas I have had so far, so if any of you want to try out tea, you have atleast a guide to the awesomeness or the suckitude of the said tea. The reviews will be a weekly affair starting tomorrow, so keep watching this space.

update: Here is a view of the collection (picture from my cell phone, so bear with the quality - click on to Flickr to the see the notes on the brands and the kinds of tea in the image)