A budding enthusiast

Take two at a first post.

It turns out the first thing I wrote was more suited to a second post than a first post; it's a shame that my inner writer enthusiast pales in comparison to my inner tea enthusiast. Thankfully at the end of the day, this is a blog about tea, not writing.

My 'love' for tea started a few years ago but tea never moved past the casual beverage on a cold rainy day (though love is a very strong word and to be honest I can't say I loved tea as such...). I can actually remember my very first cup of loose-leaf tea (though I am slightly ashamed to call it 'tea' in retrospect). A friend of mine gave me a tin of aromatic loose leaf earl-grey tea from a little shop that opened near my house, and with it, a passport to a whole new world. I must admit that I was slightly less than thrilled when they handed me the tin as I had no prior contact with loose-leaf tea. Before then, I only knew of tea in two varieties; first being mint tea when I had a stomach ache, and second being my moms daily generic breakfast tea. This being my first loose-leaf experience, I did what any sensible person would do: I created a concoction composing of 4 parts sugar, 2 parts milk, and 1 part tea (hence why I am ashamed to call it tea). I wish I could say that I realized the error in my ways after a few cups, but sadly this habit continued for a number of years and many good tins of earl-grey were wasted and somewhere out there, a tea leaf was crying. Thankfully this all changed around three years ago.

November 16th 2009 (just past three years to the day!), when I was twenty-two, my life decided to flip-upside and mix things up a bit. All of a sudden, health became a very important issue for me and the sugar/milk concoction that I called tea just didn't cut it anymore (don't get me wrong, I still enjoy a cup of sugar with a few drops of tea every so often but my views and taste of tea has moved to a more purist perspective). I was looking for something, anything to give me an edge health wise and get better and lo-and-behold, I stumbled across tea. Real tea.