Note: This is re-post from my private password protected website. Stay tuned for the next chapter.
Hello, Hello…… I am back. Today I like to tell all you people about how things are going on my tea journey. People who know me slightly better will know that I’ve always liked my cup of tea. I am not much of a coffee drinker. Whenever I drink coffee it is more milk with the taste of coffee and most coffee lovers cringe just by the thought whenever I am adjusting my coffee to a way that I find it acceptable to drink. So I learned very early in life that it was easier for me to ask for tea than hurt all the feelings of all the coffee lovers. This way both me and the coffee drinkers could continue to live a long and happy life together. When I was younger I loved the scented tea. Things like coconut or other funny flavors where regulars in my cupboard. But I am proud to say that I always preferred loose leaf tea over teabags when it came to that kind of tea. There was so much variety. And it became a well known fact that I could be pleased with tea. It is only until a few years ago that I started to collect tea. In 2010 I did a round trip of Sri Lanka. When I was there I bought some amazing tea. We even visited a Tea plantation. mackwoodstea.com Funny enough I didn’t buy any tea there. I managed to walk away from this plantation empty handed! This was not the case when I stumbled upon a very lovely tea shop in Hikkaduwa where we stayed for a couple of days. When I look back I think this was just the last kick I needed to get going onto my tea journey.
The man in the shop was such a kind man. First we browsed the store and I had no idea where to start. There was so much choice and I felt I was in Tea Heaven. While browsing the shelves we got offered a cup of tea (although I think I declined that?! as I can’t recollect drinking, only that it was offered!) and at that point he also asked how I liked to drink my tea. Since I was in Sri lanka, the home of Ceylon Tea I dared to confess I like my tea really strong and preferred to drink it with milk and sugar. This was also the moment I learned that the stuff we like to call “tea” in The Netherlands is actually Tea Dust and that it is the worst quality of tea you can get! In fact most of that is considered to be waste in tea drinking countries. While we are “happy” to drink that stuff and call it tea, most Tea lovers just cringe just by the thought of that stuff. So that was a valuable lesson and really sparked my curiosity big time. Of course that also sparked the question “what is good quality tea?” and even more important “What does good quality tea taste like”. So the kind man in this store was the one that took me “by the hand” so to speak and lead me on the way to good tea. He recommended a tea that was the strongest one he had and I indeed loved that tea. Unfortunately I only recently threw away the package when I finished the last bit of it without writing down what tea it was. I can only recall that it was a “BOP” tea (broken Orange Pekoe). With that experience in mind I started to get more interested in the different grades of tea. There is a whole world of abbreviations to let buyers know the size of the leaves. Then there is the origins of the tea, the season when it is picked, how it is processed….. so much to explore!! So that is when the internet is a fantastic world to dive into.
When a colleague of mine introduced me to the online shop hotsoup.nl things became even more exciting. That is where I really started to explore different tea. One day, about 2 yrs ago, I was just browsing You Tube when suddenly I got the idea to enter “Tea” in the search box. I found lots of videos. And there was one You Tube channel that really catched my attention. That was the one of China Life with the videos of Don Mei. He was really explaining things he thought are essential to know and presented this in easy to watch videos. I became a big fan and watched as China Life developed into Mei Leaf. I learned so much in the last years. I still do and I continue to learn as I go along.
A few days ago Mei Leaf launched their brand new website. This is not only a webshop but an online platform where you really can explore tea. It gives you the opportunity to build a database for all the tea you have ever tried and rate it. So my first thought was, how cool it would be if you could connect to other people, just like what you do with books on Goodreads. So I suggested that on their Facebookpage and cool enough I got an answer from them only a few hours later that it is the intention to add this to the website in the future.
I can seriously not wait for that to happen! In the meantime I added all the tea that I’ve got to the “my collection” part of the website. I rated about 2 or 3 of them. Still got quite a few to go. Today I rated Miracle of Hoorn and Milk Silk Oolong. At this point it is still for my own pleasure. But as said earlier, in the future people will be able to browse your collection. A few days ago I purchased about 6 new tea’s at The art of…..Tea in Haarlem and together with all the tea that I still had it is quite a task to get it all online. Amongst my latest additions to my collection are a Matcha, a Genmatcha, a tea van Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka and the shop owner recommended a rare White Tea from Sri Lanka as well. After all this years it is so refreshing to find out I am not the only one that really loves tea! And with the internet it is so fantastic you can reach out to other Tea Lovers and share experiences. I am slowly but surely turning into a Tea Geek instead of a Tea Lover haha…
My next step is tea pairing. I love cheese and not many people know that cheese and tea are a fantastic combination. And another thing that is going to be the next big thing is combining my 3 favorite things together: Cheese, Tea and Chocolate. YES, people chocolate and cheese do go together! And Yes! that works really well with an nice cup of tea! And if you don’t believe me I’ve got proof! Kaas met chocola (en thee) wordt de nieuwe trend. Unfortunately the article is in Dutch. But maybe you can use google translate to read the story. I am really passionate about this so I will find a way to get my plans into action. In the meantime I need to experiment a lot because I don’t have much experience yet! So my goal for the upcoming Months is to post more blogs about Tea and Cheese and probably chocolate as well. It is a dirty job but someone got to do it! The things I do for my job!
