A Few Thoughts on Tea

One of my most vivid childhood memories is waking up early on a Saturday or Sunday and walking into the kitchen seeing the Earl sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper waiting for a saucepan of water to come to a boil. "Want a cup of tea, Hitz?" he'd ask. "Yes, Dad," I'd answer. And then when the water came to a boil he'd plop Lipton teabags in mugs and pour in the hot water. After a couple of minutes of steeping the teabags would be pulled out and sugar cubes would be dropped into the mugs, the tea would be stirred and then gingerly tasted and approved and the heat would warm me up on the coldest day.

The Earl is a tea drinker. Hot, cold, lukewarm. And I'm a tea drinker. It wasn't until I was in the Navy that I got used to drinking coffee. And even then coffee was a poor substitute for coffee. It's not because my family is English. I was the first member of my family to touch English soil since the late 1600s. And there was no great tea drinking tradition in my family. There was always a coffee pot on the hob for the rest of the family. Tea was, and is, my preferred drink. It's more warming, more cooling, more refreshing and better tasting than coffee.

Orange pekoe, oolong, Darjeeling, Assam, Earl Grey and lapsong souchong. Those five varieties of teas cover a greater flavor spectrum that do all the world's coffees. From light and clear to heavy and smoky, tea offers a drink that can be consumed by the pot without ill effect and makes coffee taste like burnt gravy doped with speed. No perking, no dripping, no squeezing. Just infusing leaves for a few minutes results in a drink that is not only stimulating, but calming and refreshing.

And one can't ask for much more from a drink than that.