Looking to educate myself about tea

I am a long time tea lover, however, want to kick it up this year and learn some more about tea, it’s history, kinds, etc. any recommendations for reading?.

Of course, I also plan on doing a lot of tasting

Also does anyone know of a tea “app” for Apple devices?

12 Replies

I recommend and app called “tea”, http://teaapp.com/. It’s the better one as far as I know.

I also recommend my blog (sorry for the self promotion) if you want to learn about Japanese tea in general: www.myjapanesegreentea.com

Bridget said

I bought this app and it doesn’t have the encyclopedia option! It will only let me add teas in my collection that’s it….

I bought his app as well and have the same problem.

I noticed the same thing, perhaps it is being updated? I sent a message from Twitter, if I don’t get an answer I’ll try contacting by email.

The developer hasn’t answered my message, I wrote him an email today. I’ll keep you informed if there’s a reply.

Just received a message from him. He’s working on the update and will announce a beta program next month.

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ekm0924 said

Someone just asked a Metafilter question the other day looking for recs for books on the history of coffee and tea. Lots of possibilities in here.

http://ask.metafilter.com/290685/History-of-coffee-and-tea

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bw85 said

The China History Podcast has this 10 part series on the history of tea, from ancient times to today. It’s long but good.
https://youtu.be/iCsvtbWxZC4

AJ said

Seconding.

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AJ said

Many of these can fall in more than one category, but these are the ones still (mostly) in print/easily found on amazon/abebooks…

For Philosophy/Abstract/Culture:
The Book of Tea (Kakuzo Okakura)
The Classic of Tea (Lu Yu)
The Spirit of Tea (Frank Hadley Murphy)
The Ancient Art of Tea (Warren Peltier)
Chinese Tea: A Cultural History and Guide (Liu Tong)

For History:
The True History of Tea (Victor H. Mair)
Darjeeling (Jeff Koehler)
For All the Tea in China (Sarah Rose)
The Great Tea Venture (J.M. Scott)

General reference/handbooks:
The Tea Cyclopedia (Keith Souter)
Tea: History, Terroirs, Varietes (Kevin Gascoyne)
The Tea Enthusiast’s Handbook (Mary Lou Heiss)
The Tea Companion/The New Tea Companion (Jane Pettigrew; she’s done a few tea books, google her)
Tea Dictionary (James Norwood Pratt; it’ll eventually be obsolete, as all dictionaries are want to be; Pratt’s also written other works on tea)

A lot of these focus on or heavily emphasize either China or the UK, or both (minus the handbooks, although the ‘history’ section of these still often emphasize english history); I’ve a couple more than touch on Japan, Korea, India and Russia.

More, including more specialized works:
http://artoftea.teatra.de/bookshelf/

Also:
https://www.teaguardian.com/ a series of articles done by one guy, on different tea subjects.

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Oneironaut said

What really got me interested in tea and taught me a lot I didn’t know were Max Falkowitz’s articles on SeriousEats. http://www.seriouseats.com/tags/tea

That’s a nice bunch of articles there. Thanks for sharing!

Liquid Jade is one of my favorite books about tea.

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