Tea Is Hard

Except that teabags can be really convenient when you’re away from home, and are often available at your local supermarket and are relatively inexpensive. The convenience means that they are often a decent choice to help a new tea drinker start getting an idea of what they want to explore in greater depth. Also, some of the herbal teas available in teabags have less of a difference in quality and are quite enjoyable.

I would agree about the herbal teas, but then again some of what is in the average spice cabinet really could be brewed as an herbal tea. Sage and rosemary are two of my favorites, and as long as those weren’t too old or in a ground form they could brew to become tea (or a tisane, if you prefer, but dictionaries vary in opinion about how much that distinction makes sense), and rosemary even ages relatively well. About tea in tea bags, that must have come up here plenty of times, but what tea people claim about that typically being low grade dust does seem to be the rule. I’m all for people taking their tea habit in any direction they choose but it doesn’t take long experimenting with mid-grade teas for tea bags to drop completely out of the rotation, or for whatever reasons most of what any grocery store would ever carry, in my experience (which hasn’t been based in the US or Europe, for what that’s worth).

This raises a related interesting point, about a modest version or a tea type flagging an area for exploration. In some cases it seems to me that lower grade versions still serve as representative, drinkable versions of the same general tea as better examples, even if characteristics do vary, but for other types you seem to lose the general character altogether at lower quality levels. The examples I cite would be subjective, and others would surely disagree, but to me lower quality versions of Longjing style green teas and lightly oxidized oolongs still retain most of the general character of higher quality teas, even if some of the most interesting aspects aren’t there. For my favorite tea type, Wuyi Yanchas, darker roasted oolongs, lower quality examples can prove relatively undrinkable, quite different than better examples, and there is a lot of variance between mid-level examples and better teas. Some of the flavor range stays the same but the general effect, tied to some subtle aspects, changes completely. Of course in some sense that would be true of any tea type. But it’s all not as hard as I’m making it sound; one should just enjoy the process. If that involves drinking tea made from tea bags for an extra year or two it’s not that big of a loss, just the basic experience of decent tea as most enthusiasts define it.

Thanks for clarifying! I’m probably more conscious of it since I drink mostly herbal tea, but I worry about implying to newer tea drinkers that teabags aren’t a valid option. I appreciate you taking the time to explain your position more clearly.

I used to hate black teas because I thought it all tasted like Liptons.. so glad that I discovered China blacks! :D Now, I’ve ventured into Assams.. though every once in a while some of them just taste like a smoother Lipton.. blech.. heehee!

I’ve tried very nice black teas from Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, and I’m sure there are black teas from Taiwan I’d like better than those I’ve tried. Of course there are lots of good, interesting versions from China as well, and lots of other countries, especially India and Sri Lanka. To me it’s interesting that black tea can be nothing like tea bags or typical Assam or Ceylon, that there is so much range. I’ve tried versions of black teas from Japan and Korea too, and Nepal, but all that drifts off the subject of tea not needing to be so difficult, just best to not try to drink the ocean in one swallow and take time exploring.