Review: Tea

Tea, to my mind, is Coffee’s snooty, hormonal sister. Coffee is cool, it gets around any way it can, and it sleeps with a lot of people. You can take it any which way you like, but at the end of the day, it’s still coffee. Coffee can be bad, coffee can be good, coffee can blow a hole in the back of your skull because it has been roasted, ground and brewed to perfection, but at the end of the day, you know that basically you’re getting coffee.

Tea is uppity. It has many moods and flavours. It calls itself by one name one day, and you enjoy it’s company, hit it off immediately, and decide you’re going to change your whole life to drink of it’s sweet lips.

But the next day you think, oh tea, I love you so much, a rose by any other name smells just as sweet, I’ll try you in your “Earl Grey” pant-suit, or maybe your “Orange Pekoe” underwear or even out in your delightful “Russian Caravan” kaftan… Bam! It’s like you and tea never hit it off, and on reflection, this tea chick is actually a fugly bitch, whose lips now taste like burnt newspaper (Russian Caravan), chinese markets (Orange Pekoe) or grass clippings (Early Grey).

Tea is a fickle mistress. You pick your blend, and you stick to it. If you feel adventurous, maybe go with something with a vaguely similar name, and hope for the best. Don’t expect it to taste the same, because tea owes you nothing, and it’s unfair to expect it to be any other way.

The exception to this is Chai Tea, which is coffee for people who don’t like coffee, and are adult enough to not get a hot chocolate at every coffee drinking juncture.

3/5