One of the shared passions my wife and I have is tea.
We have had the pleasure of sipping mint tea while
buying rugs in Morocco, of participating in an African
Tea Ceremony in Cote d'Ivoire, and of course
partaking of High Tea in England. One of our favorite
social gatherings is to host a tea-tasting party at
our home. Over the course of our marriage, our
knowledge about tea has grown and our palate for tea
has become if not refined, at least opinionated. We
like our tea black and sniff our noses at mere
tisanes! Even green teas are eschewed in favor of a
bold quality black tea. And of all the black teas, our
favorite comes from the region of Assam. A few years
ago, our local source for quality Assam tea changed
ownership and the new owners stopped ca rrying tea.
The situation was desperate! The battle to keep the
Internet from becoming commercial had been lost so I
turned to it hoping that somewhere, some entrepreneurs
had started selling tea through a web site. At first,
my searches were disheartening. Most tea sites were
Only selling what I call "new age" teas. Suddenly the
proverbial light clicked on and I realized that if I
searched for Assam followed by Tea, I would be guiding
the search engines towards what I really wanted. The
results from that search were encouraging: the summary
for a particular site, www.specialteas.com seemed
particularly hopeful. My dearest hopes were far
exceeded when I clicked on the link to find not only
that they sold Assam tea, but that I could get one of
over a dozen different single-estate Assam teas!!
There, listed by rating (e.g. FTGFOP-1) were teas from
estates like Harmutty and Hajua and Mangalaam. Each
tea was described in prose that would make even a
wine snob envious. We have been a devoted customers
ever since. Now all we have to do is add "sipping
Assam tea in beautiful Assam itself" to our list of
travel stories.
(Contributed by Tracy Petrie, Colorado Springs,
Colorado)
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