Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

Attention All Tea Snobs

I reported earlier that I have officially gone Full Coffee Snob, and I am now blissfully in love with my Chemex and my Tonx Coffee subscription.

But — if I am a burgeoning cellist or museum curator in the coffee department…

Well, in the tea department I’m basically a garbageman.

I have no technique when it comes to tea. No care for quality. I take a bag. Not long ago I microwaved the water and the bag together — now I’m actually at least using my swan neck kettle to pour the hot water over it. Then: milk. And I leave the tea bag in there the whole time I drink it.

My teabags are probably filled with pesticide-shellacked pencil shavings. It’s probably a 1:1 ratio of actual tea and somebody’s pubes. The gods only know what the hell I’m actually drinking.

I’m told many of these things are anathema to the true tea drinker, so much so that some of you right now are probably suffering Scanners-like head-rupturing effects. So, I’m talking to you tea-sipping snobs out there: what’s your tea ritual like? I’m looking for anything and everything I would require to join the Ancient Order of The Pristine Tea Leaf — where do you get your tea? How do you brew it? Is there a temperature thing? A technique?

School me, tea nerds. School me.