(This is my 124th blog on Tea Trade. It will form a good intro to my 125th which I am planning to be something a little different. Stay tuned!)
It must be said, I have a lot of tea.
Now, I’m not talking about the dozens of kilograms of tea sitting in our blending area; nor am I talking about the dozen or so 150 litre boxes containing blended and packed tea, packed in The Devoteamobile for this weekend’s rather large market.
No, I’m talking about the personal stash.
We have a large four door pantry with 12 huge shelves. Two of those shelves are devoted to tea. Then there’s the tea rack (as featured in the old video linked below) on the wall, and the tea caddy, which is full of Sikkim Temi, as usual.
Last time I counted, I had 72 teas, not counting our own blends and a few experimentals created for business purposes. This was about a year ago. Lady Devotea suggested this number could be winnowed down a bit, and after a great deal of effort and deliberately finishing off my meagre supplies of two teas this morning, it’s down to 71.
Progress? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
The point is this: Does having such a large selection enhance or diminish my tea credentials? Does it show a passion for variety, or a damnable inability to decide and refine? How many different Assams does one person need? Am I ever going to drink that milk oolong? What the hell is in this unlabelled plastic bag*?
Some recent events have got me thinking about how much tea, and what a large variety thereof, I have crammed into the shelves to the ‘falling out’ point.
If I cull, what do I cull? And even: what’s missing? At this point there are at least three or four real favourites I am out of. And what do visitors like to drink?
What about the teas I have that Lady Devotea doesn’t like? They tend to hang around longer as I never make a pot for two of those; they are confined to early mornings when I am hunched over my keyboard before the sun comes up.
I have whole binders full of tea, to paraphrase the Mitt Romney phrase that is today’s hot meme.
And I rather like it.
*I think it’s a Vietnamese green of some sort.
Nice to see that meme has sort of made it into the tea world too.
“sort of made it into the tea world” ? It’s in my blog! That’s not sort of, that’s making it into the tea world in a big way, surely?
I have a similar dilemma, deciding which ones to cull and save. Which ones to brew by the pot or just by the gaiwan for savior’s sake. But I am horribly jealous of your Sikkim Temi stores. Good golly. What I wouldn’t give for that much Temi. Temi, TO ME!
Anything that is a year old, and you haven’t wanted enough to finish, I’d cull that. Unless it was so special, you couldn’t bear to scoop out the last lot.
With us, all the large bags of tea are large because we love them, so they never hang around for long. The only teas that sit on shelves are samples. We often wait for the right moment, and then we forget they are there when the right moment comes.
I guess I prefer a few ones I love, to lots of teas I don’t like enough to finish within a couple of months. Of course we don’t get tons of samples sent either, because companies have cottoned on that we don’t review teas…So what, send me your samples anyway! 😛
From 72 to 71? I am really impressed.
I shall take this as a dire warning and portent of the future. My teas have spread from a large cupboard into an entire antique coffer ( about 6 ft long ) and threaten to take over the house. That’s just the tea you understand – not the accessories. I predict that I shall eventually be found suffocated beneath a huge heap of leaves – but with a big smile on my face.