Hey guys!

[dorkpie]

Hopefully y'all are still checking your reading pages, because I have a question for you guys.

But first, a bit of context: my SO told me today that he's been looking for an excuse to get into loose leaf tea, and, I'm not going to lie, primarily it got me thinking of teas that I've been wanting to try and can now buy under the guise of expanding his horizons, but it also reminded me of what got me started on drinking tea in the first place.

The story itself is pretty simple. I never had a cup of tea I liked until I came in to work sick one day and my boss made the most delicious cup of tea I've ever had.

How did you start drinking tea, or did you grow up on it?

Comments

[katarik]

I grew up on iced black tea in the American South, both sweetened and un. Drinking hot tea I think mostly started because I wanted some downtime and I read a lot of books of my grandmother's generation, which discussed the pleasures of a nice cup of tea of an afternoon.

I have about fifty varieties of tea now, some loose and some bagged, a mixture of green and white and black and oolong and rooibos and herbal, so apparently the habit stuck!

[wallflowerish]

I did not grow up on tea. Part of my growing up was in the South, so everyone drank sweet tea, which I didn't care for, so I never drank it. Then my brother-in-law introduced me to Jasmine tea a couple of years ago, and I've been hooked since then. I was really into black teas for a while, but right now I'm drinking Traditional Medicinals Throat Coat, which is especially good since it's winter time!

[krait]

My family always drank unsweetened iced tea; I don't actually remember when I started drinking hot tea! It must have been in college... I had a great little pot that heated water super fast, so that helped. Maybe I started by making iced tea, and being too impatient to actually ice it? :D

Now I own a dedicated electric kettle with settings for black/oolong/green/white, two lovely glass teapots, a miscellany of teacups with saucers, and a large miscellany of mugs! Not to mention every loose-leaf gadget known to mankind, and an ever-shifting assortment of both bagged and loose teas.

[bookblather]

I think I was eight years old and going through a phase of wanting to do everything that my daddy did. My daddy drank tea, so I wanted to drink tea. I got raspberry tea the first time I ever had tea, and never looked back. :D

[proseac]

My mother was English, and tea was the panacea that cured all ills, so I was raised on it practically from the moment I was weaned. In the beginning it was mostly milk and sugar with a bit of tea poured in it, then as I got older she gradually adjusted the proportions.

By the time I went to school I was carrying hot tea in my thermos with my lunch. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, and a cuppa (or two, or three!) has always been a part of my daily ritual ever since.

[glinda]

Well, I'm Scottish, so I grew up with the whole British cup of tea as cure all thing. I enjoyed it to a certain extent but unfortunately knew lots of people who were 'oh you like tea, you must drink it all the time' which put me off (they generally made rubbish tea too). So I mostly avoided it outside of our favourite Chinese restruant where the after meal offer was tea? China tea or India tea? My love of their 'China' tea (I presumed it was green at the time but experience now suggests it was white tea) lead me on adventures in first Green and Jasmine Tea and then, once I discovered specialist Tea Shops (My favourites are in Bristol and Chicago, neither are geographically convenient to me - there's a coffee shop here that does an excellent selection of teas but its not an actual 'tea' shop) White and Red Tea.

My obsession with loose leaf tea, comes oddly enough from my local art house cinema where if you order tea you get a pot with a wee filter full of loose leaf tea. I love a fruit tea (I will not call them 'infusions' and I don't actually like fruit flavoured 'tea') and they did proper ones, Apple loves Mint tea involves mint leaves and tiny chunks of dried apple among other things.

I got a tea pot with filter for my birthday and am delightedly experimenting with loose leaf teas. It's really easy to get loose leaf green tea, but there's only one place that does any other kinds locally and their selection is all varieties of black tea. I have however, been enjoying the box of Darjeeling I bought, and look forward to trying the Ceylon tea I have next in line...

Ummm...I might need a tea icon...

[untonuggan]

My mother is British. I grew up on camomile tea when sick, and toy tea sets made of real china, and sometime when I was deamed "old enough", black tea with milk.

[xoxomarina]

I grew up on drinking mate cocido (Argentine herbal tea), because that's where I was born even though I grew up in the states.