Are you a coffee drinker or a fan of tea? Or both? I'm both. I love a good cup of coffee but I equally like tea, not only for its health benefits but because there is no bitter after taste and I always feel refreshed and energetic after a good cuppa. What kind do you drink?
There are so many different ones, why limited yourself to the common grocery store brands when you can discover the art of tea from specialty shops and by loose tea? In my town we have many tea shops where you can choose from hundreds of loose tea from black to green and beyond and the shop assistant will scoop as much as you want into a bag and you can bring it home and transfer it into your favorite tea tin.
In addition to tea shops, you can also buy loose tea in beautiful tins from specialty companies like The o Dor and Kusmi (both from Paris) and the lovely German tea companies Tee Handels Kontor in Bremen (they make a lovely pear blend) and Samova in Hamburg (Istanbul Nights is my favorite). In addition to being a relaxing drink, a beautiful tea in a pretty tin is a lovely decorative object as these photos illustrate.
So remember this weekend… have a lovely cup of tea!
(images: holly becker, selina lake, chez larsson, minimaus2009)
I discovered Kusmi tea a few months ago during my long weekend stay in Paris. It’s truly great and Im loving the small cute tins.
I used to be a strictly Diet Pepsi drinker, but I knew it wasn’t healthy. I’ve since left it behind and become a tea drinker. The ritual of making the tea has given me something to look forward to and has replaced my bad habit. I’m limited right now to the “grocery store” brands, but as I become more of a connoisseur I hope to develop my taste for teas. And now I think I better make a cup. =) Have a wonderful weekend full of tea Holly!
Barry’s Tea from Ireland is my go to cup of tea…..love it!
Lovely post! I will have to link!
I am both! Coffee in the morning, and a cup of hot green tea in the afternoon.
I am both. I need a nice cup of tea in the morning and a latte in the afternoon. My husband bought a little expresso maker for my 40th and I am using it every day – it is my little treat and has become a little ritual.
I adore Jasmin Green tea, but have found it difficult to find one I really like. I’ve just stumbled over jasmine tea from Teapigs and really like and hope I will find some others.
I drink tons of green tea. And yerba and jasmine and peppermint and chamomile and…I love tea. I would be so sad if a new study showed that tea had a negative effect on my health.
Coffee = yeuch. Tea = yum! I used to think all teas were created equal, and I also used to dollop huge amounts of honey into my tea until I discovered Teapigs (Google them!) whose tea is so fabulous that it needs no addition of sickly sweet stuff. My favourites are the white tea and the blue oolong tea, but the peppermint is also very special – when I tried it I thought, “I know what peppermint tea tastes like and this will be very nice but no different” but its lovely freshness and proper pepperminty flavour really surprised me.
I love the smell of coffe, but I am a tea drinker all the way. One of my favorite vacations was to Bermuda. It is British, so of-course they serve afternoon tea daily. They served a cinnamon blend that I’d never had before and it was so delicious I ordered a supply as soon as I returned home. Growing up, my mother always had a tea party on Sunday afternoon for my brother and me. We would take turns telling a story. I have now taught all of my grandchildren (4 of them) to drink tea and they love it. Sometimes in the summer, we lay down on the ground outside on a blanket and look up at the stars and we will have tea and cookies. It is something my grandkids love to do. Check out a recipe for Chai Tea Latte that I created. You can find it on my web-site. Not only is it good, this particular recipe is full of anti-oxidants.
I’ll drink tea for the tins alone!
I know they’ve made the blog rounds this week (DesignSponge or Apartment Therapy, can’t remember which) but who makes the knit-textured mug in the first picture?
Coffee smells nice, but it does a number on my stomach and is generally too bitter for my tastes. So I’m definitely a tea drinker. I love any of the “Breakfast” teas – Irish, English, Scottish. So far the most I’ve branched out is to some British import teas that the boyfriend brings back from Canada. Love them with milk — the proper British way.
I have gotten some flavored specialty teas for my mother while on vacation – some lovely blueberry tea from Maine, for example.
oh those tea tins are just devine!
Definitely tea for me! At least 4-5 cups a day. One of my favourites is Rooibos. (Very) slowly starting to love a good cup of coffee too, but the caffeine can make me feel like I’m on strobe!
I love tea! Harney and Sons makes some very good ones – Paris, Palm Court and Elyse’s Blend are some of my favorites. I like to use loose leaf tea and brew it in a pot. There is something about the whole preparation and drinking of tea that is so relaxing.
What’s your fav. flavors of tea, Holly?
Definitely tea for me! We live in Paris and one of our indulgences (we don’t have many on our small budget) is to buy loose teas from Mariage Frères — my absolute favorite is Wedding Imperial, which we buy 200 grams at a time (the others 100 g.). Sadly though their packaging is black so it doesn’t really cohere with anything else in the kitchen (and we have open shelving). But oh well, it’s delightful, and a mug of tea every morning makes me so happy!
I prefer caffe latte en masse. But Kusmi Chai tea is also really nice.
I like the small collection of pink pixes.
Both, but coffee is an ungrateful lover while tea is a faithful friend.
My mother would give me lukewarm tea when I was 5, when I was 8 I fell in love with the packaging of Jasmine tea and would drink it with tons of sugar (ewww!), at 15 just because once I was too lazy to bring the sugar and lemon I discovered that Twinning’s Darjeeling and Earl Gray taste incredibly without any addition, at 16 discovered that cold tea is very refreshing “as is”. Green tea, white tea, herbal teas and spiced teas have a place in my cupboard but not in my heart, where Jasmine, Earl Gray and Darjeeling rule (with the occasional appearance of English Breakfast when I need a pick me up). Also, I collect the 100 gr. Twinning’s tea cans. I have 9 and I’m always in the lookout for more.
I started drinking coffee because when I got married, at 24, got like 5 coffee pots and machines and love them all. As other readers mentioned, I’ve always liked the smell of it but not so much the beverage. I lived in the US for 2 years and I loved the coffee up there, despite people saying that American coffee is horrible. Some of it is so for sure, but I discovered that good coffee doesn’t need to be ink black to be good, sometimes a “umbrella’s juice” is fine: subtle in the tongue and the nose, enticing to the eye, light to the stomach.
I am with you on this one. Coffee is great in the morning, but tea is sooo refreshing and a great pickmeup. I am English, so of course drink gallons of the stuff. When I am exhausted from work and my feet ache, all I need is a good strong cuppa and the world rights itself.
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I’ve been obsessed with tea since I was old enough to have an imaginary tea party… Thank you for such a nice post about my favorite drink! The tea tins you have shown are beautiful. I just posted about an inspiration board about a grown up tea party on my blog yesterday, and can’t wait to have one!