Tony Gebely - Tea: A User’s Guide

Eggs and Toast Media

This book is the result of my 10 years as a student of tea. Tea is one of those subjects where the more you learn, the less you know. Because of this, I vowed not to write this book in a vacuum. Rather, core ideas were shared with readers of World of Tea (www.worldoftea.org), and with the help of feedback I refined these ideas. Finer points were tested by extensive peer review.

Before we dive in, there is a bit of stage setting to do. This book isnt about all tea. Its about specialty tea. Specialty tea production prioritizes quality over quantity. Teas that fall beneath the specialty moniker exhibit a diversity in flavor that cannot be matched by coffee or even wine. Yet most of the world is only familiar with commodity teaproduction that prioritizes quantity over quality. This is the cheap black tea (sold in individual tea bags) that most consumers know. The goal of this book is to celebrate the diversity of fresh, complex loose-leaf specialty teas.

Youll also notice that there are very few mentions of tea culture within this reference. Early on while writing this manuscript, I realized that by separating tea culture from objective tea study, we are left with a much better framework for tea education. Its much easier to learn about the tea itself and add color with culture later. This is a book about tea and only tea; there arent any mythical stories, lengthy descriptions of preparation methods or even recipes for cooking with tea. This book strictly covers the journey of tea leaves from the field to the cup. I hope that youll use it as a reference throughout your tea journey.

In this book youll learn how tea is grown, harvested and processed into different tea types. You will also learn how to prepare tea properly at home; youll gain a foundation of knowledge that will allow you to steep any tea and achieve desirable results.

In part one, well discuss the chemical properties of tea as it is propagated, harvested and processed. In part two well classify tea into six categories, building on information learned in part one. In part three well get to tea preparation and evaluation, the most important part of our tea journey.

Before we begin with part one, I want to give you an overview of my classification methods. The following pages also serve as an introduction to the romanized names that well be using in the book.