![]() Next, she gives instructions for trying your taste test at home. But all forms are enjoyable, depending on your taste. She found that tea from bags is the darkest and least complex flavor. Her first experiment is to compare three forms of English Breakfast Tea, loose or in a bag or sachet. Skilled tea tasters ensure this consistency by blending teas from many sources. Lovelace emphasizes, however, an advantage of tea bags: the taste and quality of bagged tea are consistent. So tea in bags is cheaper, and its finer particles make a more potent brew. In addition, bagging allows for much more economical shipping. Lower-grade teas often use sustenance leaves plucked below the emerging buds and may lack flavor. Is the tea vacuum-packed, loose, or in a tin, a bag, or a sachet? Is the packaging meant to help preserve the tea, or is it simply to entice you to purchase it?īagged teas mainly contain CTC (cut, tear, crush) grades, fannings, and dust, which is not an appealing description. Tea appreciation doesn’t begin with the tea in your cup or mug: it starts with the packaging. Processing distinguishes different teas: green, white, yellow, oolong, puer-and black teas emerge from different processing stages. Here you will learn a little about tea processing: through plucking, withering, oxidation, and fermentation. So use the words that seem meaningful to you, but keep in mind that these words may not be meaningful to others. ![]() She raises the question of terminology: how do you label the aromas and tastes of tea? We have a limited taste and smell vocabulary in English, so we often say x tastes like y. But, if you’ve never tasted y, you won’t find this description particularly enlightening. Knowing how taste buds work helps us understand why what is pleasurable to one person is distasteful to another. ![]() For example, we learn how taste buds work to affect our perceptions of tea. But, as with all the science in this book, it is applied science. The last may surprise you but think of the sound of the roil of the kettle and the sound of pouring tea, the clink of cups, the plop of a sugar cube or lemon slice, and the hiss of sipping. The book has some physiology, particularly how we taste, smell, and listen to tea. She said the supplies are easy and cheap to acquire, a lesson she learned when she taught her first courses at Cornell with no budget. The book begins with a list of supplies you will need to try her experiments with tea. She leaves space for you to write your early memories of tea. Some English ladies taught her how to prepare, serve and enjoy tea. She tells us her introduction to tea was at age 6, on a ship returning home from Europe, just after World War II. See Excerpt: Important Note about Teabag Teas So there are no journeys to tea-producing areas or exotic tea gardens in exotic places, just fun at home with tea. A Nerd’s Eye Tea Lab is free of much of the biochemistry of her previous book, and her focus here is to let you explore tea at home. ![]() Her books pleasantly surprised me, a relative newcomer to the world of tea. Now retired, she is applying her teaching and research skills to the world of tea. She joined the faculty at Cornell University and received several teaching awards for her work with students. She attended French schools until she was 18, studied piano through her childhood (and still plays), took a physics degree, and became a medical doctor, board certified in pediatrics. Virginia Utermohlen Lovelace was born in New York City. I enjoyed this book immensely.īut the book could as easily be called a sensualist’s tea lab, for this is a book where you learn to explore your senses with tea, especially sight, sound, smell, and taste. My first surprise reading her books was discovering that I am a nerd. Virginia Lovelace explained in her previous book, Tea: A Nerd’s Eye View, a nerd is an individual who enjoys learning and does not adhere to social norms. A Nerd’s Tea Lab: How to explore and enjoy your favorite teas at homeĪs Dr.
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