I love spicy chai tea. I don't drink coffee at all, but in the winter, I usually have a cup of hot tea every day to warm me, as well as my hands, up. We were in Ireland in the fall and the tea was so delicious every where. I loved how it came served in a teapot every where we went. Toward the end of our trip, I found this gorgeous teapot at a small pottery shop. At that point, I'd already bought quite a few wool sweaters, an expensive painting, and a few other things at a different pottery shop. I didn't have room left in my bags, and I didn't want to spend the money on shipping this one small thing. I didn't get it. After we got home, I told dh I regretted it - this artist's style was quite unique, very colorful and abstract. He actually called and ordered me one for Christmas - that was quite a surprise! While I normally drink either Tazo, Stash or Trader Joe's tea, I decided I wanted to try using loose tea leaves like I had in Ireland. Finally, just last week, I stopped at a tea and spice shop and bought a bag of Chai and a bag of green tea leaves. I made my first cup on Friday and it was delicious! It was fun serving myself out of my new little teapot. I also really like iced tea but never make it at home. I've been meaning to, but just haven't bothered. It is my drink of choice though if I'm out at a restaurant in the summer. While I do like some sweet tea, I prefer my iced tea unsweetened, with just a touch of sugar and lemon. Daisy, I"ll have to try the Tazo zen tea. I'm still going to use bags for when I'm in a hurry, but my loose tea when I'm relaxing!

Two of my grandparents were from Ireland and the other 2 from Scotland and Wales and all 4 made tea the same way - very much as jmc described. The only difference was my Irish grandparents wouldn't purchase British tea and relied on relatives to send them Barry's or Bewley's. Now of course those brands are readily available. I usually drink Irish Breakfast Tea which is fairly strong since it's a blend of several black teas and heavily Assam. But I've never learned to appreciate Earl Grey, there's something about the oil of bergamot that I can't abide - even the aroma bothers me. My DD on the other hand now drinks Stash's double bergamot. DD's significant other moved here from London and he prefers P.G. Tips and of course his digestives. When we were in Dublin we often had tea at Bewley's on Grafton. How delightful to sit by the window in the late afternoon and watch the world pass by. For some reason I've segregated my coffee and tea - one cup of coffee in the morning before I begin my day but I seem to reserve my tea for late afternoon or evening when I'm relaxing. And we always had a cup of light, sweet tea when we weren't feeling well.

Too many varieties to list them all. Today there is a lot of decent wine available. In general, lower-priced wine will not be vineyard specific (in other words, it can come from grapes grown in a number of different areas), it will not have been aged, it will not have been put in new oak barrels (expensive), it may be a blend of different varietals. None of those things are bad or mean that the wine is not good. White wine is typically made by pressing the grapes and fermenting the juice. Red wine is made by letting the skins soak in the juice for a while. This provides color and flavor. If you do not let the skins soak, you end up with a white or pink wine - "blush" or "white" zinfandel is an example. This wine is actually a rose, but was renamed for marketing purposes. Sometimes the winemaker wants to concentrate the juice, so he bleeds off some juice. This leaves 100% of the skins with maybe 85% of the juice. The red wine will be more concentrated and the "bleed wine" can be a very good rose. Drink it early and enjoy. Extraction is different from concentration - it refers to the amount of flavor that is leached from the skins. Think of a tea bag - if you leave it in the cup for a long time and squeeze it hard, your tea will be stronger. Will also be bitter - that bitterness is tannin, also in grape skins. So you get a lot of flavor, some that you don't want, and you also get a lot of tannin if you soak for a long time and then really squeeze the skins. Thus, some winemakers are really gentle, so that they don't get off-flavors in their wine. The stereotype of "new world wine" (US, Australia, S. America) is that they are fruitier, less tannic, more alcoholic, cleaner. The stereotype of old world is that they are leaner, less "fruit forward", sometimes funky. And some of that is true. But not 100%. Clean for example - literally cleaning the winery can reduce the amount of brettomyces (a kind of mold) that makes the wines stink. A little may be interesting, a lot is awful. And not everyone in the US wants to make big fruit bombs. But after all, wine is from fruit and you should taste some, no? A couple of other things - there is wine made from lots of stuff, but I am only talking about wine from grapes. And those grapes are vinifera grapes - the native American grapes tend not to make good wine, although there is a hybrid called Norton that is used in Missouri that can make a palatable wine. As far as descriptors - don't take them literally. If I describe wine as having notes of chocolate - they are really just hints. I only had one wine that REALLY tasted like chocolate - it was from Portugal and I loved it. Finally, most of the stuff in supermarkets is not really that great. I lived in Indiana for a while - not really wine country. But you can order on-line and I heartily recommend it. Grapes grow around 45 degrees latitude north and south of the equator. Closer to the equator you get tropics so you make rum. Farther away it is too cold so you grow grain and make beer and vodka. White grapes tend to come from cooler areas like Germany, or higher in the hills. That means that in general, they will have more acidity. Grapes like chenin blanc are grown in the Loire - in France they are called by the location, not the grape, so you will see Vouvray or Sancerre. These are really acidic, so drink with steamed mussels or trout or light seafood. Chardonnay is the only white grape allowed in Burgundy, so if you see something called Chablis, you know it is chardonnay. They tend to be more acidic and what wine people call "minerally" than many chardonnays from California, although that is changing. In the US, Kendal Jackson put the chardonnay in oak, starting a trend for oaky chardonnay that is now subsiding. Not bad, but very different. They will feel heavier on your tongue and taste nutty with some vanilla notes. Widely available - California - Chateau Souverain, Chateau St Jean, Martin Ray. Riesling is the great grape of Germany - rarely put in barrels and often making great wine. Germany has elaborate conventions for naming, so I will not get into them here. But look for QBA or Kabinett bottlings - they will be dry (not sweet) and inexpensive (defined by me as under $25, sometimes as little as $12). Columbia Crest is a winery in Washington, part of a large group that also owns Chateau St Michelle in Washington. For an illustration of the different grape varieties (varietals), any of their bottlings are good. Inexpensive and decent wines, especially the whites. Incidentally, CC makes merlot and cabs that they put into barrels. How do they do it cheaply? Re-use - they scrape the insides of the barrels, exposing new wood and therefore do not need to buy new ones each year. If you want to spring for them, the Columbia Crest Reserve series - Walter Clore, Cab Sauv Reserve, or Syrah, are around $20 - $30 but they drink like wines that cost much much more. Australia is another great source of value. Avoid things like Yellow Tail, Penguin, etc. Too many to list, but there is something called shiraz, which is the same grape as syrah, which comes from France (NOT Iran, although people will spread that misinformation around because there is a city w the same name). Australia is huge so one cannot generalize fairly, but the most commone wines over here are from Barossa Valley - very hot place, producing very ripe grapes, meaning they will have more sugar, meaning more alcohol in the wine. These are broad generalizations, but most Barossa wines are towards the fruitier, riper end of things. So look for bottlings by Peter Lehman - always good and very typical. He has a number that is usually under $20 - Clancy's Blend, etc. Australia also makes very great dry rieslings in McClaren Vale - Leasingham has one for $12 and their shiraz is great too. France is going to be expensive if you go for the names, so stick to the south - Rousillon, Languedoc, Corbieres, Cotes du Rhone, even Chateauneuf du Pape. This area is hot and they grow grapes like syrah, grenache, mourvedre, and others. Not usually cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, and merlot. Grenache can smell and taste like strawberries. Doesn't have a lot of those bitter tannins and it is one of the most delightful wines to drink. Traditionally it is blended with the others I mentioned to make GSM. Australia makes great GSM - Lucky Country, if you can find it, is under $15 and wonderful. Spain has a grape called Tempranillo but again, they name the wine by place, not grape. They also have an aging system. Rioja was the best, at least traditionally, so it is what most people know. Young wines are called joven and can be great values. Next up is crianza, which requires at least 6 months in oak barrels (1 yr in Rioja and Ribera del Duero.) Next up is Reserva, next is Gran Reserva. For great examples of traditional style, look for Marques de Murrieta, Marques de Caceres, and Marques de Riscal. The latter especially makes millions of bottles so it should be easy to find. Not too tannic, kind of funky smelling (old leather) tasting of red cherries and tobacco - some of these wines will last for many years. Just do NOT buy the 2002 vintage. There are many wines made for the American market that are less than $10. Finally Italy. They have so many grape varietals, it is impossible to keep up. Again, remember that part of Italy, most of France, and good chunks of Europe were under water in 2002. So there is some good wine, but if you don't know, just avoid the vintage. 2003 was super hot, but some of the wines are fantastic, especially in cooler areas that generally don't ripen as much. People know the Tuscan wines - Chianti, Brunello, etc. Some are buys - Gabbiano, Felsina, Castello d'Abola all make good wine for less than $15. They are made with a grape called Sangiovese - a little more acidic than cabs with a red-fruit profile. Monte Antico is another worth looking at. But you can do something else. There is a grape called nebbiolo - grown in Piedmont and used in Barolo and Barbaresco. Well, some producers are just bottling nebbiolo as well. Mauro Molino, Vietti, and others are making wines called Nebbiolo d'Alba (or wherever they are from). These can be less than $15 and they are wonderful wines - not as tannic or harsh as the barolos and meant to be drunk young. Italy also makes white grapes - pinot grigio (kind of pointless IMO) and malvasia - which can be very nice. Other white grapes to look for - viognier - smells of flowers and peaches, sauvignon blanc - smells like grass, grapefruit, or sometimes cat pee, semillion - smells like tart apples. Other red grapes to look for - pinot noir (the red grape of Burgundy)- can smell like bright berries or Welch's Grape juice, or sometimes like mushrooms and forest and earth, some are good, some are awful. Gallo has a couple of lines - Anapamu, Gallo of Sonoma, that produce respectable stuff. Zinfandel - America's grape, although it is really from Italy where it is called primitivo. Lower end bottlings that are good come from Cline, Ravenswood (Vinter's Blend), and again Gallo - the Rancho Zabaco series. Also Malbec - originally from France but it has reached perfection in Argentina. Bodegas Norton makes a reserve for around $12 that is fantastic - plummy, rich, delicious. Catena Zapata, Terrazes de los Andes, Gascon and Dona Paula are others to look for. Chile has a lot of stuff over here but I find many of their wines vegetal and green and would not recommend them as somewhere to learn. Not fair, but we are talking gross generalizations. Don't know what you want to spend, but it was much easier to spend less than $10 a few years ago. Now you really need to look. Check out Jancis Robinson's Purple Pages - she is an English wine critic who just re-edited the Oxford Dictionary of Wine. Has a great dictionary on her site. Check out Robert Parker's board - he is probably the most influential critic of anything. And check out Decanter - a wine mag from England. And Wine Spectator - the largest circulation US wine mag. And look at the websites that some stores put up. They have a surprising amount of info. PJWine in NYC has a great site with lots of well-written tutorials. Wine Library in NJ has exhuberant blurbs, but some decent info as well. Near you, Sams Warehouse has an excellent site. E-mail me for more specific info.

pinkmountain, if you ever make it out to Sonoma County, CA, we can heartily recommend a lovely little tea bar/spa/cafe called The Taste of Tea: The Taste of Tea: Art and Science The owner's father does the cooking so it's the very rare chance to have Japanese home cooking, not the typical restaurant stuff. Spouse and I had a lovely light dinner and did a hot tea tasting of two different teas to accompany our multi-course meal. It was such a pleasure to have not only high-quality loose-leaf tea (which is actually not that rare here in the San Francisco Bay Area) but also tea that was properly brewed - each tea having the optimal water temp and brewing time to bring out its individual best. This is what I wrote about the teas from our Jan 2020 visit (which feels like a MILLION years ago, lol!): ".....We chose two teas from the extensive list. Our young waitress Kendahl was well-trained and knowledgeable. As it wasn't busy, she was able to spend the time discussing the teas with us and pouring them into the serving pot. Fine teas deserve the care taken to not oversteep them. Although Taste of Tea sells their teas on-line, only the most popular ones are listed. Both teas we tried are available at the store, or by on-line request. Taste of Tea uses an egg timer with 2-minutes, 3-minutes, and 5-minutes mini-hourglasses to set the appropriate steeping time. Each order brings two small glass teapots: one to brew, one to pour. The leaves are brewed the precise time, then the tea is poured into the second teapot so that the leaves are not left floating in the water to oversteep. Tea is poured into cups from the second teapot. The teacups are exquisite to hold; we both loved them (available on Amazon). Ti Kwan Yin, aka Iron Buddha or Iron Goddess. This was the first tea we chose. We love black tea, and this is one of Carlos' favorites. The style of it has changed over the years (see https://www.silkroadteas.com/iron-goddess-tieguanyin/ for a short summary and tasting notes). Traditionally it was more heavily roasted (oxidized). Now it is roasted more lightly, becoming more like a green tea. This was medium-bodied, which gives more floral notes. It goes very well with food. Hōjicha, roasted green tea. The current fashion for tea is to the lighter side. As we're black tea lovers – our tea at home looks like most people's coffee, being a 1:2 blend of Turkish black and smoked Lapsang Souchong – we get frustrated when the only restaurant choices are wimpy cheapo teabags of Earl Grey, Mint, or Chamomile. Restaurants that serve good bulk tea, made properly, are sadly rare. We discovered Hojicha-style green teas when we dined at Ramen Gaijin/Sebastopol on our last trip to Sonoma County. We found it very similar to a good black tea, so when we see it on a menu, we order it. This was bolder and richer in flavor than the Ti Kwan Yin, with a darker reddish-brown color. We had never done a tea tasting with food before, and enjoyed it very much. We both agreed the Ti Kwan Yin went better with the foods at Taste of Tea, which have a more delicate, subtle flavor profile than, say, Ramen Gaijin or Sake 107/Petaluma. But we both really enjoyed the Houjicha, which Spouse called "a drinking tea". "