Tea online: Rate Tea
December 5, 2009Lynne Kiesling
I drink tea. Lots of tea. Mostly strong, black tea with milk and some Splenda. I prefer Assam and its big, malty body. I’m not such a tea weenie that I drink only loose leaf tea, but I am enough of a tea weenie that when I travel home from London, I always bring back several boxes of Twinings Assam tea bags (not available in the U.S.) and at least a pound of loose-leaf breakfast tea from Fortnum & Mason. I know I’m pathetic, but I’m OK with that …
So I’m excited about Rate Tea, a new independent tea rating web site. In addition to being able to rate teas, it links to several other tea-related web sites, so it can serve as a tea portal (see, I warned you, I’m a tea weenie …). It looks like it will be thorough and useful, and now just needs to be populated with ratings. If you are a tea drinker, head on over, sign up, and rate some teas!
It’s also interesting because its proprietor, Alex Zorach, is a statistician with a particular interest in developing rating algorithms. Check it out!
UPDATE: Another good online tea community is Steepster, which has more of a social networking nature to it. Rate Tea and Steepster are complements, not substitutes.
I’m almost certain I drink more
Buy Ceylon, not Assam, and only loose. Dilmah Yata Watte (strongest they’ve got) and Twinnigs Ceylon Breakfast (they seem to be ending this one, which will make me miserable). I was quite astonished that I couldn’t get them any other way but through Amazon, when I got to the US for this semester.