Lynne 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.