Now available on amazon.com

Reference

Verzuh, Ron. Tea Leaves – Journeys to the Tea Lands (Eugene, Oregon: CreateSpace online publishing, 2012), ISBN: 9781457922951, $22.95.

Cover blurb

We live in an age of war and terror. The four horsemen of apocalypse  gallop through the world as if they had coffee hot-wired into their veins. The tea time of the soul seems far away for the moment. Perhaps what the world needs now is to return to a quieter more peaceful time when the fast pace of life stopped each day for a while, when people put aside everything else to enjoy a brief respite with their favourite cuppa.

Introduction

The tea lady woke me with a rap on the door of my clean but tiny room at Dolphin Square, Pimlico, in London.  Tea was the last thing on my mind at 7:30 a.m.  But this was London, England, where morning tea is a tradition that dates back even before Thomas Twining set up his little tea shop in the Strand in 1706. “Here’s your cuppa, Gov!” said my tea lady as she placed a tray of piping hot PG Tips with milk and biscuits (read cookies) at my bedside.  “Hope you like it.”  It was part of the $65 cost of my room, a steal by London standards in those days even though I had to share a bathroom.

Now available at amazon.com.

Sample chapter

Tea at the Top of the World

On the way up to the fabled ‘hill station’ of Darjeeling, 7,000 feet of sea level in West Bengal, India, I shuddered as we passed hand-lettered signs screaming “We Want Gorka Land.” Wouldn’t a separatist guerrilla movement here in the foothills of the Himalayas fancy taking me hostage? I flattered myself. And wouldn’t they be disappointed to learn that I was just another traveller on a pilgrimage to the ancestral home of the “Champagne of Teas”?

Darjeeling tea – Part I

Tags: tea

This entry was posted on February 10, 2011 at 6:06 am and is filed under Books, Consuming, Cultures, Featured, Non-Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.