Tea Blog

Each time I embark upon the writing of this column, I find myself getting a little nervous. After all, the supply of new tea books has to run out some time. Doesn’t it? Well, maybe it will at some point, but we apparently haven’t gotten to that point just yet. So let’s get on with it.

I don’t recall seeing many (any?) books about that picturesque tea-growing region of India known as Darjeeling. Yes, you know the one. But that’s about to change, as of next May. When we’ll be presented with Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World’s Greatest Tea, by Jeff Koehler. Information is still a bit sparse on this one but among the author’s other books, for what it’s worth, are cookbooks focused on the cuisine of Spain and Morocco.

Tea and Downton Abbey seem to go hand in hand for some reason and so it’s probably no surprise that an enterprising publisher has chosen to capitalize on this. With the recently published Tea at Downton: Afternoon Tea Recipes From The Unofficial Guide to Downton Abbey, by Elizabeth Fellow. Which promises to “share some recipes from the golden age of England.”

Once upon a time the only sommeliers to be found were the kind who tended to the wine drinking types. But the times are changing and author Jennifer Petersen has commemorated these changes with Foundations of Tea: Tea Sommelier Journal: Taste, Taste, Taste, which was also released recently. As the publisher’s description notes, the book “is a comprehensive organizational tool for organizing and recording your sensory evaluations of tea. This forward-thinking journal provides guidelines for tasting various types of tea, steeping times and evaluations for any type of tea or herbal infusions.”

If you don’t know anything about Persian tea, then we’re pretty much in the same boat. If you’d like to know more about Persian tea, you might want to start with The Art of Persian Tea, by Farahnaz Amirsoleymani. In which the author “highlights the essentials of Persian tea culture: tradition, blending, & brewing the perfect cup.”

See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.

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