For years now, I\’ve been trying to develop a taste for tea. Tea has so much to recommend it: tons of antioxidants; a strong aesthetic tradition and a world of adorable pots and cups–not to mention cozies– to go with it; not enough caffeine to keep me awake at night, and so on.
So why am I not drinking as much tea as I think I should? Because I\’m drinking coffee.
Compared to coffee, tea, whether green or black, lapsang-souchong, darjeeling, orange pekoe, Irish breakfast, or gunmetal, seems to me anemic, namby-pamby. Even when sweetened, it never tastes like much more than slightly bitter H2O. Whereas a good cup of coffee can take the place of dessert, can be almost as satisfying (if memory serves) as smoking a cigarette, can revive the flagging animus. It tastes of chocolate, of red wine, and best of all, it tastes and smells strongly and unmistakably of what it is: coffee.
During my recent years\’ immersion in British literature, I have read thousands of accounts of tea made, served, and drunk in every possible circumstance, from the sordid to the exalted. And I am no closer to understanding its hold on the British, just as I do not–and never hope to–share their taste for marmite.
Perhaps there is nothing I can do about it. Perhaps there are coffee people and tea people, just as there are dog people and cat people. But I have loved and lived with both dogs (the coffee equivalent) and cats (more of a tea kind of pet), so I see no reason I shouldn\’t bridge the coffee world and the world of tea as well.
For years, believing that coffee was not good for me, I gave it up in favor of tea–usually green tea, never in a bag, made with water at the recommended temperature. Every time I drank a cup, I wished it were coffee. Then this year, hearing that women who drank two or more cups of coffee a day were significantly less likely to be depressed than those who drank less or none, I threw myself back into the arms of coffee. Black, strong and full of attitude, it leaves me, after each encounter, satisfied, exhilarated and a little shaky.
10 Responses
Funny — I do love a good cup of tea, but prefer coffee — for the reasons you mention.However, I find that coffee, if I drink it after 10 am, gives me a stomach ache so if I need a pick-up in the afternoon I drink a strong cup of tea. My current favorite is Yorkshire.I also love Marmite. Really love it.
I keep wishing I were a true tea drinker. The truth is whenever I make myself a cup, I will drink half of it. That's it. I never finish it. I like tea, so I don't really understand this. Except that by the time I do drink tea (afternoon), I've already had my fill of coffee.
Dona, you are a Brit at heart!
Indigo, maybe there's a support group out there for people like us?
Mmmmmm. Marmite. Yay Dona!
I think it's what you're raised with. I like them both, but think there are terrible examples of both. I'm thinking you're prompting another blog post as response – you're so provocative, Lali!
O.k., I'll look for your post.
I drink so much coffee my hair and skin smell like it sometimes. It's bad. I will drink herbal tea at night. But black tea? I have to load it up with so much sugar I might as well just not. I don't like the flavor. Mike says coffee smells like dirt, but tea smells like old leaves to me.
Yes, I sometimes refer to myself as a closet anglophile.
I'm married to a non-coffee drinker myself. To him (though he doesn't remind me of it often) coffee smells like garbage…his parents' garbage that he had to take out when he was a kid.