Your first memory of tea?

[Schrammy]

Spill it. What was your first memory of tea?

I was out to dinner with my parents (~3 years old), and the waitress asked my parents if they wanted coffee. Well, she walked away and I started BAWLING in the middle of the resteraunt. My parents looked at each other and looked back at me and asked what was wrong. "She never offered ME any TEAAAAA!!!!!" The waitress ran over with her box of various teas, and I got to pick one. She brought out a little tea cup and saucer, and taught me how to make tea, and how to drink it, pinky out.


I'd like to say, that is the go-to story for telling my boyfriends I bring home. And of course, they all look at me and laugh, and see that it's completely true.

[Victoria]

No vivid memory of the first time. But it was from my German Grandmother who always had tea in an exquisite German eggshell porcelain cup and saucer. Oh how I have looked for a duplicate, but I was so young I hardly remember it. It was just delicate and golden with hand painted roses. My Grandmother had a friend who was a widow and she had no children. So this woman adopted me like a second grandmother. She would take me to ladies tea parties where everyone wore fancy gloves and pearls and tea was served in beautiful pastel glass cups with little sandwiches. I was under 5 years old.

Ahhh I just remembered another detail. The lady who hosted these parties was Laura Kettle. Funny, I never thought about her last name relating to tea until just now.

[LauraW]

She would take me to ladies tea parties where everyone wore fancy gloves and pearls and tea was served in beautiful pastel glass cups with little sandwiches. I was under 5 years old.

I wish I'd had someone like that! I've been thinking about this, and I honestly have no idea. The oldest memory of tea I can think of right now is from when I was 13, but I already knew I liked tea at that point, so apparently there's another memory that's eluding me at the moment. Maybe I was just born liking tea. I'd be ok with that.

[entropyembrace]

I don´t really have any specific memories...pretty much since I was old enough to handle hot liquids I´ve been drinking tisanes...and probably around the same age iced tea...

I -wish- I had awesome childhood tea stories like Schrammy and Victoria lol

[s(tea)ven]

No memories. If anything it was me discovering loose leaf tea going "no way! I've been doing it all wrong this whole time" that was about a year ago.

[IPT]

I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin. In my hometown there was a Chinese woman who married one of the Flying Tigers in China during the 1930's and she came back with him. This woman was like a grandmother to me and I used to visit her every afternoon after school. She would tell me about Chinese culture and history and she would share her teas with me. I first started drinking Puer around 1980. I learned the old style of the gongfu tea ceremony from her and we used to sit out on the porch watching the grass grow and talking about China. I still miss her every day and I have a lot of her teas.

[Victoria]

Wow, interesting IPT. Looks like we both had adopted Grandmothers.
I will concur growing up in a small town in the midwest myself, anything from another culture has a big impact. My grade school friend's brother's wife was from Okinawa. She had a huge influence on me and my love of things Asian.

[InsanityPrelude]

I was seven or eight and emptying the dishwasher when Mom offered me a cup of some Celestial Seasonings herbal or another. I want to say apple cinnamon.

[sneakers]

In the '50's my mother gave us tea with lots of sugar only when we were sick, to soothe a sore throat and ease congestion. Later I started drinking it any time, but it was the bagged stuff, with 3 spoons of sugar and milk. I was a heavy coffee drinker in the '60's and '70's, and then lost my taste for it. I had discovered a whole new drink, loose tea, and it was a revelation. And never a drop of sugar!

My brother, now 68, still thinks that you drink tea only when ill.

[Skippyandjif]

When I was about three or four years old, my mother was reading me Alice in Wonderland, and as soon as she got to the part with the Mad Hatter's tea party-- complete with a really spectacular illustration-- I asked her if we could have a tea party ourselves. She said yes, and made some tea which we drank from a couple of her mother's tea cups (my grandmother absolutely loved tea and had a huge collection of very pretty tea cups). She even taught me how to drink pinky-out, which I still do to this day.

The tea parties became a weekly thing, often with finger sandwiches or cookies that we'd make together. Since then, I have branched way out in my tea tastes, but I continue the tea party tradition with my friends at college.

[cindyt]

Well, probably not my first memory of tea, but an important one from my childhood in Taiwan. Back then, it was common to see big teapots on the side of the roads offering free tea for people passing by. Not expensive, or high-grade tea of course, just a way to show random kindness. It is one of the best memories I had about tea and about Taiwan.

[morvaltur]

My first memory of tea was actually negative. When I was a young child, my mother tried to get me to drink green tea when I had a cold, and I hated it because it was too bitter.
Years later, I drink much more tea than she does, and I discovered that it was always too bitter because she made it with boiling water...
Tea education is that important!

[Amaikokonut]

I don't know that I have any vivid memories really, but I know my mother used to give me chamomile for nights when I couldn't fall asleep due to sore throats, so that was probably my first introduction to tea of any sort.

I also recall trying oversteeped green tea when I was with a group of friends who were obsessed with the stuff; it was horribly bitter and I honestly don't think they actually liked it themselves but for some reason it was "cool" to drink it. That is such a vague memory though and I still don't remember the context; it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[debunix]

I first tried tea when eating out at a Chinese restauarant, liked it, and was mystified why no one else was drinking it.

There was almost certainly an unpleasant experience with iced tea some years before, because mom kept it around in the summer, but it must have been so vile that I have repressed it entirely.

[Owlie]

I don't have any early vivid memories of tea, although my mom tried to get me to drink straight black tea when I had a cold. Ick. It was Lipton (my parents had been poor students for a little too long) and my mom doesn't put sugar in it. I prefer my black tea (depending on the tea) with at least a bit of sugar.

My first real memory of tea was probably from when I was 13 or 14. I was over at a friend's house and she got me to try some of this cinnamon-flavored tea. And I thought it was pretty good. Well, it can't have been too bad, as that was what got me drinking tea.