Onward to my walls of text - feel free to skip, I'm just typing.
Greetings all. I've been hanging around this board for the last couple of weeks, and I'm finally ready to dive in and say 'Hi'...something I don't do much (I'm a lurker by nature). However, I've quite enjoyed the talk here (even if some is still Greek to me) and wanted to commend you on the forum.
Now for the obligatory few (or not) words on my (short, so far) tea experience.
Living as I do in the good ole south (North Carolina), I've drunk sweet iced tea my whole life - a constant, daily drink. However, hot tea was always seen as something those weird Yankees did (okay, I kid...a bit). Loose leaf tea wasn't even a consideration.
About a year and a half ago, my youngest sister came to live with my wife and me and brought with her a taste for hot tea, specifically from Twinings tea bags (especially Lady Grey and their Jasmine). I joined in and found it to be tasty, and slowly tried more and more bagged teas in an occasional manner.
Finally sometime in December it clicked and I decided to try loose leaf. However, the selection at my local grocery was small, mostly just Twinings as well. I finally saw, in the 'expensive' corner, a tin of Adagio Jasmine, the only other loose leaf, and picked it up. Well dang - it put the bagged jasmines I'd had to shame.
After the craziness of the holidays, I finally stopped by the one place selling more than one type of loose leaf in the area, Teavana. I came away with mixed feelings but more importantly some more tea (more jasmine, Assam, and yeah, 'Monkey Picked Oolong' aka Tie Kuan Yin).
I tried those teas and got a few books on tea from the library where I work and delved in. The internet was the next place to go, and so I tried out a couple of online vendors, getting samplers or small sizes of all different types from four other vendors, including Adagio.
Since then I've been living it up trying out all the different varieties, with my favorites as listed above, and looking at this forum and learning.
So to close, greetings and thanks from another loose leaf tea convert!
