what made you fall in love with tea?

[Wosret]

My mother is British - I was just born this way.

[bronzebed]

i drank tea since i was young, especially during the winter. my mother would host tea parties at our house, so tea was always around. i started to explore more options in tea because of snowboarding. during winter vacations, i always wanted something warm to drink when i would get off the mountains and i wanted more of a variety. also, indian food got me really interested in masala tea.

[joelbct]

I had been trying my first whites, and my first pu, but mostly drank flavoured bag tea. Then I got an anonymus comment on my blog saying I drank crap

That is too funny! First time I have heard of someone finding good tea through a malevolent Blog Flamer

I guess you should be grateful he/she woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning!

[Trioxin]

Well, a number of years ago I found myself very sick with the flew and raided my mothers blackberry tea bags. After that I searched every grocery store in town looking for blackberry tea, eventually giving up and ordering some loose leaf off of ebay. Once I tried that first loose leaf tea, I ordered other flavors, then some second flush darjeelings, then the first flushes, then some cooked pu which then lead me to tea chat were my obsession took off thanks to all of you enablers. Now I spend more on tea than food.

[soapy]

I drank mostly blacks, usually Ceylon, and a few whites - I fell in love when I tasted my first oolong.

pretty much the same here , always loved going to Chinese restaurants when I was younger.. I'd drink a pot or two if my parents ordered more...heehee

[horsencl]

I grew up drinking a cup of lipton with milk and sugar with my mom before bed. While I was in college, I learned how to deal without them to save money for more important things like ramen noodles . I drank whatever tea bags were on sale at Target, nothing too special. Stash was about as fancy as it got.

One day I saw a blip in a magazine about Numi flowering teas. After watching the video on their site, I ordered a glass pot and an assortment of flowering teas. I was amazed at how much better the taste was. From there, I discovered loose teas and haven't turned back since.

As I started to learn more I found this site and Teaviews. After I become a reviewer there, I quickly took over a large portion of my parent's food pantry for tea storage. I'm still constantly exploring and am amazed at how much the world of tea has to offer. I've learned so much about other cultures, the global economy and just about everything else under the sun

[zacstill]

I worked at a bakery this summer that had a few boxes of tea bags lying around. On my breaks I would have a cup of tea (bigelow earl grey). Remembering an adagio from a podcast I watch, I decided to buy some of their earl grey, a few greens, and some fillable teabags. Now it's become a small obsession with mostly chinese greens and oolongs. Have yet to dabble in japanese, pu, or others, apart from a few times when I had some matcha at tea/coffee houses.

[tsverrir]

I had the good fortune to be invited to Beijing this spring (no not in any connection with the Olympics). I was a huge coffee drinker before but a good cup of coffee is hard to find in Beijing and costs about the same as a meal at a restaurant (still relatively cheap) so I bought a teapot and some jasmine pearl tea. I liked the taste of it and found out as the days passed that I had more energy than before (in spite of the pollution).

Then when attending a gong fu tea session I just fell in love with the whole aspect of tea drinking. From the respect shown handling the tea and brewing it to the taste of it and the good feeling after drinking a cup (or seven) of good tea.

After having read every article about tea on the internet I started mail ordering tea and have been receiving new tea almost every week since then. Now I drink fewer cups of coffee each month then in one day before.

[caligatia]

My earliest tea memories are from Chinese restaurants as a child. But the thing that got me hooked was staying at my grandparents' house in the country when I was seven, waking up when the rooster crowed, and sipping tea as the sun came up. Sure, it was horrid Lipton teabags, but that wasn't the point. I felt so grown-up, and the experience of watching the sunrise was just magical.

Appreciating the taste of tea came much later, after I moved out of my Mom's house in my late teens, started doing my own grocery shopping, and discovered that there were more teas on the store shelves than just Lipton. I tried some Twinings, and it went from there...

[eor1122]

My Gram got me started drinking tea as a little kid......a cup of lipton with milk and sugar when it was cold and then iced in summer

After high school I started drinking the flavored celestial seasons flavored teas.

It wasn't until a few months ago that I ventured into the world of loose leaf, but being that it was still summer here and quite warm so I still used a lot of bagged teas because I found it easy when making sun brewed iced tea.

Now that there is a little chill to the air, I've switched back to hot tea. The last couple weeks I've gone back to loose leaf. I am thoroughly enjoying it.

[filth]

I have been drinking all kinds of common tea my whole life. It wasn't until I turned seventeen that I had my first cup of green tea. I regularly had tea at a local shop until I got my first tea pot on my 18th birthday. Tea has become a significant passion in my life. I'm young, and I'm not quite sure about anything in my life or in the world except for tea. I feel like it grew out of the ground for me.

[chad]

I started in my teens when Bigelow and Celestial Seasonings was about as exotic as it got in small town Florida. But, my folks drank coffee and soon I did, too. The a lot of years shift working in the Air Force and more coffee. I did develop a taste for good coffee.

We've always had tea in our house, my wife is a Constant Comment and blueberry tea fan. And 7 years on the island of Okinawa gave me an appreciation for Japanese green teas.

However, I'm a dabbler and foodie so a few months ago after watching the Hoffman documentary I decided to learn more about tea.

Well, I'm here...does that give any indication how far this tea thing has come?