4/4/2014 When you started to drink tea seriously, was it to

[Taleri]

I don't think I can classify myself as a serious tea drinker, at least not yet. I drink a LOT of soda. I've tried various teas over the years, and while I've liked some, they haven't impressed me enough to prefer them over the soda on any regular basis (not to mention that making tea requires much more effort ). I have a few teas in my cupboard of varying types and most of which starred in a period of time where that particular tea was the only one we'd make if we felt like tea. I'll revisit them occasionally when I want something different, but they dont really call to me.

A few weeks ago we went out to dinner to a Japanese restaurant, and on a whim I ordered an iced green tea. My husband usually gets a hot tea, and his turned out to be the usual genmaicha, of which I'm not a fan. I really dont like the burnt rice flavor. My tea was a suprise. It was a deep green color and the taste was amazingly good. When I asked about it, the restaurant had used matcha to make the tea. That drink is still haunting me.
I've spent the last week researching matcha, which is how I came to find this board.

[coffeeteaunited]

My Grandmother introduced me to tea when I was a boy: it was always black tea with milk and sugar, and lots of biscuits. My taste has now developed somewhat and I enjoy the more exotic brews...

[bryan_drinks_tea]

I tried tea on a whim in college and decided to learn more about it. I was also introduced to it through a nice Japanese family.

[Rosaria]

I was drinking sweet southern style tea from earliest memories and gradually branched out over years. When I was about 13, my parents got me loose leaf for the first time for my birthday and three of those porcelain mugs with lids and removable porcelain infusers. They doomed me right then. My grandparents gave me that year my first mesh tea infuser which I still have. Use all my old infusers during yule time on a tree as ornaments.

No one in my household drank coffee until my brothers were in high school- they had to purchase their own. Parents weren't coffee or tea drinkers, either.

[RenaldM]

I always liked tea, but I truly fell in love with it during the Summer of 2015. I bought a couple of flavors that I considered exotic at a time and really liked them. The rest is history, as they say.

[BrianM]

I’ve drank tea throughout my life without any consistency or care about quality. About four years ago I decided to buy a box of Lipton dust bags as a substitute for coffee as part of the journey to find myself (aka mid life crisis). I drank bags for a year or a little longer before deciding to try higher quality in loose leaf. From there the progression was typical and now I brew mostly gong fu style except when entertaining non teahead friends and then it’s a larger pot of hot tea.

[Ludovitche]

It can be all these reasons at once

It started for me as an advice from a doctor : replace all drinks (from cold water to liquor) by light pu-erh tea.
Except... I never prepared a light pu-erh.
I started strong, and then went stronger .

Since I recently stopped nicotine, cut down on sugar, and stopped coffee, I'm regularly getting slightly high on tea to compensate.

But I also love the taste.
I always found tea bags boring, even as a kid, but when I drank my first shot of concentrated Chinese tea, I thought 'I just discovered tea' and 'I want to do it seriously'.