My tea week

Apologies for the lack of posts this week; I haven’t been feeling very well (and am in fact still rather sniffly and sneezy). However, despite the fact that I am feeling rather gluggy, there are a few things which have happened this week to maintain my sense of joie de tea!

The first is that I ordered, from Amazon, The Story of Tea by Robert and Mary Heiss (apologies for the current lack of hyperlinking, I can’t get Amazon up on my web browser at present for some reason). This book is one of those on the recommended reading list of the American Tea Masters’ Association, so I presume it must be good. I had a brief look through a copy at Borders the other day but it was $70 so I thought I would see if I could get it cheaper elsewhere… and I could! So I ordered it and am happily anticipating its arrival, although it won’t be for another four weeks or so, by which time I will probably have forgotten about it and consequently get a nice surprise in the mail one day.

I also intend to pre-order another books recommended by the American Tea Masters’ Association, The New Tea Companion by Jane Pettigrew, of which a revised and updated edition is coming out in October, as I recall…

The next exciting tea-related thing which happened this week was that a friend of mine, who is coming to visit for the weekend, sent me a message from one of my favourite Melbourne tea locations, Tea Leaves in Sassafras, asking if there was anything I would like her to bring up for me. Well, of course there was… I’m only human after all. I am waiting keenly until tonight to see if she was able to acquire the blends I was after, and will review them over the course of the next week once they arrive!

Thirdly, I purchased (from a local independent bookstore this time) a copy of Alan and Iris Macfarlane’s Green Gold: The Empire of Tea. I think this must have been published in the United States just as The Empire of Tea, as this is the title it’s given on Tea Guy Speaks, where Tea Guy gives it a most favourable review. I’m only a short way into it so far, but I will write more about it over the next week as well, as soon as I have finished it…

Speaking of tea related books, today at the Twinings Tea Blog there is another handy instalment (also written by Tea Guy himself) in the series ‘The Tea Drinker’s Bookshelf’. Check it out!