#14 Ceylon Tea

Dear Esteemed Members of the BAMS Tea Club,

We have officially completed one full year of this beautifully unhinged experiment, and to celebrate entering Year Two, I owe you all a confession. I have a problem.

It started exactly one year ago this March, when I discovered Kirin Straight Tea. I thought it would be a brief seasonal fixation. The kind of thing I’d enjoy for a few weeks and then quietly retire, like every other hyperfixation that has ever entered my life. Reader. It has been twelve months. I am not better. I am, in fact, worse. I have not stopped. There is no sign of stopping. At this point, Kirin Straight Tea is less of a preference and more of a personality trait I have simply decided to adopt. So naturally, being the deeply self-aware and well-adjusted individual that I am, I eventually asked the important question: What is actually IN this tea?

Ceylon Tea. It’s Ceylon Tea. And then, because the universe apparently wanted to make a point, I looked up another longtime favorite — one I’d been drinking and enjoying for years without ever really thinking about it — and what do you know. Also Ceylon Tea. It turns out I have a type. I have always had a type. I was just too busy not paying attention to notice.

Tea of the Month: Taylors of Harrogate Ceylon Tea

This month, we’re going to the source. Taylors of Harrogate Ceylon is a bright, clean, beautifully balanced black tea. Ceylon tea comes from Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), and it’s one of the most widely loved black teas in the world — which means a lot of us have been drinking it for years without realizing it. It’s the base of countless blends. It’s the backbone of your favorite bottled tea. It is, apparently, the tea I keep returning to without ever consciously choosing it. The lesson? Sometimes you don’t discover what you love — you just eventually notice that you’ve loved it all along.

Or, more accurately: sometimes it takes a Japanese canned tea and an embarrassing consumption rate to teach you something about yourself. Either way, here we are. So steep it hot, sip it slow, and take a moment to ask yourself what your Ceylon Tea is. The thing you keep coming back to. The comfort you never had to explain. The hyperfixation that turned out to just be… you.

Welcome to Year Two. This ride only gets more specific from here.