About me and the start of my tea journey!
- Harvey Cocks
- Jan 4, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 1, 2020
Hello! My name is Harvey, as you may have gathered I am a vivid tea fan, student and now officially a blogger! Today I want to talk a little bit about myself and more specifically my journey with tea about how it started and where it's at now!
Me drinking out of my handmade Chinese Jianzhan teacup, looking fabulous as per usual.
I myself started my tea journey through my brother who also loved tea! It all started where one day, I was interested in trying some tea, I watched my brother do it and thought to myself "Hey, that looks nice! I wanna try some!". So the next day I went down the road to my local shop and bought some tea from Twinnings and I remember distinctly what kind it was, it was the Jasmine Green tea. The reason why I chose that type was purely down to the fact that I loved the smell that came from the tea my brother had and when I asked him for recommendations, he said he thought I would like this and he was right! I loved it!
So after trying the tea, I thought to myself: "Wow! This is great, but I wonder what other kinds there are... meh, probably not a lot." And boy was I wrong! I decided to buy more tea and more, but started eventually after using tea bags from various companies like Twinnings, Tea pigs and Pukka I was getting a bit bored of the bland taste or weakness of the tea and did some research to find that tea bags were not just the only way of drinking tea but using loose leaf!
So eventually I started to bridge out and went to buy some more tea but this time in loose-leaf form. Now, keep in mind this is over the span of around a year and not in days! But eventually, I started to notice what teas I liked and which brands I thought were great, I started off by buying online from recommended tea sellers through blogs/websites online and then branched out to find more premium tea brands that sell premium quality loose leaf tea that costed way more than what I usually expected.
Then eventually I got really interested in tea and went ahead to go and buy some really nice teaware from tea sites to brew my new tea in and treat myself to something special! However, I then started to kind of begin getting a bit of an addiction to finding out handmade teapots are a thing and that the material, size, and method of brewing the tea all change the flavor and taste! Below you can see some of the first teapots I bought!
On the left side, you can see my first Japanese Kyusu teapot that I bought on Etsy! On the right side you can see my first Chinese Yixing teapot that I also bought on Etsy! Links at the end of the blog for the products if you want to buy them!
Once I had started to buy handmade teapots every now and then I really started to get properly into tea throughout 2 years of collecting and buying tea. I decided that this was the route where I want to take my future in and start my own business. But catching up to speed to present day now, I still am not ready to start up my own business yet, hence why I wanted to make this blog to document my journey and help others online learn more about tea!
I want to take more time and enjoy my time currently whilst I'm studying to learn more about tea, find more kinds and hopefully even visit countries like Japan and China or Vietnam to see the culture and background history of specific kinds of tea that originate from those countries.
Eventually, I began to build up more of my collection which I will talk about in some of my future blog posts but that's really it to be honest. I'm up to a point in my tea journey where I know a lot about various kinds of teas, teaware, and brands and cannot wait to begin diving deep into my blog to share all of my information with everyone!
Inconclusion, tea is awesome. Even baby Yoda drinks it!
Thank you for reading my first blog and once again I can't wait to post more blogs in the near future!
Teapots that were shown within this blog post:
Black Japanese Teapot - https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/651716374/kyusu-teapot-kiku-black-nankei-ceramics?ref=shop_home_active_5&sca=1
Green/Yellow Chinese Teapot - https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/506856096/yixing-duan-ni-clay-teapot-chinese?ref=shop_home_active_2&pro=1&frs=1
Awesome