What I'm Watching Wednesday - All In This Tea

Netflix suggested for me All  In  This Tea recently (gee - another travel documentary).

This is Les Blank's film following his friend David Lee Hoffman, a renowned tea expert (no, I did not know that before this film). Hoffman traveled to China on his tea buying journeys looking for organically raised leaves, handmade teas, and battled bureaucracy and language barriers.

Now, I'm English and I grew up drinking tea - stuff from the grocery shelves, typically in bags, tho' sometimes loose leaf, and nearly always with a dollop of milk and a touch of sugar.

This film makes me want to try a million different teas. To try to taste, as Hoffman does, the soil and land it was grown in; to taste the care the farmer took with the cultivation.

(Instead of merely a warm cup of liquid to dunk a biscuit in!!)

I'm not knocking the tea that I do drink -something I'm not apt to take any great effort in choosing - (it's typically PGTips, rather than Lipton or Tetley or Red Rose). But maybe I'm missing something - some depth of flavor experience. I wonder if my palate can detect any subtleties in the teas - is that something that can be "trained in" or is it a genetic happenstance of the taste buds to be sensitive to flavors. I've dabbled in herbal teas - and a green tea or two - nothing really sticks out in my mind as a memorable experience. So, where to start??!

(Oh! For the textile lover in me -  that appliqued tent he used at the Himalayan Fair - fantastic!!)