Stuff Every Tea Lover Should Know by Candace Rose Rardon

 

So one thing you might not know about me that is probably oversharing but oh well is that I like to tipsy shop on Amazon. I know other people who do this too, but whereas they usually end up dropping $1,000 on clothes or whatever, I spend $10 on weird ebooks about lizard men erotica or the history of the tyrannosaur. And the funny thing is, because I am like pathologically averse to spending any amount of money on myself, I think we probably both feel equally as guilty and unentitled to our purchases LOL.

Anyway, one of these items I tipsy shopped recently was this book, STUFF EVERY TEA LOVER SHOULD KNOW. I impulse-bought it because I noticed it was published by Quirk Books and they are one of my favorite publishers ever and I will literally read anything they put out because there's a 99% chance that it's going to get a 3+ rating. Their acquisitions team is just, IDK, a team of Olympic gold medalists in the sport of Finding Books That Are Weird AF That You Still Want to Read.

STUFF is about tea. The history of, how it's made, how to tell good quality from bad, how to prepare it, how to serve it, and even how to drink it. In this book you learn about all the different kinds of teas, including fermented (like puerh) and tisanes ("tea" that doesn't actually contain any tea, like Korean flower teas, of which I am quite fond). At the end of the book, there are even guides for throwing tea parties yourself (for kids AND adults) as well as how to make tea cocktails (not for the kids).

I thought this was a pretty fun book and I'm actually going to keep it on my Kindle for reference because I want to make some of those tea cocktails. It has some really interesting information (I didn't know there were tea sommeliers or that they used a lot of the same lingo as wine connoisseurs like terroir), but it's not really a pleasure-reading book unless you're really, really into tea. There were swaths that weren't really applicable or interesting to me so I skimmed. I do think that this would make an excellent gift, though-- especially if you paired it with a nice box of tea and a cute mug.

3 out of 5 stars