I’ve been drinking a couple of cups of green tea each day. It has become a habit of mine to have a mug of green tea each night to gear down before going to sleep. But until today, I basically just bought green tea bags from the Chinese grocers not far from us and dunked them in hot water. Today, I became “enlightened”, and that simple mug of green tea will never seem the same again.
As I feared, green tea has an entire multi-century old culture associated with it, with fancy names, special ceremonies, and specialized leaves. Apparently, you need a special teapot, and your water shouldn’t be above 170 degrees, and … well, you might as well read what I did yourself [1].
There are two main categories of green tea leaves: Sencha which is green tea grown in the full sun, and then the much less common Gyokuro, which is grown in shade. As an example of the gyokuro stuff, check out this offering [2]. And then do the math: that’s $64 U.S. for 110 grams of tea. It takes 1 gram of tea leaves to make 1 ounce of tea, and one cup for me is about 10 ounces- so that 110 grams makes maybe 10 cups, or about $6 a cup.
I think I’ll stick with my crappy chinese tea bags, at least for now 😉