Loose Leaf vs Tea Bag

A good quality tea bag is preferred to a cheap loose leaf - always!

Some of my favourite tea that is sold in sachets (or bags) are Twinning, Organics brand available at Pharmaprix (Shopper's Drug Mart) and Mighty Leaf. Most recently I discovered that the Marche de l'Ouest has a shop, I believe it's called Cavallero, which sells a nice selection of inexpensive to "wow that's expensive" teas. For example, they have Mighty Leaf and Numi brands.
My newest find comes from this store: Taylors of Harrogate English Breakfast tea made my little taste buds revel and ah! It's a tea bag format, full-bodied black tea.

As for loose leaf, my favourite place to get it used to be Sipps in Kingston, On, but since I've moved back to Montreal, the 3 hour trip seems a bit excessive. If ever in K-town, do stop by this lovely little shop which is right to the east side of the town hall and square (and farmers' market!) They serve you a little pot and their desserts are sinful!

But luckily for me, David's Tea (http://www.davidstea.com/) has been expanding and opened a store in Fairview mall. Hurray! Their David's Organic breakfast is really nice, as is their English Breakfast, but not as good as the Taylors. David's has a few other locations around Montreal.
Another really awesome store is Un Amour des Thes (http://www.amourdesthes.com/). The one I went to is on Monkland. It's a bit more expensive than David's, but their Enlish B is fantastic. It's also quite a beautiful store full of great tea pots.

To avoid: The Tea Store, which, luckily for Montrealers, we don't have here. Tea should never, ever, ever, ever be stored in clear glass containers exposed to light. You want weak tea, then go there. Otherwise go to the grocery store and buy a box of Twinning.

A note on Twinning loose leaf: I hate it. They use the same processed leaves as for the bags, so they end up being too small and you end up swallowing a mouthful of grainy leaves - yuck.
A nice loose leaf should 1) be a nice full leaf and 2)have a greenich tint rather than a brown or black one.

From East to West

East: Ming Tao Xuan Tea House is a lovely authentic Chinese tea house located in Old Montreal and is totally worth the visit. The menu they give you is all of teas, and the food menu is one page! Literally, the have a large selection of Asian teas, and 6 food items, which are all vegetarian options. The veggie buns were AWESOME! and so was the tea. My favourite part of this experience was the great service. The friendly staff brings your tea and shows you what to do with all the little teapots that come to you on a spill platter. I had a great mountain green tea that had a sweet aftertaste. Only problem is that I don't remember the name, but it was great. I didn't have to add sugar, which is good because there wasn't any.

West: Cafe London Bus, near Westmount Square offers a great, but modest and affordable English-style afternoon tea experience. For $12.50 you get a pot of tea, which they will refill with water, cucumber sandwich, scones and a variety of sweet desserts and fruit. My friends and I had a very relaxing and enjoyable time at this confortable but large cafe. The very friendly and accomodating staff sets up a table in one booths, set it with a white table clothe, flowers and china tea cups and saucers. Everything is made in house and smells wonderful. We tried the soups as well, and they were delicious.

Orwell on the subjet of tea

Here is a link to one of my favourite essays by George Orwell: http://www.booksatoz.com/witsend/tea/orwell.htm

This is the one point I disagree strongly with:
"Lastly, tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tealover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.
Some people would answer that they don't like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again."

In the previous points, Orwell mentions adding milk to his tea. Does that not change the taste? I guess I like my tea in the Russian style - without milk.

From the Beginning...

I actually don't know when I started drinking tea, but I do remember my first cup of coffee, which was more like a sip. After a primary school function at the local church, a friend and I decided to try out the coffee from the dispenser. Not sure if I had creamed and sugared it, but that sip was pretty much my last. I have drunk cups of moka (half hot chocolate and half coffee) but they made me so jittery.

So that's my history with coffee.

My history with tea is more foggy. It seems like I've been drinking it forever, and at some point in time, I tried English Breakfast and got addicted. Ever since I have been exploring the different kinds of teas, and mostly learning about them with my taste buds, and from whatever I read on Wikipedia.

My prefered tea is English breakfast with two lumps of sugar.