Bully for Tea

I hate to say it, but this past weekend I had one of the worst tea-buying experiences of my life.

I love tea. LOVE it, so when I spotted a Teavana store during a recent trip to a mall in Buckhead, I got all excited and stopped in to see what was new. I hadn’t been to Teavana in ages, since there wasn’t one near where I lived in NJ, and I feel a certain fondness for them, since it was a Teavana store that first introduced me to the joys of high-quality, loose-leaf teas, way back in my college days.

In I went. And I wasn’t two seconds in the door before someone was trying to persuade me to buy one of their teapots. Their teapots are cast-iron, and they cost a lot of money. The cheapest one is almost $70. I already have a teapot that I love, and yes, I know the cast-iron ones are lovely and keep your tea hot, and if you spend an extra bundle you can get a stand that’ll prevent you from fracturing your wrist when you try to lift the damn thing. But I already have a teapot. And my job just ended, so I’m on a budget. I explained this repeatedly, only to be shown more teapots. I really should have turned around and left right then, but for some reason, I didn’t. I wanted some tea! Once I finally made that clear to the saleswoman (and this might have been part of the problem: there were about a dozen salespeople there, which seemed like far too many for that size store. It’s not Christmastime; it wasn’t packed or anything. So they were getting too competitive), she handed me off to someone else behind the counter. I guess she only does teapots.

Here’s where it started to get really bad. Tea Girl immediately started pushing some of their most expensive teas my way, also waving around a giant tin that holds a pound of tea, bleating about how it keeps the tea fresh for a year, and it’s marvelous tea that you can re-brew, etc. etc. Yes, thank you, I’m aware. I told her many times that I know the teas are good–I’ve tried them. And I know they can be re-brewed, I’ve done it. I do it almost every day. But even I can only drink so much tea in a day, and even the best tea goes pretty flat and flavorless after two brews. And there was absolutely no way I was ever going to buy a pound of tea. Especially not a pound of tea that costs $13 an ounce. She refused to listen, continuing to push Golden Imperial Lotus at me, when really all I wanted was the Taj Masala Chai (which cost a sixth of what the other one did). Once I managed to get through to her that I wanted the Chai, she still reached for the 1-lb tin and told me I should get that, even though I’d already said I didn’t want that much tea, and, in fact, I didn’t want any tin at all (they cost extra, of course), because I had plenty at home. This was a dance we repeated for each tea I got, so I cut off after three, too exhausted to keep going. I stumbled out of the store and rushed to the nearby tapas bar for a soothing glass of wine.

It was not a good experience, on any level. I felt bullied, and it got to the point where I actually felt like I needed to be rude to Tea Girl to get her to back off. I hate doing that–I’ve worked retail before, and I try to be extra nice to people who work it now, just like I try to be extra nice to waitstaff. I know they have sales goals to meet, but when a customer repeatedly makes it clear that they’re not interested in a pound of tea, and they’re definitely not interested in spending hundreds of dollars on a tea, it’s time to back off and give them what they want. Stop trying to convince them the math will work out in the end, because it won’t. I don’t care that the tea’s 10% off, if it costs $12 or more an ounce, you’ve still just spent almost $200 for frigging tea. I love my tea, but that’s absurd. I’d need to be able to rebrew it eight times a day for that to even start to make sense, and like I said, even I had my limits. And tea’s supposed to be soothing, so why isn’t the buying process soothing as well?

The teas I got were fine: I picked up a Moroccan Mint for evenings, a malty Copper Knot Hongcha, and a Thai blend, all of which have been quite enjoyable. But the experience of buying them was so awful I don’t think I’ll ever set foot in another Teavana store again. What this has done is encouraged me to stick to online buying, where you only get advice when you ask for it, and pushy salespeople are nowhere to be found.

Teatime

Despite the many supermarkets, strip malls, and the regular mall nearby, I’ve found something you can’t seem to buy in Douglasville: tea. Specifically, good tea. Not the bagged, flaky junk that Lipton tries to pass off as tea. There isn’t a place that sells decent loose-leaf tea for miles. Believe me, I’ve checked.

For a lot of southernors, ‘tea’ seems to mean ‘sweet tea,’ and although I consider myself an adventurous eater who’ll try just about anything, I can’t get on board with sweet tea. I think this is one southern specialty I’ll just have to miss out on in future. I haven’t put anything in my tea since I was about 5 years old, and even then it was only a bit of milk to cool it down. Since then I’ve been a purist–I could never stand sweetened tea. I can’t even handle teas that have cinnamon in them, because that makes it taste too sweet for me.

I’ve had sweetened iced tea in the past (by accident–I ordered iced tea in a restaurant and that’s what I got). I’ve got a pretty decent sweet tooth, but I couldn’t handle this. To me, it tastes tooth meltingly sweet. It’s like being punched in the face by the Stay Puff’d Marshmallow Man. At the time, it was all I could do not to spit it out and maybe cry a little. You couldn’t even taste tea anymore, and that’s a terrible thing to do to such a wonderful beverage.  Tea’s marvelous stuff. It’s one of the few things with flavor that also has 0 calories. It’s got all kinds of health benefits too, and some types are even said to raise your metabolism. Dump a bunch of sugar in there and you’re flushing all that right down the toilet.

You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m a huge tea snob. I won’t deny it, and I won’t be apologetic about it. It’s like when someone gets used to drinking good wine and can’t stomach the cheap stuff anymore. You get used to something with really good flavors and the blandness of the bottom-shelf versions puts you off. When I was in college, tea started to get popular again, and a branch of Teavana opened up in my local mall. It was like a whole new world had presented itself to me. Instead of spending my limited student budget on booze, I discovered the different flavors of darjellings and oolongs, started to appreciate the oddly grassy flavors of yerba mate and certain green teas, and got brave and dipped a toe into the pool of pu-reh. And just like that, I was ruined for Red Rose.

My favorite tea purveyor is Adagio, which is located in New Jersey. That used to mean that I’d get my tea shipment the day after I placed it, but now I had to wait a jittery three days, while I milked the last of my assam and kept refreshing the tracking page. I was like a drug addict looking for a fix. And when the box finally landed on my doorstep, I swear to God I hugged that thing like it was a relative who’d just returned from war. It was insane, but it made my husband laugh.

So now I’m fully stocked, calmed down (well, except for a bit of a caffiene high), and happily enjoying an (unsweetened!) cup of rich, malty Tiger’s Eye. To me, it tastes like happiness.