#teatogethertuesday - The One Tea I Would Choose for the Rest of my Life

The tea community is really a unique one.  It is full of amazing, friendly and considerate people who all share a passion for tea.  I have made so many great friends through tea.  Folks are sharing their love of the through various platforms including Instagram, blogging and YouTube.  So two very active gals in the tea community, Tea is a Wish and Tea with Jann, decided to come up with a way to bring all of these platforms together.  Their idea was to create weekly prompts that all tea lovers could answer regardless of platform.  I think this is a fantastic idea and a great way to create togetherness within the community.  Today starts the first of hopefully many Tea Together Tuesday's.  The first question is: If I could have only one tea or tisane for the rest of my life what would it be and how would you use it or drink it?

I really didn't have to think about this question for long.  I instantly thought of Orange Pekoe.  Now orange pekoe holds a place in my heart as it was the only tea I drank growing up.  We would make it iced mostly by brewing it via the sun tea method. To me nothing beats the refreshing taste of freshly brewed orange pekoe iced.  Being the intense thinker I am I wondered, is orange pekoe versatile enough?  I think it is!  I could add bergamot essential oil to it and make a light earl grey.  I can add spices to it and make a light chai.  I say light on this as most earl grey or chai have a much heavier black tea base but you can absolutely use orange pekoe for any of these blends.  I thought that I could also add freeze dried fruit to the orange pekoe to make a fruity blend or could add vanilla bean for a vanilla black tea.  Really the possibilities are endless with a basic black tea.  I went with orange pekoe specifically over other black teas because I love it iced, it is my favorite iced tea.  Also, once the tea has been transformed into an early grey or chai I could then use it to bake with, cook with, make syrups with, the sky is the limit.  Yes, I do think I could be happy forever with orange pekoe!

So the next question would be, what orange pekoe?  Well I have had orange pekoe from so many companies, from Lipton to DAVIDsTEA and everything in between.  I do really love the T2 orange pekoe.  Now it is worth mentioning that orange pekoe is not like other black teas, lets say Nepal black for instance that only comes from a very specific farm, orange pekoe actually refers to the classification of the leaf.  Orange pekoe can have other sub-catagories like FOP or flowery orange pekoe or FTGFOP (finest tippy golden flowery orange pekoe).  One thing is true with orange pekoe, it means a basic, medium-grade black tea with many whole tea leaves of a specific size.  T2 does not designate what grade of orange pekoe they have other than that it comes from Sri Lanka.  It is a smooth and light black tea, perfect for iced tea, hot tea or for adding ingredients to for blending.

Yes, I think I could be very happy with orange pekoe for the rest of my life.  Also, I used this little tea set today because it is called Orange Pekoe Cat.  So cute!  So, I would like to know, if you could only have one tea for the rest of your life what would it be?

And check out my video discussing #TeaTogetherTuesday here:  https://youtu.be/1DMMNEUgmws

Until next time, happy sipping!!!!!