And Now For Something Completely Different…

I drink tea. A lot of tea. It’s partly because I just like the taste of tea, and it’s partly because I like ritual. Oh, not the formal ritual of a religious service, where every movement was so carefully choreographed so very long ago that now no one even remembers why it’s done this way.

I mean harmless, informal ritual.

That’s why I prefer tea to coffee: the ritual of boiling the water, warming the teapot, measuring the right amount of tea. Pouring the boiling water into the pot and letting it steep the prescribed amount of time.

For many years my favorite blend of tea has been Irish Breakfast, or IB. And until this morning, my favorite IB was from Peet’s Coffee & Tea. But when I stopped in at my local Peet’s outlet last week in search of a pound of loose IB, they told me that I had to order it on their web site. So I returned home with just a 4-oz. tin I purchased.

Peet’s has IB in loose leaf form for just under $24 a pound. I decided to see if I could find a better price than that, so I Googled “tea” to see what was out there. One of the hits was teadog.com, in Dallas, Texas. After a few minutes, I found what I was looking for: Irish Breakfast tea, loose leaves, in 8.8-oz packages. So I ordered 2 boxes. With postage, the whole thing came to about 50 cents more than what I would have paid at Peets—and Peets’ price didn’t include shipping.

The tea arrived today, and I immediately opened it and brewed a cup. Oh, my! Bewley’s Irish Breakfast tea. Imported from Dublin, no less. Oh, Peets is still an excellent tea, and I’ll continue to buy it when I can’t get Bewley’s, or when I go to a Peets outlet.

But now i have a new favorite IB:Bewley’s Irish Breakfast.