Learning about Tea can be very much like learning about wine; you could spend a lifelong deep dive into the history, culture, horticulture, and politics, spending thousands of dollars doing so or go grab a bottle of two buck Chuck and some Lipton and call it good. These are the extremes of Oenology (study of wine) and Teaology (study of tea…I made that one up) but for our purposes we are going to land right in the middle; everything you need to know to get the most out of St. Bibiana or any other tea of your choosing for that matter. (Technically St. Bibiana is not tea. All herbal tea is actually called tisane…but that would be in the deep dive study category, so lets just call it tea.)
Loose Leaf vs Tea Bags
There is a lot of talk about loose leaf always being superior to tea bags (I’m looking at you, the whole of the U.K.) but truly everything has its place and time. There are some really good, bagged teas out there, and for convenience they can’t be beat. For our purposes though, which is to treat each leaf, seed and root as carefully as possible to extract the most benefit, the better choice is to keep it loose ( and isn’t that just good life advice in general).