It’s hard not to get tea drunk when exploring tea in China.

Traveling throughout tea country in China presents not only the opportunity to see the tea and how it is made up close, but to sample it over hours of conversation with growers and producers. Those conversations leave you with a different perspective not only about the tea itself, but proper consumption practices through the eyes of its makers. As you talk with different growers and producers in different regions you start to find common themes from all of them. Below are just 3 of themes that just keep recurring:

• You can get “tea drunk”. Yes, you read that right, tea drunk. So the symptoms of being tea drunk include foggy thinking, nervousness and a stomach ache. Usually this is prevented by making sure one has eaten before drinking tea or by limiting the consumption of tea. Now a tea maker is going to have a tough time limiting tea consumption, especially during a harvest period, so timing breaks during the day with no tea consumption is critical. Also, some of the makers talked about the best time to taste tea being in the afternoon after lunch, when supposedly your taste buds and brain are functioning at their best.
• Novice tea drinkers should be served weaker tea. Knowing whether or not your guest is a routine tea drinker and their favorite types of teas influences how much tea you put in the pot. This was totally eye opening the first time we heard it. Indeed, in China it is very important to not overwhelm a guest with a flavor profile they might not understand or appreciate. The tea can be cut by as much as half or just by a third for the first serving to watch the response of the guest and then increased to full intensity in subsequent servings.
• Tea is medicine. Tea, having been consumed for centuries in this country, is talked about as a cure for digestive issues, blood thinner and cholesterol remover, preventer of cold and flu, and general cure-all. Medical studies in both the East and West are slowly catching up with the cultural beliefs and beginning to prove or disprove many of them. However, this view of tea as medicine is reflective of the overall cultural belief that what you put in the body daily is critical to health.

The big take away, not surprisingly, is that there is still much we can all learn and explore when it comes to tea.