I heard good things about A Social History of Tea by this two authors (link to the review I saw) and wanted to read it, but the library didn’t have the book so I borrowed this instead. It’s a pretty comprehensive look at tea, focusing on the various types of teas around the world.

The book is divided into three parts:

The first is a short history of tea. If you’re familiar with the history of tea (I feel like re-reading(I want to reread Tea: The Drink that Changed the World by Laura C Martin now), then most of it won’t be new. While it covers the history of tea around the world, it does have a disproportionate focus on tea in Britain and North America which I’m not too pleased about since tea came from China. To illustrate, the section of tea in China is about 5-6 pages while the section of tea in Britain alone is around 10 pages.

The second part is titled ‘tea production’ and is about how tea is produced, the types of tea, and different ways of storing and brewing it. This part is pretty similar to the Black Tea Bible, although the black tea bible has illustrations for the section on how to brew tea, so it’s a bit easier to understand.

The third and last part is a catalog of teas from around the world. This makes up the bulk of the book and is really fascinating. Each tea has a short description (including tasting notes), tips on how to brew it, and pictures of the tea leaves when it’s dry, when it’s wet, and a picture of the tea that’s brewed. It’s a very detailed and interesting to understand guide and I would now like to try teas from places like Georgia and Korea! The descriptions make the tea sound amazing!

If you’re looking for a book to guide you through the world of tea, this would be a good fit. The extensive catalog gave me lots of suggestions on types of teas to look out for and the section on the types of tea and how to brew it was pretty helpful. And fingers crossed that I can find a copy of A Social History of Tea soon!