This is pretty rare but I borrowed this book because of the author. I’ve heard of Tony Gebely’s tea-rating website Tea Epicure, which meant that I was curious to see what he had to say about tea.
The Philosophy of Tea is a slim volume that manages to pack a lot of information about tea. Within 91 pages, Gebely manages to write about:
- What tea is
- The six different types of tea
- How the word tea moved about the world
- Tea culture in Japan, China, India, Sri Lanka, Britain, Morocco, and America
- How to make tea
- Tea and health
That is a lot of breadth for one book and I was very impressed that the book managed to touch on so many things. As you can expect, the length of the book means that in-depth discussion is out of the picture (for example, I would have loved it if the chapter on fermented tea covered more than puer), but overall, I found that things were explained in a clear and simple manner.
Given that the title of the book included the word “philosophy”, I was expecting something more theoretical. Instead, I found a clear and simple introduction to tea, suitable for anyone who’s looking to study more about the beverage and would like a place to start. There’s a list of further reading and references at the back, so I think this would be a nice launch pad for further readings into tea.