Drinking Tea and more

I recently returned from a family vacation (Christmas with my parents and my brother's family).

I had prepared myself in advance for a total lack of espresso. I've made the mistake in the past of trying to seek out espresso in locations like this and it has always led to a ton of frustration for me. I took with me three pounds of lovely coffee, made sure my father had two different sizes of Press Pot, etc. And, as a fallback, I took a bunch of tea with me.

Now... a little back story.

My mother is a tea fanatic and I grew up drinking more tea than coffee. My father is the coffee person, but tends to drink a lot of drip coffee. In addition, I've spent a lot of time hanging out with various Brits and developed a tea habit as a result. Even now that I drink espresso most of the time, I still enjoy tea in the afternoon (especially with a stem ginger shortbread).

In any event, I arrived at the family homestead prepared.

In a week there I discovered three things - one forgotten, one expected and one unknown.

First - I re-discovered the flavour complexity of tea. My mother has a relatively large collection of very nice and often rare teas in house at all times. By not just drinking tea for social or pharmaceutical purposes (sound familiar?) but rather tasting and evaluating a range of teas I started to really develop an appreciation for the flavours of tea. In fact - I would say that I developed just enough understanding to realize how big the unknown world of tea really is for me. Most coffee people have a knee-jerk disdain for tea and tea drinkers. Many are, in fact, proud of this. I find this really silly now that I've thought more on the topic. I think we all owe it to ourselves to give tea a chance.

Second - while I knew I would get no good espresso, this did not stop me from giving local indy shops a chance. I feel like I always have to do this. Sadly, what I found in general was that the state of espresso in the US as a whole has not improved in the last few years. Filthy battered portafilters left sitting on the counter. Stale ground Costco quality coffee sitting in dosers. 1/4 inch thick baked on milk on wands. Foul, burnt, acrid gushers of so-called espresso. The owners and staff of these so-called espresso bars should be ashamed of themselves.

Third - on the other hand... I spent part of a day in the Italian section of Providence Rhode Island. While there I stopped into a very busy deli and store. They had a little espresso bar area that was rocking busy. In the case they had some lovely looking cannoli, so I figured we'd stop and get a little something-something. Almost out of habit or perhaps cultural programming I ordered an espresso as well. Was it great? No. Was it good? In a different sense. Sitting there, stirring sugar into my espresso, talking with the barista (in the true Italian sense of the word) and eating my cannoli I came to the realization that the espresso almost wasn't supposed to be great in the sense we're used to. I wasn't interested in evaluating the accuracy of the brew temp or the persistence of the crema. It was just one component of the total experience - which included everything from the banter to the music to the cannoli (which, by the way, was truly god-like) to the families dropping by for an appertif, some gossip and perhaps a little gelato. Really enjoyable - in a very different way.

Oh... Happy New Year.