Tea or coffee?

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

"Do you want tea or coffee?" The answer to this question determines the further course of events. If tea - ahead is an evening of heartfelt conversations, subtle mutual understanding and fragile peace. With a woman or a man, it doesn't matter. Tea is eternity. If coffee is an evening of pleasant excitement, cigarette smoke, unexpected confessions and unpredictable consequences. If coffee is with a woman, then conversations will be about eternal, - about love. If with a man - there will be love itself. Coffee is the time. Why do these drinks have such power over us? What is it about them that makes them never go out of style?

The other day I was invited to a birthday party. I didn't even think about what to give. Of course, a tea set! Such a gift is universal. It is on a fine line between a necessary, but banal gift and an original, but useless. I chose: porcelain cups for family feasts or minimalist earthenware cups for selected guests. I bought a large set of red clay, in an oriental style. The birthday girl was delighted. She said that now, instead of hookah evenings, she will arrange tea rooms.

Tea is inseparable from our way of life. "Do you want some tea?" - the first question for any guest, wherever he comes. Moreover, this drink says a lot about us. Not only about our taste preferences, deeper: how we really relate to ourselves. Tea - cheap, in bags, in a hurry, at work noon? With the enticing "in and out" movement, exploited by an ad for a well-known tea brand? Or maybe a collection of Chinese tea with a real tea ceremony?

My friend Masha says: "Tea is always a ritual. And if it is not so, then there was simply no coffee at hand." In my opinion, this is true: tea bags "in a hurry" can quench your thirst or help pass the time, but they cannot deliver subtle pleasure. It's almost like having sex with the unloved.

Once I saw on the site of Artemy Lebedev an interesting section called "I hate", and in the list - "electric kettles". I don't know how they annoy him, but I can guess - with their clear functionality. Which is associated, perhaps, with lack of spirituality. But a real, certainly clay, teapot should keep the "soul of tea"! Gourmets know: if you wipe a ceramic teapot with some kind of detergent - that's it, you can safely throw it away. The tea ceremony does not tolerate amateurishness. It is akin to meditation, which relaxes the body and illumines the spirit.

I have a friend who is a real tea master. Previously, however, he was an ordinary engineer, but he was so carried away by the Chinese tea tradition that he turned it into his profession. He says that the best way to get to know a person is to have a tea ceremony with him. Each participant in the action must first get acquainted with the selected tea: in a special way to inhale its aroma. It is believed that tea changes its smell and even taste depending on who drinks it. He seems to absorb human energy. Fills with shades. Making real tea is also not easy. Water (preferably from a source) must certainly be in sight, in a transparent glass container. Otherwise, how do we know at what stage of boiling our future tea is? If you look closely, it is mesmerizing: first, tiny bubbles - "a string of pearls", then larger - "fish eye", then a characteristic sound - "noise of trees" … The main thing here is not to let the water boil. With a special spatula, the tea master makes a funnel - the "dragon's tail" - and pours tea into it. Tea is allowed to brew - and they drink from tiny bowls, without sugar.

At first, the taste seems strange: some "green flat tea" does not in any way resemble what we usually drink from large cups. But it is worth tasting it well … "Why did you become a tea master?" - I once asked a friend. “When I was a schoolboy,” he said, “Baba Tanya worked in our canteen. She poured indistinct swill into glasses with a huge ladle. There was so much indifference in that. addition - love for a person …"

And coffee? Black, strong, aromatic. Without which we can hardly wake up in the morning, not very friendly in the afternoon and not too romantic in the evening. Which is more than a familiar ritual. "A cup of coffee, please" is the first thing people say in coffee shops around the world. Coffee and milk. Coffee and Cigarettes. Coffee and conversation. Coffee and love. Coffee and loneliness. A drink that we, without hesitation, spend a lot of money on.

In one of her articles, Katya Metelitsa wrote surprisingly accurately: “Coffee, like tea, has an extraordinary economic potential. can be absurdly high. We don't pay for coffee, but for a lifestyle.

Coffee tells about us even more than tea. The addiction to instant coffee, especially in three-in-one bags, raises suspicions: why does a person voluntarily sacrifice a rich taste in favor of an indistinct surrogate? Doesn't he think he deserves more? Can't tell good from bad? A colorful Abkhaz old woman taught me how to make real coffee: while traveling, I bought a handicraft Turk from her. The old woman was majestic as a master of experience, and believable as a character of cinematic neorealism. Since then, I have come to believe that brewing coffee is a magical process, built not so much on skills as on feelings. In semitones.

We make dates in coffee shops and, looking at the interlocutor, instantly determine: tea or coffee. Tea is spirituality. Coffee is sensuality. We know who is in front of us. We know what we want. Without any words. Intuitive.