Hi friend,
Welcome to the very first Common Steep. I’m Bower. Before I say much about tea, I want to tell you about red wine. Not the glass so much as everything around it.
For years, red wine was my hobby in the truest sense. I loved learning that one village in Burgundy could taste different from the village down the road. I loved reading about Bordeaux estates and why people still argued about one particular year decades later. Most of all I loved the table: someone would bring out a bottle and tell the story of where it came from, and suddenly everyone was leaning in, asking questions, comparing notes.
That was the part that got me. Not the buzz. The learning, the exploring, the talking. Maps, makers, vintages. A reason to be curious, and a room full of people happy to be curious with me.
At some point wine stepped out of my life. I’ll save that story for another day. What matters here is what I noticed afterward: I didn’t miss the wine as much as I expected. I missed the map. I missed having something to geek out about with other people.
Tea found me about eight years ago, and it started small. A tin from the grocery store. Then one afternoon, a cup of oolong at a little shop where the owner poured from a clay pot no bigger than my fist and told me the leaves came from a specific rocky slope in the Wuyi Mountains. I asked one question. She answered with ten. And I recognized the feeling right away.
Everything I’d loved was there. Named mountains: Wuyi, Alishan, Yiwu, the Darjeeling estates in the Himalayan foothills. Makers: families who’ve picked, rolled and roasted the same gardens for generations, with a house style you can actually learn to taste. Vintages: pu-erh pressed into cakes that keep changing for years, so a 2012 cake and a 2019 cake from the same mountain are two completely different conversations. And the ritual. Gongfu brewing means a small pot and many short steeps, each one a little different from the last, so a single session unfolds like a story in chapters.
And company. The pours in gongfu are small on purpose. They’re meant to go around the table.
In eight years I’ve had a handful of cups that stopped me cold. The aroma, the light in the room, the people around me all lined up at once, and I just went quiet. I’ve never been able to predict when the next one will come, and honestly, that’s part of why I keep putting the kettle on. The other part: I have never been disappointed by a cup. Not the rare ones, not the bagged ones in a hotel lobby. Every cup teaches you something, even if the lesson is “steep this one shorter.”
I’m not a tea master, and I’m definitely not here to tell you you’re doing it wrong. Think of me as a friend a few steps down the path, happy to turn around and point at the good stuff.
If you loved that, try this
If you loved Burgundy (the obsession with place, the idea that a single slope has its own personality), try Wuyi rock oolong. These teas are named for where they grow among the cliffs, roasted by hand, and in my experience they have a mineral depth that tea people love to argue about. For a lighter, more floral take on “taste the mountain,” look for Taiwanese high-mountain oolong.
If you loved Bordeaux (structure, aging, collecting by estate and year), try pu-erh. Young raw (sheng) pu-erh is bold and grippy and changes over years in storage; ripe (shou) pu-erh is earthy and smooth right now. Many people find that buying one cake and tasting it again a year later scratches exactly the same itch as cellaring a bottle.
If you loved bright, aromatic, special-occasion bottles, try a first-flush Darjeeling from a named estate. Light, lively, and very much tied to a season.
A quick note: all of these are true tea, so they contain caffeine. If you’re tasting in the evening, a caffeine-free herbal like rooibos or chrysanthemum is a lovely way to join in.
So what is Common Steep?
Common Steep is a live tea tasting club. We meet online, brew the same styles of tea together, and talk about what we’re tasting, like that wine table I loved, just with a kettle in the middle. A mug and a kettle are enough to start, and I don’t sell tea: before each session I share a shopping list of tea styles, and you buy from wherever you like.
Come sit with us
For now, the best thing you can do is stay subscribed. A new issue lands every Tuesday, free, with a little education and a little story each week.
Your first chance to taste with us is Open Steep, our free drop-in, on Sunday, November 1, 3:00 to 3:45pm ET. Bring whatever tea you have, even a bag from the back of the cupboard. Cameras are optional. RSVP here: RSVP for Open Steep
Between issues, you can find me on Instagram at @commonsteepclub.
One small ask: hit reply and tell me about a bottle, a place, or a cup you still think about. I read every one.
Kettle’s on,
Bower