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Tea & Infusions: A Connoisseur's Guide
Jane Pettigrew
A connoisseur's guide to tea from Britain's foremost tea historian and specialist. Jane Pettigrew has spent decades explaining tea to the world, and books like this one distill that expertise into an approachable reference: how tea is grown and processed, the differences among the great categories — white, green, oolong, black, and beyond — how to brew and taste them, and the cultures and rituals that have grown up around the leaf. Pettigrew writes with authority but without snobbery, treating tea as both a craft to be learned and a pleasure to be savored. For the reader ready to move past the supermarket teabag toward single-estate leaves and considered brewing, it offers a clear, well-illustrated map of the territory. Practical and gently opinionated, it is the kind of guide that turns a daily habit into a lasting interest.
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The author
Jane Pettigrew is a British tea specialist, historian, writer, and consultant who has worked in the field since the early 1980s. She has written some fifteen books on tea's production, history, and culture — including The Tea Companion and A Social History of Tea — and in 2016 was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to tea production and tea history. Few writers carry more authority on the subject.
The book
Tea & Infusions: A Connoisseur's Guide belongs to Pettigrew's family of illustrated connoisseur guides, covering the origins, types, tasting, and brewing of tea (and related infusions) for the enthusiast. Like her other reference works, it balances horticultural and historical background with hands-on guidance.
How it reads
Pettigrew's guides age gracefully because the fundamentals — how tea is made and how to taste it well — do not change quickly. The specialty-tea world has expanded since many of her titles first appeared, so the newest producing regions and trends may be fuller in her later books, but as an orientation to the leaf this remains reliable and warmly written.
For more context
See Pettigrew's The New Tea Companion and World of Tea for updated regional coverage.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Jane Pettigrew
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Craft & How-to
- Location
- Colorado