A couple of weeks ago when Nina and I went to rm for Restaurant Week, I had a revelation. A tea revelation.

rm has an incredibly well developed tea menu. Chi-chi restaurants often have a good selection of coffee, but tea generally comes in a bag, often with a yellow Lipton tag. If you’re lucky, you might be able to choose between three teas. rm had an entire tea menu, with recommendations for food/tea pairings.

I had a cup of freshly steeped Indian Assam with a molten chocolate tart. The flavors of the tea and the chocolate went so well together, I could barely believe it. The sweet bitterness of the chocolate tart was cut by the tea, refreshing my palate for every chocolatey bite.

The tea was a revelation in itself, since I’ve only ever had cheap bagged supermarket tea before. But the more important revelation was that I wanted to develop a taste, a palate for tea. There’s just so much yummyness to choose from.

A little surfing on the eGullet forums later, I found Upton Tea, where one can buy samples of each tea. Samples on average only cost $1.50 each, and you can make a good 5 or 6 cups per sample. I was very impressed by Upton Tea’s selection, which is heavy on black teas, my favorite type of tea.

I also found a beautiful glass tea mug with a built-in infuser, to conveniently brew whole leaf teas at work.

So this will be a semi-regular feature on my blog for a while, as I work my way through 13 or 14 luscious tea samples from Upton Tea.