Let’s do a tea gift guide

From someone who has a problem with the way gift guides work.

Online gift guides are stuck in the middle of mismatched audiences. The ostensible purpose of a gift guide is to advise the friends and loved ones of somebody with an obscure hobby on interesting gifts to give them. The underlying assumption is that the giver doesn’t know much about the recipient’s hobby, but the writer, an expert on the topic, can point the giver in the right direction.

The problem with the nature of online content distribution is that gift guides are usually clicked on—and judged—by practitioners of that hobby, who do know its particulars and probably don’t need advice on getting gifts for themselves. So who is a gift guide really for? The giver in the outgroup, or the hobbyist in the know? Beats me, which is why I’ve always had trouble writing gift guides that felt useful to givers and meaningful to recipients. After all, there’s nothing worse than when someone with good intentions gives you a gift that’s related to your hobby, but not to your interest within that hobby. A hand-knit Christmas sweater full of “cuppa” tea puns.

Yet we still want to give gifts to each other, and in a time where everything’s made of cheap plastic, we want those gifts to count. So I decided to do something I swore I’d never do when I launched this newsletter: write another gift guide. Here are Leafhopper’s tea gift ideas for 2024.

Printed matter

There’s no better gift than knowledge, so as always, give books. There are two tea books I recommend both as pertaining to tea and engaging reads on their own. Darjeeling, by journalist Jeff Koehler, is the story of how India’s most famous tea region came to be, and how English tea colonization shaped the world around it. Koehler shows readers the nitty gritty of how Darjeeling estates run and what they’re doing (and not doing) to face the future.

Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic by historian Jinghong Zhang explores the rise and cultural implications of Yunnan’s puer tea business. A more academic read, but still a great one, that probes the mindset of tea drinkers and challenges them in ways they may not expect.

There are a few print and online tea periodicals worth sharing with tea people as well. Eighty Degrees is a beautiful print journal that comes out three times a year with stories from a wide cast of characters, including yours truly. Global Tea Hut’s magazine offers insight on tea traditions that rarely reach the English language, and a quarterly subscription comes with pretty nice tea. Diehard tea nerds in search of academic-level talk on the culture and production of tea should try out Jason M. Cohen’s Tea Technique, an ever-growing online tea arts textbook.

Replacement teaware

It’s a law of the universe that every tea drinker will, at some point, shatter a beloved piece of ceramic teaware. Orphaned pots with cracked lids are common, as are widowed cups that used to be part of a set. Drinkers usually keep these leftover pieces for sentimental reasons. So get to snooping, or just ask them outright, about which piece needs replacing. This is an act of love.

Something green and growing

You can learn a lot about tea by watching it grow—namely, how difficult it must be do it commercially! Camellia sinensis isn’t an easy plant to keep happy, but it’s a rewarding one, and the honeyed white flowers that emerge in the fall are a gift that keeps on giving. This cold-hardy variety can grow in most of the United States with some insulation during winter.

A tea club subscription

Despite my hemming and hawing about tea clubs, a regular subscription to new and interesting teas can be a lot of fun. Here is a non-exhaustive list of Leafhopper-approved sellers that offer tea clubs.

• In Pursuit of Tea

• Eco-Cha

• White2tea

• Wuyi Origin

• Kettl

• Herbs & Kettles

• Global Tea Hut

Leafhopper-approved ceramics

This is where I’m getting into dicey mismatched audiences territory, because ceramic taste is a personal thing that’s easy to misjudge from the outside. However I want to highlight two studios whose work I’ve shown on Leafhopper before. If you like my teawares, check out the wabi-sabi brutalist pieces from Pottery Park Store in Ukraine and the rustic, organic forms of The Jade Leaf in Taiwan.

Tea preserved in honey

This one may involve some theft. Snag some of their favorite tea leaves, pack them in a glass jar, and fill all the crevices with good honey. Let the tea and honey commingle for months or years. The longer it sits, the more tea attributes the honey will take on. When your recipient has a sore throat, they can steep some honeyed tea in a mug for a sweet and soothing brew that can last through several infusions. The tea leaves will be preserved indefinitely, so your gift can continue to age with its recipient. Best with black, oolong, and white teas.

Or scented with their favorite flowers

Follow my instructions for DIY flower scented tea and make a custom batch with your recipient’s favorite fragrances, or flowers that are meaningful to you.

Treat them to a private tasting

This requires being in the proximity of a shop that offers such a service, but a private tea tasting experience at a venue like T Shop in New York or Tea Habitat in Los Angeles offers your recipient a chance to do that they enjoy most: to drink tea. Of course you should join them at the table, because the best tea experiences are shared ones.

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