“Grocery Store Tea.”

The above was my tea this morning, and has been everyday for the past few days. What can I say? I enjoy its smoky beginning, its peaty finish, and its strong followthrough. Steep it for an extra few minutes for a real kick, a tea that cannot be submitted like so many others, a tea that…umm…yknow what? This is total crap. I like Prince of Wales tea because it makes me think of Maine, and more specifically, cold foggy mornings at my Grandmother’s farm. I like that memory. I’m big on connecting senses to memories.

Another Story
A year ago, my mother went looking for stocking stuffers for the family, including tea for me. She stopped by a local specialty shop. She asked for my favorite - Twinings’ “Prince of Wales” tea - and was told that while the specialty shop could order it, they generally didn’t like to stock, “grocery store teas.” The woman behind the counter must have been the hipster of teas, what with her not wanting to associate herself with the Twinings more proletariat offerings.

The condescension that comes along with everything these days is so incredibly off putting. Tea, golf equipment, music, art, stereo equipment, movies, food. People wrap themselves up in these things, assuming that their preferences are somehow indicative of inherent truths about the thing. The woman at the specialty store condescended to the so-called grocery store teas because she assumed that her own preferences were somehow themselves superior her customer’s son’s preferences. Of course, all teas are equal; nobody’s preferences are better than those of anybody else.

On some issues, it is silly to preach relativism - we should be free to judge cultures that persecute women for the crime of being women, for example. But music? Or golf equipment? Or tea? There is no reason to assume that our personal preferences are somehow superior to another person’s; there is no reason to endow our preferences with the ridiculous notion of truth.

Do I like the teas sold by the specialty store? Absolutely. But the tea for sale on grocery store shelves, like my favorite Prince of Wales, is equally good. I’d be silly if I thought I could rank order them for any number of nonsense reasons. I could say that I like Prince of Wales more than I like Twinings Darjeeling tea, but that’s not evidence of truths about the teas themselves. There are plenty of people who’d prefer the Darjeeling.

Needless to say, this absurd assumption that our preferences represent truths inherent to the thing that we prefer is madness.

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