Why Tea?

Tea is like air. It’s everywhere, all the time, and yet, even in countries where tea is a cultural staple, many drinkers only notice tea when it’s either especially delicious or breathtakingly, chokingly awful. On the other hand, tea for many of the leaf-attuned is a matter of gnarly connoisseurship. At some juncture, a Wine-ification began in the tea world. There are tea sommelier classes featuring all the usual tasting note suspects. This beverage of the people was then placed it on the other side of a rather steep obstacle course. A wall, which I’m interested in blowing up.

But tea is also like those one-sided mirror-windows they use in police procedurals. Depending on how you look at it, you can get a good perspective on yourself or whatever lies on the other side.

So what, then, do I or anyone else know about tea? Probably both too much and not enough.

After water, tea is the world’s most consumed beverage. I consider it humanity’s most beloved beverage. By tea, I mean leaves from the camellia sinensis plant that are steeped or whisked or otherwise squeezed into some kind of ooze and then consumed. In other words, tea = the caffeinated variety. The major categories include white, green, oolong, black, and pu’erh (don’t @ me about yellow or hei cha — and for now let’s avoid all the linguistic trip wires — I see you ‘hong cha’ advocates — that could set off the alarm and bring this whole party to a close before we’ve even finished out first cup).

Tisanes (often called non-caffeinated or herbal teas and include things like rooibos, soba (buckwheat), chamomile, might occasionally appear in the Tea w/ Dweez universe but they simply do not pull my heartstrings with the same vigor.

So, then, tea is great place to explore paradoxes. Grey areas. A force for the great unlearning of the binary that society and language have had on the menu since the place opened up shop. Tea is a place and a beverage and a mind state—for seriousness and absurdity and mind-numbingly casual behavior.

Tea is for now. A force for presence. A great big can of “this moment, right here.”

And yes, at some point I intend to cook up guides based on location or type or season to help those who are keen get deeper into the tea game. A casual tea-drinking guide if you will. For those who are here for the writing and the expression, that will be the main feature.

Why w/?

Tea alone has its place. Tea together is better. W/ you—dear reader—is best.

Why Dweez?

It’s a nickname that’s been in use for almost 20 years. Like all good nicknames, you grow to hate them and love them more as time goes by. I once heard a dear friend describe tattoos the same way. I don’t have tattoos but ask me right now and I’d probably tell you if I did, it’d probably have something to do with tea. But a few years ago I would have said world football. A few years before that I would have chosen lines from a book. Before that, lines from a song. There seems to be no bottom to the passion mine that exists somewhere at the core of my being. I may apologize for it elsewhere. I shant apologize for it here.

For a while, I’ve been drinking tea in rather absurd volumes.

I wrote an off-the-rails GUIDE TO TEA, BOBA, & KOMBUCHA IN LOS ANGELES for a beloved local publication L.A. TACO.

On the most basic level, this newsletter is a spin-off of the third and final segment of my 100+ episode podcast FCFC that I cohost with my brothers Spice and Slim.

I began living in Kamakura Japan in January 2023.

And thus, we have Tea w/ Dweez:

Why Subscribe?

Because you like tea and want to dive deeper.

The deeper hope, as I danced around in my first post, is that these dispatches (newsletter posts, if you prefer) do more than educate about tea or entertain. The hope is that they do for you what tea has done for me and the hundreds (thousands?) of years the beverage has been enjoyed by so many.

The hope is that they give you a break: not just a tea break, but a break from the relentlessness of modern life, with it’s messages about productivity, self-improvement, hustle culture, etc. The hope is that these dispatches remind you that you don’t have to do anything or be anything or go anywhere else than where you are right now. The hope is that I can help play a part in the unlearning process that tea has helped me wrap my head around: an emphatic permission to exist as a being rather than a doing.

Tea is a vehicle for unlearning. Perhaps Tea w/ Dweez, at its best, will be a play-by-play of that unlearning, giving anyone following along belief and instruction that they aren’t alone on these windy roads.