Yes, I’m a tea snob. But I come by it honestly. My family has been in the tea business for 30 years and as such I’ve had the pleasure of sampling countless hundreds of teas from just about every corner of the planet. Gunpowders from China, wiry leafed black teas from Sri Lanka, organic Fair Trade teas from Guatemala, you name it, it’s been down my gullet. As such, there are a few facts about tracking down the world’s finest teas that I can share:

1. It typically involves at least 40 hours of travel to the word’s most far-flung quarters.
2. It frequently involves the accompaniment of armed guards.
3. It almost always involves at least one near death experience either at the hands of bandits, seated on the scantily-padded seats of a hand-me-down down bus, or as the result of eating something you wish to God you hadn’t.

Thankfully, although there is nothing quite like stepping off onto the makeshift runway of a real life tea plantation, I ‘m a Toronto resident tea snob so I can simply ride a bike into Kensington Market to get my fix. This cuts down on travel time considerably and erases the need for an armed coterie. Unfortunately the near death experience remains part of the equation thanks to the lack of regard Toronto’s drivers still have for cyclists.

Kensington is home to one of Toronto’s best selections of loose tea, a giant wall of glass jars filled with the leafy bounty of almost every tea producing country on Earth. The great wall is located at Casa Acoreana (235 Augusta Avenue), the Honest Ed’s of Kensington, a landmark bulk shop at the corner of Baldwin and Augusta. It is toward this corner that I point my bicycle on a Saturday morning, making great haste as I do since the discovery of an empty tea tin on my counter has me twitching - not good.

I make up my mind on the way. I will purchase a black tea to quell the twitching and a smooth green tea to mellow me out afterward, sort of a tea junkie’s version of a few bumps followed by some ludes. I arrive, explain my dilemma to the man behind the counter and am directed to a good strong black tea, an Assam from North Eastern India, the bumps, and a green Sencha from Japan, the ludes. I pay the man and head for home.

I brew up the Assam, a CTC style black tea produced for strength and flavour. If you’ve ever seen black tea that looks like tiny pellets rather than a long wiry leaf, this is usually CTC (Cut Tear & Curl). People will frequently assume that this type of manufacture produces teas of inferior quality, an assumption that is in fact untrue, it’s just another way they make tea these days. I add a touch of milk to help open the flavour and raise it to my lips. It is superb and picks me up instantly. The cup is bright and rich with a deep touch of malt, typical traits of good solid Assams. If I were hungry at this moment, which I’m not, this tea would be perfect with a typical Toronto brunch of eggs and hollandaise, ham, toast and cumin encrusted potatoes. The Assam’s full-bodied flavour would tear through all that cholesterol like cabernet through a filet mignon.

The twitching has stopped. I chill out for a few minutes and decide to try out the Sencha. I run a few of the leaves through my fingers. The leaf has an almost waxy appearance, the result of a manufacturing process in which the raw leaf is fried quickly in a pan before it is dried. It looks good. I drop a handful into my teapot and set the kettle to a boil. Well, almost to a boil. The trick with green tea is to flip the kettle off before it boils. A rule of thumb - you know how Japanese teacups have no handles? Basically, if your green tea is too hot to hold in a cup without handles you’re going to miss out on all the nuance and romance of the tea. My Sencha suitably infused I take a good long haul on my cup. Moments later my taste buds are floating on a cloud of sweet damp moss and fresh grass. My body and mind relax. Again, if I were a hungry man I’d be reaching for something spicy, or oddly enough, a peanut butter sandwich, albeit a good one with natural peanut butter on some artisanal multigrain.

My twitch gone and now suitably mellowed out I put down my cup. “Thank god for Casa Acoreana and their selection of fine teas,” I say to myself. Life in Toronto would be quite impossible without it.