Spilling the Tea: Turns Out Grandma Was Onto Something

Lucie Vanova, Head Tea Taster at The Tea Centre.

There’s a rather lovely theme happening at the moment. After years of being told to move faster, work harder, squeeze more into our days and somehow optimise every waking minute, I’m noticing the trend of slowing down is seriously amping up. You see, apparently doing nothing can, in fact, be doing something - and it’s a revelation I am fully embracing. And then some.

Cortisol is suddenly part of our everyday vocabulary. We’re walking without our phones, taking baths, breathing deeply, putting magnesium in everything and trying to remember what life felt like before being contactable 24 hours a day.

And sitting rather quietly in the middle of all this is something humans have been turning to for thousands of years.

I'm talking tea.

Lucie Vanova, The Tea Centre’s resident tea professional, has spent more than 18 years tasting, studying and exploring the world of tea.

Long before wellness became an industry, tea was already part medicine, part ritual and part reason to stop what you were doing for a few minutes. Across cultures it has been used for comfort, digestion, alertness, warmth, hospitality, ceremony and connection.

And while I’m not suggesting a pot of Earl Grey is going to magically sort out your cortisol levels, there is something about the simple act of making tea that feels remarkably suited to the way many of us are trying to live now.

Which is why a morning spent at the newly opened The Tea Centre at Warringah Mall felt strangely timely.

Established in 1993, The Tea Centre is an independent Australian-owned business specialising in premium loose-leaf tea, with 12 stores across NSW, Queensland and the ACT.

The new Northern Beaches store carries around 160 loose-leaf teas, alongside all the beautiful paraphernalia that goes with making a proper cup of tea.

And I do mean a proper cup of tea.

Because one of the first things you realise after spending time with tea professional Lucie Vanova is that most of us have been treating tea rather badly.

We boil the kettle, throw a teabag into a mug, forget about it while answering an email and eventually return to something so strong and bitter it could probably remove paint.

It turns out tea deserves a little more respect.

Lucie has worked with tea for more than 18 years. Her relationship with it began as a child growing up in Prague, where her mother introduced her to Japanese tea. That early curiosity eventually led her to run a highly specialised tea shop in the heart of Prague for seven years and, over the years, to taste thousands of teas, travel, work with producers and farmers and develop an extraordinary understanding of how tea is grown and made.

Although often referred to as a tea master, it’s a title Lucie is slightly uncomfortable with.

“I prefer ‘tea professional’,” she says. “For me, that represents many years of dedication to the tea industry - tasting, studying, travelling, working with producers and farmers, learning about different cultivars and processing methods and, perhaps most importantly, developing a very sensitive palate.”

And despite those 18 years, she says she is still learning.

That, perhaps, is part of tea’s appeal. What looks incredibly simple - leaves and hot water - turns out to contain an entire world.

Much like wine, where tea comes from matters enormously. Altitude, soil, climate, rainfall, the surrounding vegetation, the harvesting season and the particular cultivar can all change what eventually ends up in your cup. Then there is what happens after the leaves are picked: withering, rolling, oxidation, firing, roasting and fermentation.

As Lucie rather beautifully puts it, “You can taste a landscape in a cup.”

There’s also far more variety than many of us realise. Green, black, white, oolong and puer teas can offer completely different flavours and experiences, before you even begin exploring herbal infusions, matcha and the countless blends now available.

And apparently tea isn't supposed to be horribly bitter.

One of the biggest mistakes we make at home is using water that is too hot and leaving the leaves in for too long, particularly with green tea. Rather than improving the flavour, it can destroy the delicacy of a beautiful tea.

Lucie suggests playing around with it. Change the temperature. Change the brewing time. Add more leaves or fewer. Even the water you use can alter the final result.

“Eventually you start understanding what the tea is asking for,” she says.

There was something about that sentence I loved, because it speaks to the bigger reason I think tea is having a moment again.

Making tea asks you to pay attention.

You boil the water. Choose the tea. Measure the leaves. Wait for it to brew. Pour it. Smell it. Hold something warm in your hands. Taste it.

None of this is revolutionary, of course. That’s exactly the point.

We have become so accustomed to doing three things at once that deliberately doing one very ordinary thing can suddenly feel luxurious.

There is growing interest in the relationship between chronic stress, our nervous system and the way we feel physically, and tea fits naturally into that conversation without needing to turn it into another wellness cure-all. Some teas and herbal infusions contain compounds that are being studied for their effects on health and wellbeing, while tea itself has a long history of traditional medicinal use. But perhaps one of its most immediate benefits has nothing to do with making grand medical claims.

It gives us permission to stop.

Lucie describes making tea as “a little interruption in the day”, and I think that might be my favourite description of it.

“You have to boil the water, measure the leaves, wait, pour and actually pay attention to what you’re doing,” she says. “In a world where so much of our attention is fragmented, that small ritual can be surprisingly powerful.”

Importantly, she doesn't try to sell tea as something that will fix everything.

“Sometimes simply giving yourself ten quiet minutes to sit down and drink something beautiful is valuable enough.”

Exactly. Because wellness doesn't always have to involve another app, another subscription, another supplement or another person on Instagram explaining how we have been breathing incorrectly our entire lives.

Sometimes it can simply be a cup of tea.

Lucie’s own choice at the moment is Gyokuro, a shaded Japanese green tea known for its umami, sweetness and freshness. But for somebody convinced they are “not really a tea person”, she would start with a good oolong.

Oolong sits somewhere between green and black tea and can range from floral and creamy through to fruity, roasted, honeyed or mineral, making it a lovely introduction to just how sophisticated tea can be.

Lucie’s approach is refreshingly simple.

“I wouldn't tell someone, ‘You need to become a tea person.’ I'd just give them something beautiful and say, ‘Forget everything you think you know about tea. Just taste this.’”

And maybe that is what makes tea feel so right for now.

We’re searching everywhere for ways to slow our minds, calm our bodies and feel a little more present, when humans have been performing this tiny ritual for generations.

Put the kettle on. Choose something beautiful. Wait for it to brew.

Then, instead of carrying it back to your desk and forgetting it exists, sit down and actually drink it.

Ten minutes. No scrolling. No emails. No optimisation required.

It might be the quietest wellness trend we never actually needed to invent.

Established in Sydney in 1993, The Tea Centre is an independent, Australian-owned tea specialist devoted to premium loose-leaf tea, with teas consciously sourced from growing regions around the world. Its newest store, The Tea Centre Warringah Mall, is now open at Shop 2349, Level 1, Westfield Warringah Mall, Brookvale, offering loose-leaf teas, matcha, herbal infusions, tea wares and gifts, along with expert advice for anyone wanting to take their daily cuppa a little more seriously.

Website: theteacentre.com.au @theteacentre