I’m going to say something here that is going to make many tea experts cringe; the best cup of tea is made with freshly produced distilled water! I’ve spent some time in the tea industry and I absolutely love it. If you think gourmet coffee drinkers have passion for their craft, you haven’t seen anything like tea connoisseurs. True tea experts know their stuff as much as a wine expert. Let me clarify this last statement a little though; they know their stuff about tea but the vast majority know very little about water. Since a cup of tea is 99% water, a lack of knowledge about water is a serious deficit.

A few years ago I ran an educational program at the World Tea Expo to bring the tea experts up to speed. Here are a couple points…

1)      Water is water. It’s H2O. The only difference between the water that comes from your tap, the water in the sewers and sea water are the contaminants that are in the water. The contaminants that are in water can greatly affect the flavor, smell and healthfulness of your cup of tea. The purest water is rain water and fresh glacier melt (which is basically rainwater) and distilled water.

2)      There are different types of contaminants that affect flavor and healthfulness differently.

3)      Water quality can vary greatly from place to place and from moment to moment.

4)      Even if the government says that your water is safe it may still have dangerous chemicals in it (even in surprisingly high amounts).

5)      The minerals in water are not necessary to bring out the flavor of tea, and in fact they can interfere with the taste.

6)      If you ask people what distilled water tastes like they base their knowledge on the only source of distilled water available to them, the old, stale distilled water that they get from plastic milk jugs. This is not what freshly produced distilled water tastes like because it’s has been left to sit in low grade plastic for months or even years. It may also have been left in sunlight which further degrades the plastic and adds a terrible taste.

7)      You will be amazed at how clear and golden your tea is when made with distilled water.

8)      The tea experts at the World Tea Expo were amazed at the clarity and excellent flavor produced by our water.

Remember that people drink tea for 1) the taste and 2) the health benefits. Nothing that you can do will have more of an impact on both of these points than by using only pure, fresh distilled water to make your tea!

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