Mitch Marty

When I branched into loose-leaf teas as an undergraduate student, my first stop was a café called the Root Note, where I would sometimes drop in on Tuesday nights to listen to a friend’s jazz combo. As a neophyte tea drinker who only brewed by the bag at home, I was daunted by the requirement to have anything more than boiling water on hand, and even reading through the scant descriptions of different teas that lined a small shelf in the corner of the café provoked a little anxiety.

The first time I drank tea, my grandma placed a bag of Lipton green tea in water and nuked it in the microwave. She then mixed in what I can only describe now as a horrific amount of milk and honey. I politely sipped the strangely curdled and astringent brew a few times as we watched Top Chef before secreting away to the kitchen to rinse out my mug. Although that was not my cup of tea, the experience put me on a mission to tinker with tea tastings as I entered adulthood.

The Vegan Creamery by Miyoko Schinner As I was shifting to a plant-based diet in 2013, one of the most frequent questions I got was, “You’re from Wisconsin and you’re not going to eat cheese?” After twenty-three years of gorging on all varieties of sharp and aged cheddars, squeaking my way through fresh and fried cheese curds with regularity, and guzzling 1 percent milk with most meals, my choice was as much for health reasons as it was in response to concerns about the inhumane treatment of...