[babalu1997]

Having been brought up in a household where toddler's milk was laced with coffee (or what they call latte in the vernacular), O remember tasting tea in a restaurant at the age of ten.

I started buying it, and when i could travel alone as a teenager, i would ride a bus for 2 hours to purchase the imported twinnings.

My mother, i believed, learned from me. When she died and I was home for the funeral, my father packed all the remaining tea in my bag-- not tea is bought in the house hold anymore.

I think i have a tea drinking gene, so i wrote here because there are smarties in the water cooler. They can save me from having to watch many hours of Oprah.

[helene_t]

According to the Dutch Twin Registry, coffee vs tea preference is 62% genetic and 38% environmentally determined. However, this is in a country where coffee and tea are both common and everyone gets exposed to both. I can imagine that if one studied twins one of which were brought up in Brasil and the other in Nepal, the environmental component would be much stronger.

Source:

http://www.biomedexperts.com/Abstract.bme/..._of_dutch_twins

[luke warm]

i think it's more about what one likes, but i really don't know... i've tried to develop a taste for hot tea but always go back to my beloved coffee

[awm]

I suppose I was brought up with neither, in that most Americans don't believe in giving coffee or tea to really small children (say under nine or ten).

My parents drink both, but they were always more "coffee people" than "tea people." I never really liked either until graduate school, when I realized that going out to starbucks (or similar places) was a big social activity among researchers and that I needed to drink something to fit in. These days I have developed a taste for chai (and I also drink a number of other herbal teas). Still can't stand the smell of coffee though.

[kenberg]

My wife likes the smell of coffee, it's the taste that she can't stand. She drinks tea. Black, green, herbal, whatever. I was introduced to coffee when I was maybe 9 or so. i stayed with my cousin for a couple of weeks. My uncle worked in the iron mines and the local water seemed suffused with the stuff. Or with something. They said it was iron that gave it the brown color but now that I think of it... Anyway, drinking the water straight seemed impossible so coffee it was. My parents were ok with my new habit when I got home so it now it has been some 60 years of coffee drinking. If it wasn't genetic when I started it probably is now.

[Winstonm]

I mean, really, who ever heard of having an Irish Tea?

[Aberlour10]

I like especially Polish Highlander Tea = black tea with a shot of pure 96% alcohol, very popular in the mountain hostels while bad weather conditions

Robert

[cherdanno]

awm, on May 24 2009, 01:40 PM, said:

I suppose I was brought up with neither, in that most Americans don't believe in giving coffee or tea to really small children (say under nine or ten).

My parents drink both, but they were always more "coffee people" than "tea people." I never really liked either until graduate school, when I realized that going out to starbucks (or similar places) was a big social activity among researchers and that I needed to drink something to fit in. These days I have developed a taste for chai (and I also drink a number of other herbal teas). Still can't stand the smell of coffee though.

You misunderstand something. If you want coffee, you don't go to Starbucks.

[Gerben42]

Quote

You misunderstand something. If you want coffee, you don't go to Starbucks.

They serve something almost but not completely unlike coffee?

Quote

I never really liked either until graduate school, when I realized that going out to starbucks (or similar places) was a big social activity among researchers and that I needed to drink something to fit in.

I had the same for alcoholic beverages. I still don't like beer a lot but enjoy wine. Otherwise, I'm a tea person!

[H_KARLUK]

I am born in Turkiye. Tea is a must there. Classic of breakfast, also for guests. There are many countries in the world still recognize 'tea is a matter of culture'.
Now I moved to USA. It's quite different. Here Coffee is preferred to tea.
Well, then i think it all depends what you are compared with

[PassedOut]

Tea drinkers turn militant

Quote

Governor David A. Paterson, who went inside the damaged Starbucks, said that the explosion was caused by an “improvised explosive device tied with black tape around foil. It was not a high impact explosion, it blew out two of the windows, put a burn on the side of the building.”

No arrests had been reported, and the police said that they would look at surveillance video from businesses in the neighborhood.

Police are questioning known tea drinkers living in the area.

[hanp]

I voted for "preference is generic". I think that sentence has a lot going for it in a more general context too.

[gwnn]

aren't mathematicians machines that consume caffeine and produce theorems?

[y66]

Why we drink tea ... from Andrew Sullivan's blog.

Quote

My Mum And Starbucks

So I ordered the fancy-ass Tazo London Fog Tea Latte at Starbucks - because a man has to have something to help the petite vanilla bean scones go down. It cost over $3. And when I started to drink it, I got this Proustian feeling. Starbucks have discovered the old cup of cha that my mother reared me and my siblings on. The same strange blend of hot water and milk and sugar; the same black tea steeped a little too long; the same impact on the nose and lungs on a cold damp evening. All that's missing is that ritual: the English zen of making the tea.
My mum (yes, I have to use the English spelling) made around 10 of these a day. We were either drinking tea or the kettle was boiling. If my parents were having a fight, the kids upstairs listening to the uproar would wait until we heard the voices fade and then the all-clear siren: the sound of the water being drawn and the kettle being readied. When I told my poor mother I was a homosexual, it was her first impulse: "Oh my God, I'd better make a cup of tea."
My poor mum. Funny how a cup of tea reminds me how much I love her.

[JoAnneM]

Why didn't you have a button for people who like neither, and I noticed a coffee snob in the midst.

[Al_U_Card]

As Spike remarked derisively to Giles:

"cup o'tea, cup o'tea, almost shagged a bird, cup o'tea".

Its all about priorities...

[matmat]

mhmmmm... coffee + tea

[Phil]

cherdanno, on May 24 2009, 06:39 PM, said:

You misunderstand something. If you want coffee, you don't go to Starbucks.

Up until about 7-8 years ago, Starbucks used to serve coffee made with beans that were roasted beyond recognition. The coffee was awful, but I understand thats how they served it in Seattle for years. They went to a mellower roast.

Now their coffee is just average, but their muffins are OK.

I don't believe the current Starbucks business model will last. People don't want to pay $4.50 for a triple-diple mocha frappa-whatchamajingy anymore.

[luke warm]

Phil, on May 29 2009, 10:36 AM, said:

I don't believe the current Starbucks business model will last. People don't want to pay $4.50 for a triple-diple mocha frappa-whatchamajingy anymore.

that's true... i just buy mickey d's coffee and pour it into my starbuck's cup