Zen Cat Art : Millerton & the Ambassador of Tea...

Millerton is a charming town with painted buildings, antique shops and a "smoke shop" that also sells old-fashioned penny candy, cold drinks and flannel shirts. It's just across the state line from Litchfield County, CT to Duchess County, NY. It's also home to the Harney & Sons (Master Blenders) Tea Company. It has a lovely store, and a delightful restaurant, albeit with a limited but delicious menu--and with some of the best tea scones I have ever tasted.

But, by far, the attraction that makes the trip worthwhile is the tasting room and the young man that presides over it. Hillel, cheerful, charming, and with a superior knowledge of tea, will make your trip through the maze of teas entertaining as well as enlightening.

All tea comes from the "Camellia sinesis," an evergreen shrub that can grow up to 60 feet tall in the wild. Tea plantations prune them to a height of about three feet for ease of harvesting--as only the top two leaves and the bud are picked--by hand. The leaves are then processed by different drying methods to create the four different type of tea: black, green, Oolong, and white.

Harney & Sons boasts over 150 varieties of tea. And they will brew a small cup of anything on the wall to help you select your favorite. Tea is sprinkled onto the lid of a two pound can for sight and smell and then a small spoon of it is place in a cup to brew (timed with a timer) the perfect cup of that particular kind of tea. We tried black teas and green, flavored and white, all of them delicious. My favorite morning tea is there Black Current, and for decaf tea Midsummer Peach has no equal.

Their Indian Spice tastes more like the tea I had in India than the American Chai Tea that pretends to it. Although green tea is not a favorite of mine, I couldn't resist tasting the one named Dragon Pearl. It was good enough to bring home a small 2 oz tasting package.

On the weekends, it gets so busy they ask you to confine your choices to two plus the one on the counter but we were lucky to be there on a weekday and were treated to a plethora of tea pleasures.

We walked around town peeking in store windows and combing through the treasures in thrift/antique stores and considered where to have lunch. In the end, we chose to go back to Harney's and try their sandwiches and scones. The smoked salmon on my field greens salad was wonderful and the Mulligatawny soup was grand!