Michelle Francl

I start my day by making a quick aqueous extraction of secondary plant metabolites. I stir in a few grams of a purified natural disaccharide, clutch the cup in my hands, inhale a hit of linalool, and take my first swallow of tea.

I read more than 500 papers while researching this book and drank at least 483 cups of tea (I didn’t start counting until I was partway through). I drank deuterated water, spiked my tea with l-theanine, and sampled tea with more than the usual amount of GABA. I wired my teapots and teacups with temperature sensors and measured cooling curves. I tried decaffeinating tea with vodka (not recommended). I did not scrape snow off the plum blossoms in my yard to melt for tea, despite the rave reviews in an 8th century manuscript.

it is the smallest unit into which a chemical compound can be broken down and still retain its fundamental identity