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Before It Begins episodes
- Lapsang Souchong - Leaves Four and Five
The cup is Lapsang Souchong, and the leaves in it are larger than you might expect — long, broad, dark, with the roughness of something that’s weathered more than one season. As they open, you can see the shape of a whole leaf returning, not just a tip or a fragment. The aroma rises with smoke and malt, and the taste holds its ground: full, round, never lost under the fire. The prized tips are delicate, but it’s the mature leaves, further down the branch, that can take the smoke and still taste like themselves. Some things can only be carried by what’s been growing a while.
Today's cup: Lapsang Souchong — Camellia sinensis, smoked over pinewood. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, three minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
5 min - Lapsang Souchong - Easy to Spoil
The cup darkens from amber to deep red-brown, and the first thing you notice is smoke—broad, warm, unmistakably from a tree, not just a fire. Stay with it, and something sharper emerges beneath: resin, sap, the green of pine on a hot day. The leaf in this cup has taken in more than water; it has absorbed the room it was dried in, the smoke of one particular tree, until the line between leaf and fire is gone. Some things are changed by what they’re exposed to, and not always in ways you can choose.
Today's cup: Lapsang Souchong — Camellia sinensis, smoked over pinewood. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, three minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
5 min - Lapsang Souchong - The Fire Nobody Chose
The cup is dark and smoky, the colour rising fast from the leaves—amber, then mahogany, then the brown of an old violin. The aroma is wood smoke, not from a fire burning now, but one that burnt last night, with resin and pine beneath, and a sweetness that waits its turn.
The taste is gentler than the scent, the smoke lingering long after the sip. In the Wuyi Mountains, the story goes, this flavour began as an accident—leaves dried over pine fires in a hurry, a fix that became the thing itself. Sometimes what people love most in us started as a way through an emergency, and it takes someone else to see it for what it is.
Today's cup: Lapsang Souchong — Camellia sinensis, smoked over pinewood. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, three minutes. It takes a second infusion.
---A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Reserve Tea - The Root Heard It Wrong
At the bottom of the teapot, something heavier waits. Everything else in this blend is light—leaf, stalk, bud—rising towards the surface, but one piece has gone the other way. It sits low, cut like kindling, slow to give itself up, and the only thing in the cup that never saw the sun. The first sip is cool, bright, soft, and then, late and lasting, a sweetness that stays behind. There is a root at the bottom, and a name that has been wrong for seven hundred years, left unchanged because it works. What else do we keep because it fits, even if it isn’t true?
Today's cup was a Reserve tea, Happy Melon. We produced this one exclusively for our client and for subscribers of our Tea Ritual Box. If you'd like access to the reserve teas, visit https://www.impalaandpeacock.com.au/pages/subscribe
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
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Next Month's Tea Ritual Starts The First Monday Of The Next Month.
5 min - Reserve Tea - What Stayed When the Petals Fell
The tea opens green-gold and clouded, with every leaf and stalk sinking to the bottom—except for the small, violet-grey grains that float, turning slowly on the surface. They are the only colour in the cup that isn’t green or brown, and the only thing that came from near a flower. The scent is layered: mint first, lemon underneath, and then something softer, faintly sweet, waiting behind the others. The floral note lingers at the roof of the mouth, more felt than tasted. Those floating grains are not petals, but the calyx—the sleeve that once held the flower. In lavender, the scent is kept not in the petal, but in the holder. The flower falls, but the calyx stays, carrying the memory of what was once there.
Today's cup: Happy Melon Tea exclusive to their studio in Armadale, Melbourne.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Reserve Tea - A Grass That Smelled of Violets
Everything in today's cup has a colour — except for the pale, straw-yellow pieces that look as if they were dry before they were ever dried. They sit in the water, hollow and faintly gold, doing almost nothing, but their scent is unmistakable: a lemon that isn’t a lemon, softer and greener than fruit, rising behind the mint. The taste is cool at the edges, bright in the middle, and the thing that brings the brightness was never grown for tea at all. Sometimes, what something is for gets decided in rooms it never entered.
Today's cup: Happy Melon Tea exclusive to their studio in Armadale, Melbourne.---
A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Reserve Tea - The Nerve Doesn't Know the Difference
In this tea there's one dark green, serrated leaf, crumpled as if it never quite unfolded. It’s the most ordinary thing in the cup, but it’s the one doing most of the work. Watch as the water gets into it and the green shifts from dusty to deep. The aroma is cold before it’s anything else, a sharp, green sweetness that grows colder with every breath in, even as the cup steams. The taste is hot, but the mouth reports coolness, as if a window had opened behind your teeth. There’s a sensor in the body that only knows one word, and it’s being pressed by something that isn’t what it seems. The feeling is real. What’s worth asking is what’s pressing on it.
Today's cup: Happy Melon exclusive to their studio in Armadale, Melbourne.---
A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Reserve Tea - The Last Thing to Arrive
The Reserve Tea opens with a cup that glows green-gold, shifting in the light like a leaf held to a window. Four shapes loosen in the pot—leaf, stalk, flower, root—each from a different plant, none of them the tea bush. The surface is scattered with buds that drift and never sink, while something pale and fibrous waits at the bottom, the odd one out. The first sip is all peppermint and lemongrass, bright and clean, but what lingers is a sweetness that arrives late and stays long after the cup is empty. There is a trick to how some things last.
Today's cup: Happy Melon Reserve — Exclusive to Happy Melon Yoga Studio in Armadale only.---
A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Earl Grey - Mr Grey's Legacy
The cup is Earl Grey, and the colour comes up fast—amber, copper, then it stops. There are dark leaves, pale curls of rind, a drift of blue petals, and a scent that reads as old: citrus at the front, malty tea beneath. The name is everywhere, but the man behind it is not a legend or a marketing invention. He is a real person, and the strange part is what he is remembered for. The tea carries his name further than his life ever could, and the story that travels is rarely the one chosen.
Today's cup: Earl Grey — Camellia sinensis, bergamot, citrus peel, cornflower petals, bergamot essential oil.
1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, two minutes straight or three-plus with milk.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Earl Grey - The Smell Nobody Names
The cup of Earl Grey Tea is a room-filling presence, its colour rising fast and its scent arriving before the water has finished pouring. There are dark leaves, curls of dried peel, blue petals drifting, but the most familiar thing in the cup is the hardest to name. The scent is bright, high, floral at the edges, a little bitter underneath—recognised instantly, described with difficulty. The ingredient that carries it has no shape of its own, and it reaches you before you even sit down. Most people could pick this tea from a lineup in a second, but almost nobody can say what makes it smell this way. The most recognisable thing in the cup is also the one that slips through language.
Today's cup: Earl Grey — Camellia sinensis, bergamot, citrus peel, cornflower petals, bergamot essential oil.
1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, two minutes straight or three-plus with milk.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min
About Before It Begins
From the publisher's feed
Five minutes with a cup of tea, every weekday morning. Pour the water, watch the colour arrive, and hear one true thing about what's in the cup — why lemon myrtle carries more lemon than a lemon does,…
why hibiscus isn't a flower, why no ginger plant has ever been found growing wild. Then one thought worth carrying into the day. A new blend each week, Monday to Friday. Made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. Best taken with something steeping.