Look closely at the leaf opening in this cup and one piece hasn't quite joined the others — paler, with a faint silvery coat that looks almost like down on a feather. That's not a flaw. It's the youngest growth on the plant, and tea graders have a word for it that comes straight from a southern Chinese term for white down. The more of it still visible, the earlier the leaf was picked — proof of age that exists for a short window and then vanishes for good.

Today's cup: Jasmine Pearl Tea — Camellia Sinensis. 1 tsp, 200mL, 80°C, three minutes. Takes three infusions.

A tea and a musing every weekday morning.

Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. This week's cup is waiting for you at online.

To join our tea ritual - click here .

Look through everything sitting in this cup and there isn't a single petal. No flower, no bud, nothing white — just leaf, rolled and opening. And yet the smell filling the room above it is the loudest thing there. Jasmine only releases its scent for a few hours after dark, on its own schedule, negotiable with no one — which means an entire night's work, for five nights running, was built around a flower that isn't there any more.

Today's cup: Jasmine Pearl Tea — Camellia Sinensis. 1 tsp, 200mL, 80°C, three minutes. Takes three infusions.

A tea and a musing every weekday morning.

Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. This week's cup is waiting for you at online.

To join our tea ritual - click here .

Somebody rolled this by hand, one at a time, into a ball tight enough to hold its scent for months. Watch it in the water this morning and there's usually one that hasn't opened yet — still round while everything around it has gone flat and ordinary. That shape was never meant to last. It exists purely to survive the distance between where it was made and where it's being drunk, and the moment it arrives, its whole job is to come apart.

Today's cup: Jasmine Pearl Tea — Camellia Sinensis. 1 tsp, 200mL, 80°C, three minutes. Takes three infusions.

A tea and a musing every weekday morning.

Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. This week's cup is waiting for you at online.

To join our tea ritual - click here .

There's a cup of jasmine tea in front of you, and none of the jasmine is in it. Each evening for five nights running, fresh flowers were scattered over the dry leaf and left to open in the dark — and each morning they were picked out and thrown away, spent, with nothing left to give. There's a faster way to get the same smell, finished in an afternoon rather than a working week, and it's nearly impossible to tell the two apart. Almost.

Today's cup: Jasmine Pearl Tea — Camellia Sinensis. 1 tsp, 200mL, 80°C, three minutes. Takes three infusions.

A tea and a musing every weekday morning.

Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. This week's cup is waiting for you at online.

To join our tea ritual - click here .

Brew this one for three minutes rather than two, and have milk within reach. Take the first sip straight — brisk, gripping the sides of the mouth, the sweetness of the bark coming in behind. Then add a splash and taste it again. The grip has softened and the vanilla, last in the queue a moment ago, has come forward and got much bigger. Nothing was added but milk. Which raises the oldest argument in tea, and the one people still start at dinner tables: milk in first, or milk in last. Orwell had eleven rules for a cup of tea and was immovable on this one. He was also, on the evidence of what's in the pot, arguing for the wrong thing.

Today's cup: Melbourne Breakfast — Camellia sinensis, cinnamon, vanilla.

1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, two minutes straight or three-plus with milk.

A tea and a musing every weekday morning.

Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. This week's cup is waiting for you at online.

To join our tea ritual - click here .

Most of what's in this cup is the thing you'd look at last: small hard twists, nearly black while dry, tight as knots. Watch one. What was a twist is loosening into something broad and coppery, and by the time you drink this it will have opened out almost flat, bigger than it had any right to be. Everything else in the cup arrived finished. That one is still going — and so is the reaction that made it black rather than green, which happened entirely after it was picked.

Today's cup: Melbourne Breakfast — Camellia sinensis, cinnamon, vanilla.

1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, two minutes straight or three-plus with milk.

A tea and a musing every weekday morning.

Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. This week's cup is waiting for you at online.

To join our tea ritual - click here .

A tea and a musing every weekday morning.

Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. This week's cup is waiting for you at online.

To join our tea ritual - click here .

Find the only thing in this cup with a straight edge. It's the pale one, tan-brown and squared off at the corners, sitting there among all that curl and twist like it came from somewhere else entirely — because everything else here has the shape its plant gave it, and this one has corners. Somebody cut it. What it is, is bark. What Europe was told for two thousand years is that enormous birds gathered it from a land nobody could reach and built their nests with it on cliff faces, and that the way to get it down was to butcher an ox and wait.

Today's cup: Melbourne Breakfast — Camellia sinensis, cinnamon, vanilla.

1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, two minutes straight or three-plus with milk.

A tea and a musing every weekday morning.

Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. This week's cup is waiting for you at online.

To join our tea ritual - click here .