How easily prejudiced we are. Say Green Pearl and it conjures up images of a fragile aroma, an elusive elegance that tickles the palate. Say Gunpowder and it evokes coarse strength that sends shock bolts down your palate.

Except they are one and the same tea, a mellow green that usually come from Zhejiang in southeastern China. It was once sold as Green Pearl in Europe, but is now known as Gunpowder.

By sheer chance, it was the first green tea I ever tried. No noble reason for picking it�??it was just cheaper than most, and I was a student. I remember the taste bowled me over. I knew very little about China tea at the time and I had thought the name�??Gunpowder�??would be an indication of flavor. So I had naturally expected something strong and explosive. Instead, it was a subtle tea that my Assam-tuned palate would refuse to call anything but delicate. Had I known it, I would have thought Green Pearl a perfectly fitting name.

I have learned much since then. That the tea�??s name had to do with the shape of the leaves, rolled tightly to look like gunpowder pellets�??or indeed green pearls. That, as far as green teas go, Gunpowder is reasonably flavorsome, though by no means explosive. And that I like other green teas better.

But that first experience conditioned my palate like the metronome with Pavlov�??s hungry dog. Gunpowder still shapes my eternal form, my Platonic idea of green tea. It is my unconscious frame of reference.

So I couldn�??t help but include it in my tour. I got the sample size of Special Teas�?? Temple of Heaven. It is a Pinhead, which means that the little pearls of tea are tightly rolled and very small. A teaspoon steeped in 12oz water for two minutes gave a rich golden cup with a very delicate scent�??vegetaley, with barely a hint of undergrowth. The taste was mild, with a subtle vegetaley accent in the end. It brought to mind the beautiful Sisley landscapes I saw at an exhibition in Madrid, Spain, four years ago. On second steep, for three minutes, the scent acquired an ephemeral floral note. On third steep, a slight astringency came across in the end.

In all, though, it remained mild, easy drinking that belied its bellicose name. But I will always wonder whether I would have deemed it just as mild had it been called Green Pearl instead.

Maybe it was its intensely dark leaf, which promised chocolate and flowers like a good Valentine�??s Day. Or maybe it was the name. Keemun. It could have been the hero of a Kipling book. The chemistry of love is always hard to rationalize and I would be hard pushed to pinpoint exactly what attracted me to this big China black one December day of fifteen years ago.

Like every coup de foudre, I remember the moment I spotted the large bottle green canisters on the second shelf of the teashop where I had just started working, sandwiched between Yunnan and Chingwoo, above the smoked teas. Keemun, Keemun Congou and Grand Keemun. They held promises of riches, of silks and spices and imperial courts.

I gave in to impulse and bought some plain Keemun, which was the cheapest of the three. Even with my employee discount, it still was outrageously expensive for a student�??s budget. But this secret guilt only amplified my pleasure, as I went home and carefully brewed a pot. My cup was delicate, sweet, ever so slightly floral, fragile, elusive. It marked the beginning of an enduring love story.

I have drunk Keemun for longer than I have known my husband and I have yet to tire of it�??which gives some hope to the husband too. Over the years, my finances allowed me to progress to better Keemuns, broadening my taste palette and my gustatory pleasure. I went around evangelizing family and friend with the zeal of the just converted and even had some success when my staunchly Indian-drinking mother embraced the cause.

So after venturing in the unknown territory of Pu-Erh, opening my Keemun caddies today was like coming home after a long and satisfying journey. Whoever said familiarity breeds contempt must have had a very unhappy home. I like to think it breeds a comfortable, embracing warmth. And it is to this warmth that I gave myself over as I brewed two cups of tea�??a Keemun by Mariage Fréres and a Keemun Imperial by Sans & Sans.

The Mariage Fréres liquor was a brilliant, reddish brown, with a distinctly floral aroma. Fresh on the tip of the tongue, it grew richer and more layered as it travelled through the mouth, ending in a sweet triumph.

The Sans & Sans cup was slightly clearer in color and has a more restrained floral note with a fleeting hint of something else�??chocolate? Surprisingly, though, its flavor was a lot more floral than the other Keemun, carrying that note all the way through the long, long finish.

Two Michaelangelo masterpieces, where vigor and complexity magically blended into simple beauty.

As it often happens to me with Keemun, the actual cup was even better than my recollection of it. What made me happiest today, though, was to see my devil of a toddler pick up the Mariage Frères caddy, bury his nose in it and give a loud �??Ahhh�?� of approval. I like to think of it as the start of his own love story with tea. May it be as enduring and pleasurable as my own.

Pandas, bamboo, the great wall, pagodas, delicate pictures of beautiful women. And tea. This pretty much sums up what I know of China. And even my tea knowledge is very sketchy. Although China is tea�??s place of birth, my drinking habits are thoroughly British (down to and including warm ale, but that�??s another story). And since the day they waged the Opium Wars, Brits have chosen Indian tea�??which they planted and produced�??over China. This attitude has changed significantly over the last few years with the advent of green tea, which has brought China firmly back on the British tea drinking map, making my ignorance of all things Chinese all the more inexcusable. Even my spell in a teashop helped little, as it took place a terrifyingly long time ago, well before customers started talking knowledgeably of Chun Mee or Bi Lo Chun.

Now I suppose I could look at this in a Socratic way and convince myself that knowing I don�??t know anything is the greatest knowledge of all. But I never bought into Socrates�?? maieutics and consequently keep feeling ashamed at my ignorance. Which is probably why I always did my homework back at school. I just couldn�??t envisage anything more embarrassing than having to admit to the whole class that I didn�??t know the answer. It happened to me once at an exam and I am still smarting years later.

“Talk to me about operation Talon Vise,” a diminutive lady wrapped in a yellow suit that set off her very dark hair and olive skin.

I couldn’t see the other students at the back but I could sense them, the buzz, the murmured answers. I felt a sudden heat rising from within and spread crimson red to my ears and cheeks.

“I am sorry, I don’t know about it,” I blurted out. And wished intensely, deeply, desperately that the earth would open and swallow me that instant.

The earth didn’t listen.

I have since found out that operation Talon Vise, later named Frequent Wind, was the one that evacuated Americans and their allies from Saigon in 1975. But that shame has stayed with me and I always feel deeply uncomfortable when I catch myself out. At the risk of sounding like a complete fruitcake, I will admit I sometimes cringe at my ignorance even in the privacy of my own home.

�??Oh my goodness, I haven�??t even heard about this tea and I am supposed to be something of an expert,�?� is a familiar sentiment.

The silver lining, of course, is that not knowing carries a distinct advantage�??it means that I still have much to learn and discover. Which is exactly what I set out to do with my tea tour.

The small problem with this is that from the little I have read in books and on Chinaphile tea blogs such as Cha Dao, Tea Masters and Floating Clouds, Gliding Eagle, I could easily devote an entire lifetime to armchair touring China and I probably wouldn�??t get any close to knowing much about its teas. Still, any start is a good start, and it is with this feeling and a degree of expectant trepidation that I approached the China section of my tea cupboard. My hand hovered on the teas I knew least about. What should I pick? Should I start with a cup of Zhongshan Baiye or perhaps Huangshan Mao Feng?

And then I cheated. I went straight to the familiar safety of a black Yunnan, which makes up my usual China repertoire together with Keemun, Jasmine Tea and Gunpowder. I suppose it makes sense to start this journey into the barely known from a safe harbour. Or perhaps I am simply a tasting coward. To make up for my lack of guts, though, I decided to compare two different Yunnans. The first was a Yunnan d�??Or from Mariage Frères in Paris, the second a Grand Yunnan from Soana in Milan.

I brewed them both the same way, steeping 2.5g (roughly one heaped teaspoon) in six oz water for four minutes. The two cups I got looked nearly identical, a beautiful dark amber, veering slightly more to the red in the Soana tea. The scent told a different story. The Yunnan d�??Or was fiercely smoky�??not in a Lapsang Souchong kind of way, but in a smoky earthiness. I like to think of it as smoked undergrowth, if any such thing exists, except I am not really sure what smoked undergrowth smells like. Nevertheless, the smoky earthy note predominated in the nose and I failed to find the promised “caramelised scent recalling sometimes hazelnuts, sometimes spices.” The mouth was much milder. Sweet at first and rich, with a light smoky, earthy accent at the end. A dark, passionate Goya painting, probably the Maya.

Soana�??s Grand Yunnan had definitely less smoke in the nose. It was there, but it was more delicate, ever so slightly earthier. The mouthfeel, by contrast, was a lot more robust. Earthy and malty with just a hint of smokiness at the very end. Definitely Rembrandt.

Both were excellent teas and I drained both cups. Maybe I could have been more daring, but I doubt my exploration of China could have been off a better start.

My mother took a sip of the Darjeeling and Oolong blend I made for her last Christmas and mulled over it a little.

�??It�??s very good,�?� she said.

I braced myself for the �??but�?� I knew would inevitably follow.

�??But not as good as that Keemun,�?� she said.

Ah, that Keemun. A Roi du Keemun, to be precise, and royalty it was indeed. A deep red, round, sweet brew with a satisfying floral aroma.

We bought together from Mariage Frerès when we took a trip to Paris six years ago. Since then, it has been the benchmark for every other tea my mother has. And no one ever really measures up. After years of drinking only Darjeeling, Assam and Ceylon, my attempts to broaden her horizons turned my mother into a bit of a Keemun convert, but even other Keemuns we tried fell short of the Mariage Frerès standard.

She can�??t really point out what made that tea so special, except saying that whenever she had a cup she wanted to have more. If it were a book, critics would call this compulsive need for more the Keemun�??s reserve of vitality�??it remains alive and attractive to you because you want to go back to it and explore its every nuance. My mother simply calls it that tea with a dreamy note in her voice.

Good daughter that I am, I going to buy her some Roi du Keemun from Mariage Frerès�?? online shop for her birthday. It won�??t be identical to that one of course. Much like wine, tea changes every year, depending on the weather, the conditions of the soil and the human vagaries of plucking and processing. But I suspect that even if it were identical, it still wouldn�??t rate up to that Keemun. Because, over the years, that tea has acquired the delicious taste of good memories.