Life
get’s a little more cheery with tea. Fact.
Tea
makes you feel better on a sad day, warmer when it’s chilly, and feel at home
when you’re far away.
Everyone
from Henry James to my family bang on about tea, hell, it’s one of the best
presents to give/receive if you ask me!
There are few hours in
life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon
tea. ~ Henry James
It is no wonder that we,
as a nation, have a reputation.
To our American
counterparts, tea is an English mystery. From what I have experienced, tea is a
quaint, British fancy that when mimicked will turn said mimicker into a very
fine Brit-alike. On countless occasions I have been asked in faux-Brit accent
(most recognisable as the Queen’s accent), “would you like a potto’ tea
darling?” I guess it’s an attempt to make one feel at home…
So it seems that us
English are stereotyped for our love of the little leaves we brew and strain
and no longer call tcha, but tea. But, an interesting encounter with The Rare Tea Lady left me bedazzled
as to just, how, improper we really are when it comes to tea-drinking…
Considering we drink
around 165 million cups of the stuff a day on this little island alone, we sure
do succumb to the mighty power of consumerism and the fate that poor tea leaves
have fallen to. Yes, I am talking bags.
Let me explain. Wandering the Southbank’s Tea and Coffee festival with fellow tea-enthusiast Jon, the Rare Tea Lady was up next to do
a lecture in a nearby marquee. To lure us over, this wondrous lady shouted her simple slogan:
“My mission is to de-bag
Britain!”
Simple.
And she wasn’t talking the
urban dictionary wouldn’t-want-to-be-her “bag” of crass insults between
neighbours. No, she was talking small, paper, square/triangle/circle/pyramid/teapig etc, bags. In the 70's, only 3% of our population used a teabag. Last year, only 3% didn't...
Tea was created, in China,
more than 5000 years ago. Then the Brits found it, liked it, put tax on it, smuggled it, coaxed China into giving it to us in return for Indian opium, got them addicted, and
well, inexorably intertwined with the opium wars, the rest is part of our lovely history.
Now tea is OURS.
And now we desecrate it.
Henrietta Lovell [said-Tea-lady] brought up tea in a way that I’d never thought of
before: When a friend comes over, you get out the coffee beans, the nice
biscuits, the nice vino, etc etc. Very rarely does one get out the fresh
tea-leaves. Or do you?? It’s something we should do FAR more often and, as
Henrietta said, is not that much more expensive. Even the Ritz short-change us at tea time, their "high tea" comprising of.....champagne.
A small spoonful of leaves
in one “potto tea” is a gem to treasure; add just one cup of water enough for
you to drink and NOT filling the pot and leaving it to stew – these leaves can
be re-used around 5 times, (and even more if you are a poor student like
myself.) It is even recommendable for good taste to use a porcelain cup.
What’s more, white tea is
excellent for hangovers.
Green tea is fab for
studying with as it has heaps of natural caffeine in it.
Black tea is excellent for being all British and having tea parties ;)
But bought, bagged tea is not the way forward, I hear. If you buy some of that lovely cheap "cranberry and apple" tea from the supermarket, -don't be fooled by its packaging finery! There are people who get paid to pretty-it-up into a consumer-luring box, in the sentiments of the tea-lady: Don't succumb. There are mainly chemicals in that bag that infuse to make a sickeningly bright pink colour in your cup and fool us into thinking "ahh, healthy herbal fruity tea".
Furthermore, I believe in the decaff myth. A friend of mine who traveled to Africa last year said that if we all could see the process that goes into decaffeinating tea and coffee, we would never touch it again. The act of stripping coffee beans of their natural caffeine takes so much effort and chemical action - why not just go for Rooibos (redbush) tea? Its lovely, can be drunk with milk (if you are strange like my father), and most importantly, naturally caffeine-free.
You can get very scientific about tea, too.
Tea is rich in flavanoids,
natural anti-oxidants that help keep healthy, cleanse away, give life a bit of
extra oomph – and they sound awesome, don’t they?
A national study of 1,764
women in Saudi Arabia showed that tea drinkers were 19% less likely to suffer
from cardiovascular disease than non-tea drinkers. (UK tea council).
It also contains fluoride, which helps look after and WHITEN teeth - its the stuff on all the toothpaste adverts anyhow!
Studies
are even being done into the validity of black tea as a cancer-busting aid –
pretty nifty. (Tea-Advisory Panel)
So, I'm slowly joining the bandwagon of the tea lady: de-bagging my cupboard as I can afford leaves and cooing over my re-discovered teapots. Why not go for it too? Get your friends over and get the posh tea out! Plus, cake-stands are all in at the moment.
Want to make the perfect
cup of tea? Check out advice from the lady herself :
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