Jan 02 2009
The great tea-time of the British soul
A recent poll showed that coffee shops are rapidly becoming a more fashionable and popular place to meet your friends than the pub, given that our pubs are closing by the score every week.
So what of that traditional British beverage, a nice cup of tea?
On the supermarket shelves there is more choice than ever, but most of it is in teabags. Now I have no objection to teabags per se, but what I really hate is tea made in the cup with a teabag, that is, unless it is something like Rooibos (South African Red Bush) or one of the many varieties of herbal and fruit teas.
If I am making ‘ordinary’ tea, it just HAS to be in a pot. My everyday brew is a mix of one Earl Grey bag, which is flavoured with oil of bergamot – from the peel of a variety of orange, and one bag of a good quality Indian tea. Currently it is Clipper Fair Trade Organic , but I also have some specials, like Lady Grey, a more delicate version of Earl Grey with orange and lemon peel and have been trying some single estate teas such as those packaged by a company called Dilmah.
There is an interesting debate about who owns the true Earl Grey recipe and whether it is based on China or Indian tea. The participants in this debate are two English tea companies, Twinings, who favour Indian Tea and Jacksons of Piccadilly who insist it should be China tea. The Earl Grey for whom it was named was the second Earl and British Prime Minister in the 1830’s and there are various legends about how the tea blend was created and got to him as a gift.
Twinings claim to have an official endorsement from the sixth Earl Grey who was born in 1939 and is still alive, while Jacksons say that the recipe was given to them by an earlier incumbent of the title in 1830. Bizarrely, though Earl Grey is probably their best known product, their new and very beautiful website doesn’t mention it!
I think the difference in taste between tea made in the pot and in a cup is that with a pot, the bitter tannins come to the top as the tea brews, but you don’t get them in the cup as when you tilt the pot to pour, they stay floating on top. My estranged husband’s mother has the even more revolting (to me) habit of putting the milk in with the teabag in the cup which means that the tea doesn’t brew properly at all as the water is never really boiling as it mixes with the tea - abomination! But then, she doesn’t like my habit of ‘dunking’ biscuits in my tea – favourite has to be digestive biscuits and they must be McVities please, no own-brand alternatives.
Before I started writing this, I did a cupboard check and found I have 7 different teas in stock, and can claim to have had at least one cup of 5 of them in the last week.
Being the season for colds and flu, I have had a cup of chai most days for the last month. I was introduced to this, under its alternative name of massala tea by the kind owner of one of our local Indian restaurants after going in there with a really bad cold one evening.
It is strongly spiced with some of the flavours you might expect in a curry, such as cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, star anise, ginger and cloves. It is also possible to buy a mixed ‘tea spice’ in Asian stores which I used for a few years before the Twinings chai teabags came on the market. I drink it black and strong giving me a lift from the caffeine and spices, as I find that the addition of milk is not helpful to the catarrh or bronchial congestion I usually experience.
Rooibos/Redbush comes from the leaf of the Aspalathus linearis which is not related to the tea plant Camelia Sinensis at all, but is a woody bush with a yellow flower more similar to broom. It is grown in a small area of the Cape Province of South Africa and produces an orangey-red brew. Again, some people like to drink it with milk and sugar, or honey, but I prefer it straight without milk or sweetening. It is caffeine free and high in anti-oxidants. Variants with chai spices and bergamot are also appearing on shelves.
The British association with tea began in the 1660’s when Charles II married Catherine of Braganza allying the British monarchy with that of Portugal. Tea had already arrived in other parts of Europe and Russia over a hundred years before, possibly even travelling with Marco Polo on the silk route. The Mongols drink tea with yak milk or butter so their migration westwards may also play a part. Portugal played a large role in its introduction to Europe via its ownership of, and trade with Macau beginning in 1557.
Tea had been grown in India for centuries and used medicinally, but planting and bulk importation to the UK didn’t begin until the 19th Century. Both the Chinese variety of the plant (now Darjeeling tea) and that native to Assam were planted in different parts of India and Ceylon by British companies.
The plant likes a moderate climate, and can even thrive in the milder parts of the UK such as Cornwall. I wonder, with global warming, whether we will eventually see tea grown here on a commercial basis.
Tea very soon became an important part of British trade with special ships being built to run the ‘tea triangle’, Britain, India and China. The ships were called ‘clippers’ and different trading companies even raced their ships. The most famous clipper ship still survives despite a very destructive fire in 2007 on the banks of the River Thames at Greenwich, to the east of London, and is called the Cutty Sark – the name deriving from the Gaelic for a short shift or petticoat.
I could go on for ages here, but what I really need is another cuppa – and if you are making it for me – please, please remember to warm the pot.
