Time to confess. I often drink commodity tea–from tea bags. It usually happens when I am hard at work and pushed for time. I either make myself some fast-brewing loose leaf greens, such as Sencha or Gyokuro, or I resort to teabags.
When this happens, I usually reach for Twinings Classics Teabags. But lately, I have been looking around for different stuff. And I have now found some tea bags which work rather well for me–Dilmah’s Watte range, a series of teas from Ceylon. I have become rather partial to Ran Watte, which is high-grown tea from the slopes of Nuwara Eliya. Dilmah touts it as the Champagne of teas–which is a rather abused description I have heard applied liberally to Darjeeling as well as high-grown Ceylon. I find it yields an elegant, smooth brew which is light at first impact but with a long finish.
It doesn’t rate up to properly made loose leaf tea–but it is instant drinking at its best.