Champagne of teas. Little irks me more than this inane definition. Just about every high altitude region that makes light, aromatic teas claims a similarity with Champagne. It is so atrociously trite. Call it the Sauvignon Blanc or Gewurztraminer of teas, and perhaps you�??ll capture my imagination. But Champagne? Yawn.

To be completely honest, though, I must admit this comparison also irritates me because I don�??t much like Champagne. There, now I have said it. But really, nose-tickling bubbles with a yeasty or acidy sweetness�??what�??s that to do with tea? Thankfully, very little.

The Nuwara Eliya tea I drank today, in particular, was as un-bubbly-like as it gets, despite being touted as the Champagne of Ceylon. The region has the highest elevation among Sri Lanka�??s tea districts and its teas have a reputation for being light and very aromatic. So I expected a golden, featherlike cup. Instead, I got a complete surprise.

My teaspoon of Nuwara Eliya OP, which I got from Special Teas and brewed for the recommended 2 minutes, yielded a deep, rich copper cup with a fuller mouthfeel than I anticipated. Only its intensely heady aroma�??floral, lemony, with just a hint of earthiness�??matched my mental picture, although I was hard-pressed to recognize the cypress tree, mint and eucalyptus which apparently scent the air in this area of Sri Lanka and make their way into its tea.

Brewed light, this Nuwara Eliya had a balanced flavor with sweet and citrusy accents and some astringency. But Special Teas also said that longer steeping times would yield a pleasant bite, so I tried a three-minute brew. The body became much fuller�??definitely strong enough to support milk�??and those elusive earthy notes became more pronounced both in the nose and in the mouth. A good astringency gave it the bite promised by the vendor�??s tasting notes. It brought to mind Picasso�??s Las Meninas series, which progressively morph from a copy of Velazquez�??s painting into a Cubist masterpiece.

Today, I captured the scent of Ceylon. After yesterday�??s disappointing experience with the rather noseless Dimbula, I was hardly expecting much from a cup of Pettiagalla. But what a change was in store.

Pettiagalla is one of the most established tea gardens in the Dimbula district. My tea bible, Le Livre de l�??Amateur du The by Sabine Yi, Jacques Jumeau Lafond and Michel Walsh, calls it one of the Great Lords of Ceylon and says it produced a very aromatic tea. And aromatic it was indeed. I bought a sample size from Special Teas and brewed the recommended heaping teaspoon into siz oz water for four minutes. The cup was a dark red, almost brown with a strong nose that, in my mind, screams of Ceylon. A floral fragrance with something sweet in it. Not much of that scent came across in the mouth, where the tea was satisfyingly sweet. Perhaps the enchanting scent of this Pettiagalla promises more than the sip delivers, but it nonetheless makes for good drinking. Definitely Turner’s Colour Beginning.

Ceylon seems to have fallen out of fashion lately. Look around any number of tea blogs and you�??ll find most people talking about either China tea�??green, black, Pu-ehr, oolong�??or Assam and Darjeeling. Which is rather suprising when you think that Sri Lanka is one of the most extraordinary tea countries in the world. They have even been keeping up with the green trend, producing several good green Ceylons, and have come up with an unbelievably expensive white to beat all whites.

But I am rather old fashioned at heart. For me, Ceylon remains very much a black tea that, like mountain air, becomes increasingly aromatic and rarefied as elevation increases. Ceylon tea was a masterstroke of Victorian growers, who spotted the weather and altitude opportunities the country offered and introduced the bushes here in the second half of the 19th century. One of the first districts they planted was Dimbula, on the western side of Sri Lanka�??s tea growing region, so it seemed fitting to start my Ceylon tour from there.

I brewed one heaped teaspoon of Dimbula Orange Pekoe from Special Teas for 3 minutes, It yielded a pretty, golden red cup with a lightly fruity aroma. It tasted sweet throughout with just a very subtle hint of mild astringency in the end. It was very smooth and I definitely found it more sweet and fruity than chocolatey/citrusy, which is how Special Teas pitches it. It was a decent, serviceable tea, but its lack of complexity left me ever so slightly unsatisfied. An Elizabeth Vigée Lebrun.

I happened to pass by Fortnum & Mason this morning�??the kind of passing by that requires two subway changes�??and decided to buy a couple of teas.

I must admit I was slightly disappointed. Oh, the shop is as dazzling as ever. It glitters more than a jeweller�??s. And the list of rare teas still reads like the very best of Darjeeling and Assam, with a sprinkling of excellent China and Formosa. But this perhaps is the problem. It failed to offer anything new, challenging or unusual.

Now, I hardly expect as established a temple as F&M to go wild on tea fashions. Still, I�??d have wanted at least a tea I hadn�??t heard of before, something that would pique my curiosity. The list didn�??t even mention “Tregothnan�??the first tea ever produced in Britain�??which I know F&M buyers got into the shop. Maybe they ran out of it. Be as it may, I was a little underwhelmed. I did learn, though, that Darjeeling’s Margaret�??s Hope wasn�??t at all related to little Margaret of Norway, but to another Margaret�??the daughter of an English tea planter. Let�??s hope she had a better fate than the other Margaret.

PS: In case you�??re wondering: yes I did end up buying something. A Grand Keemun and a Yunnan Pu-erh.

Misty. That�??s how I think of Nepal. A country permanently wrapped up in a milky, muffled whiteness. It is, of course, somewhat untrue. Nepal has many weathers�??the monsoon rains, the subtropical summers of the southern lowlands. It is hard to imagine more biodiversity in a place that small. But then, as a Nepalese friend of mine once put it, Nepal is like many islands connected by elephants.

The tea slopes, however, firmly belong to the swirling mists and achingly clear light of the Himalayan foothills. And misty is the flavor of the cup of Special Teas�?? Golden Nepal I drank today. It tasted like a Darjeeling enveloped in a thick hazy blanket. Which is to say that it was too subtle for me.

I brewed to instructions, using one level teaspoon for a six oz. cup and steeping the leaves for three minutes. The resulting liquor was a beautiful golden color with a hint of red. The nose was nearly imperceptible though. And the flavor was closer to the nose than to the look. It was light and soft, with vague fruity notes and a sweet end. Delicate. Pretty. And as nice as the work of a minor landscape watercolorist, which is fleetingly pleasant but soon forgotten.

I usually loathe flavored teas. The aromas are often artificial and overpowering, killing the delicate taste of tea. The one exception to this is chai. I love the way tea and spices combine to create a warming drink. For me, chai tastes of winter and days spent lazing in front of the log fire. Not that I have one�??it�??s just a daydream. But of course chai is the product of a warm climate.

Monica Bhide, my Indian cuisine guru and one of the most entertaining food writers I know, once confessed she too finds it funny that �??the favorite drink of a “hot” subcontinent is tea!�?� Her recipe for chai is pretty much that anything goes. It could just be tea and a few cardamoms or a complex spicy blend including cinnamon, cloves and other ingredients.

I took the spicier route and made my own chai with an Assam base (Whittard�??s blend) and adding cardamom, pepper, cinnamon, cloves and a touch of allspice. My idea was to compare it with Whittard�??s ready made chai, which has the same ingredients minus the allspice, plus some unspecified flavoring.

I brewed it slightly stronger than recommended, using two teaspoons per pot and steeping them for four minutes. It produced a dark amber liquor with a sweet spicy scent. It was pepperish at first, tickling the tongue ever so slightly. Other spices�??cardamom?�??emerged as the sip traveled through my mouth. The tea is there but definitely plays second fiddle to the spices.

My chai, by contrast, was murkier and darker, with a pronounced cinnamon nose, but an altogether more delicate scent than the Whittard version. Exotic as a Gauguin in the Tahiti period, it had more spiciness at first impact but was altogether less aggressive throughout. The finish was very much malty tea and pepper. I liked it better than the Whittard version, chiefly because it had a stronger tea taste. But I don’t think it would have borne milk as well as the other one.

India did it again. About a hundred and fifty years after a British surgeon brought Chinese tea seeds to Darjeeling and unwittingly gave rise to one of the world�??s most successful tea stories, the district�??s gardens have borrowed another leaf from China and made a success out of it. Over the last few years, a number of estates�??led by the pioneering Poobong�??began producing white tea. Now it ranks on par with the best whites from China, where the tradition originated in the late 18th century.

I very much think of Darjeeling as black tea, but really wanted to give their white a shot, and jumped at a chance when I discovered I could buy a sample size of Darjeeling Silver Needle from Special Teas for $4�??white tea being abominably expensive.

I brewed it for the first time today, steeping 3g of leaves for two minutes in water that had been heated up to 185F (85C) as recommended. The cup I got was pale golden with an incredibly subtle scent. It smelled like a tea for relaxation or meditation.

In the mouth, it was delightfully light and sweet, with just an idea of leafiness in the end. I can�??t say I could find any of the honeydew melon promised by Special Teas. This could well have something to do with the fact that I am not hugely familiar with, nor do I particularly like, any melon, but the fruity sweetness was definitely there. It had the kind of fragrant, sweet softness of Monet�??s mature paintings.

St Margaret�??s Hope is a tiny village on the Orkney Islands off the scottish Coast. The Orkneys stand off the Scottish coast toward the Shetlands Scandinavia and the hope that named the village might have belonged to the unlucky Margaret, Princess of Norway and granddaughter to Alexander III of Scotland.

Margaret was only three when her grandfather died and she inherited the right to the Scottish throne. The little girl, who was betrothed to the heir to the English Crown, Edward, sailed to her Scottish domains in September 1290, when she was just seven years old. Heavy weather forced her ship to land in Orkney. But tiny Margaret�??s hope to escape the storm unscathed was shortlived. She died on the island a short while later, worn down by exhaustion and a very serious sea-sickness.

I have always wondered whether the remote Orkney village is in some way linked to Margaret�??s Hope, one of the oldest and most established gardens in Darjeeling. Perhaps the estate was named by a homesick Scot?

A big garden, Margaret�??s Hope stands in the district�??s Kurseong North Valley and spans 892 acres of China bushes. I tried one of their teas today, a first flush SFTGFOP�??that is, special finest tippy golden flowery orange pekoe. Incidentally, I am convinced that the tea experts that came up with orthodox tea grading secretly belonged to a school of sadist linguists bent on making the average drinker trip on his own tongue. Try saying SFTGFOP a couple of times and see what I mean.

That said, this particular SFTGFOP, which I got from Whittard, as worth all the effort of asking for it. First flush means that the tea is picked right after the dormant winter season and tends to be more delicate in flavor. This particular one was picked about eleven months ago. I worried that it would taste flat because it is coming at the end of its shelf life�??after eight to twelve months or so, first flush teas are prone to lose their aroma�??but I was pleasantly surprised.

Because this tea is only lightly oxidized, Whittard recommends brewing it light�??2 teaspoons for a six-cup teapot for 4 minutes. The cup it yielded was a beauty. Perfectly clear and golden with a sweetish, hint-of-muscatel aroma. It was light at first approach, with a barely-there sweet note and a very long green tea-ish�??that is to say, refreshingly vegetaley�??finish. Absolutely superlative and, for once, I didn�??t feel the urge to brew it stronger than instruction. A Renaissance masterpiece of a tea. I�??d say Raphael, but I like Botticelli better, so Botticelli it is.

I travel around Europe a lot and tend to have tea shops stops in as many cities as I possibly can. I shop at Fortnum & Mason in London, Sans & Sans in Barcelona, and the incomparable Mariage Frères in Paris, which is perhaps the best of them all. In Milan, my favorite place is the tiny and unassuming (but expensive) Drogheria Soana, which I prefer to the flashier and even more expensive Peck.

Italy is a strange country, in that very few people drink tea and the average cup you get in a bar�??the Italian equivalent of a coffee house�??is dreadful. But this desert has a couple of extraordinary oases, where you can buy or have some excellent tea. One of them is Soana, a family business founded in 1947, which has a large selection of established gardens plus the odd novelty, such as tea from Laos.

On my last visit there, a couple of weeks ago, I bought some Assam Mokalbari. I drunk it today to compare it with the Assam blend I had yesterday. Despite a common Assam-iness, it made for a very different experience.

I steeped two teaspoons in a three-cup teapot of boiling water for four minutes. This cup was darker than the blend, the color sugar has when it�??s about to burn. It had a hint of a scent, a barely there vegetal maltiness with a whiff of something sweet. It had a good but not overpowering body. Sweet at first impact, it developed a malty complexity as it travelled through the mouth, with a touch of astringency to temper any excess. It was perhaps subtler than I expected, but a neat cup nonetheless. I like to think of it as a Cézanne.

Ah Assam. Although I have never physically been there, I fell in love with this corner of north-eastern India back when I was a teenager, a frighteningly long time ago. I read about it in the books of Emilio Salgari�??a master of adventure literature most of whose work, sadly, has yet to be translated into English�??where a group of Malaysian, Indian and Portuguese pirates defies bloodthirsty natives, powerful Brahmins and the evil British Empire to conquer a small kingdom.

The magic of the country shines in its tea. Assam has little to do with serene meditation. It�??s a passionate, powerful cup that speaks of sleek tigers, lush plants and hollow baobabs that hide the entrance to secret temples. It is Picasso�??s Cubist period, a scream of colors, textures and shapes, to the Nilgiri�??s Canaletto �??elegant, restrained and sublimely devoid of emotion.

Of course, I am biased. I like strong teas and am incredibly partial to malty flavors. I like malty tea, malty ale (Duchy Original�??s Winter Ale, in particular) and malty whisky. I wonder if an excessive use of Ovaltine as a child may be to blame?

Still, the Assam I tried today�??Whittard�??s House Blend�??wasn�??t particularly malty, as far as Assams go. I brewed according to instructions, using three teaspoons for four minutes for a six-cup teapot. The leaves had a strong scent that didn�??t emerge with as much clarity in the liquor. The cup was a rich dark amber color with an ever so slightly caramelly nose. In the mouth, it had good body with some sweetness, the right astringency but just a hint of malt. The finish was pleasantly long, and I found it supported milk very well.

Then I went back and brewed it my way�??using a full four teaspoons for a six-cup pot and steeping for five minutes�??and liked it better. But I think my tastebuds are biased.