I can hardly remember when I drunk my first cup of tea. I must have been seven or eight–it can’t have been earlier than that because my mother was very strict about my caffeine intake. It galls me a little that I can’t pinpoint the defining moment when I got hooked on the brew but then tea had always been around in my house.
We would have a cup of Twinings English Breakfast or Ceylon Orange Pekoe for breakfast and Darjeeling in the afternoon, usually with a slice of apple cake or an Italian tea cake called Torta Margherita. Proper leaf tea was reserved for special occasions–or for the days my mother could be bothered to brew it. My mother being extremely conservative in taste, we rarely strayed from the safety of her favorite tea triad–until I went to boarding school. Many of my school friends came from Japan, and we would occasionally dine at Chinese restaurants, so I discovered green tea. We chiefly drunk cheap Gunpowder and jasmine-flavored green tea.
The big leap for me came at university. Where most students filled their pantries with beer, cheap wine and every imaginable brand of booze, I had tea and the odd tisane. I had about ten at any given time, mostly greens, plus the obligatory Darjeeling, English Breakfast, Twinings’ Prince of Wales and chamomile. It was somehow inevitable that I’d go looking for my first job in a tea shop. I was under sales assistant–which is to say general dogsbody–during the holidays and at busy period. The shop got by selling hugely expensive tea pots, olive oils as pricey as champagne and silver trays. Tea, however, was their draw–and it was serious staff. It was sourced by Betjeman & Barton, which, despite their English name, is a French company and is perhaps only second to Mariage Frères when it comes o good tea. My favorite part of the job was opening the sealed packs of tea and filling the canisters with leaves. The fragrance that hit my nostrils more than compensated for having to dust the shop windows every morning and evening. And we got a 20 percent discount on tea, which I put to good use by buying as many as I could. It was then that I discovered black China tea–Yunnan, Keemun and the humble Chingwoo. This tea from Fujian, South East China, is a bit of a Yunnan wannabe and I had bought it simply because it was cheaper than the Great Lord of China. But then I fell in love with its mellow taste, which suited my pre-evening mood to, well, a tee.
I can hardly believe that fifteen years have passed since my days at the tea shop. I no longer sell tea, but I drink and write an awful lot about it, especially on Fresh Cup and on Country Life Online. My horizons have expanded to encompass Kukicha, Gyokuro and white tea, which were all too expensive during my days as a student. My latest passion is Pai Mu Tan, a light and sweet white tea with hints of nuts which I bought for my mother the Christmas before last. Alas, her tea tastes have remained nearly as conservative as they were in the past, so she decreed that Pai Mu Tan was too light for her and gave it back to me. Which is why I had better go now before my cupful becomes too cold.
A couple of things you should know about me:
- While I regularly write about tea, I am not a master blender or a tea professional. I am simply a compulsive drinker.
- When it comes to tea, I am a daughter of the former British empire. The word itself conjures up images of strong, malty Assam in the morning and aromatic Darjeeling in the afternoon–with milk, of course. This prejudice inevitably shapes my tastebuds.
- And finally my taste in tea is, well, mine. Which is to say, highly personal and subjective. You may hate a tea I like and vice versa. I respect you for it and ask your respect in return.