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 youâ??ll capture my imagination. But Champagne? Yawn.

To be completely honest, though, I must admit this comparison also irritates me because I donâ??t much like Champagne. There, now I have said it. But really, nose-tickling bubbles with a yeasty or acidy sweetnessâ??whatâ??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 Lankaâ??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 aromaâ??floral, lemony, with just a hint of earthinessâ??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 fullerâ??definitely strong enough to support milkâ??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 vendorâ??s tasting notes. It brought to mind Picassoâ??s Las Meninas series, which progressively morph from a copy of Velazquezâ??s painting into a Cubist masterpiece.

Today, I captured the scent of Ceylon. After yesterdayâ??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 lâ??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 youâ??ll find most people talking about either China teaâ??green, black, Pu-ehr, oolongâ??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 Lankaâ??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.

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.