I happened to pass by Fortnum & Mason this morningâ??the kind of passing by that requires two subway changesâ??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 jewellerâ??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, Iâ??d have wanted at least a tea I hadnâ??t heard of before, something that would pique my curiosity. The list didnâ??t even mention “Tregothnanâ??the first tea ever produced in Britainâ??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 Margaretâ??s Hope wasnâ??t at all related to little Margaret of Norway, but to another Margaretâ??the daughter of an English tea planter. Letâ??s hope she had a better fate than the other Margaret.

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

Why, oh, why didnâ??t I study more chemistry at school. Truth be told, I just hated the subject, but some chemical knowledge would come in handy to answer a burning tea question.

The rec.food.drink.tea group has been debating whether reboiling water affects the taste of your tea, and how. Now, every tea book I know says that you should use freshly drawn water to make tea and reboiling it is a major no-no. But I have recently read Hervé Thisâ?? book, Molecular Gastronomy : Exploring the Science of Flavor. This is Franceâ??make that the worldâ??sâ??leading expert in molecular gastronomy and, beakers in hand, he has proved that many culinary practices guaranteed to improve the flavor of food are little more than myth. His book set me thinking. What if some of the standard practices in tea-making were also a myth? What if you can happily reboil water?

A search on the Internet bore no fruit. Some sites suggest that reboiling water deprives it of oxygen, so the resulting tea tastes flatâ??but others say that most of the oxygen goes with the first boiling and repeated boilings make little difference. Other sites say that reboiling water increases the concentration of mineral, which is not only detrimental to a good cuppa, but also to your health. But then again others maintain that, as you reboil water, minerals precipitate to the bottom of the kettle or pot and the resulting water will be purer. Now, this again could affect the taste of teaâ??but how much? I know that the limestone build-up in my kettle is so much worse when I reboil water than when I donâ??t, but I am not sure how that is going to affect flavor.

To try and solve the conundrum, I set up a little test, making tea with freshly drawn tap water and some Darjeeling GFOP. Then I reboiled the leftover water and made another teaâ??also with Darjeeling GFOP, using the same spoon, colander, steeping times and type of cup. I tasted the two teas blind and found the one made with reboiled water had a marginally more pronounced flavor than the other oneâ??but then I might have given it a marginally longer steeping time without realising it. Other then that, I could tell no major difference.

I suspect that a single reboil isnâ??t going to alter waterâ??s chemical composition so much to have a discernible impact on taste. But reboiling several times might. Since the question still teases my mind, I put finger to keyboard and asked the expertâ??Hervé This himself. I am now hoping he will get back to me and shed some light on this once and for all.

UPDATE: I heard back from This, who was incredibly kind and replied quickly to my fairly out of the blue email. He says that there is no doubt that ions are very important to the taste of water. So if the concentration of these ions increases through multiple boiling, this could definitely affect the taste of said waterâ??and hence of tea. He wasn’t too sure about the impact of dissolved gases. Either way, he suggested running an experiment by filling three vesselsâ??two with water that has boiled once and one with water that has been repeatedly boiledâ??and asking several people to identify the two identical ones. It’s an interesting one. I plan to set it up and report results.

Clink, clonk, clank. My son was playing with my tea caddies a few days ago when I thought I could perhaps expand his olfactive horizons by making him smell some tea. At the grand old age of 18 months he is still too young to drink the stuff, but sniffing it gave him great pleasure. I gave him a teabag of English Breakfast and rubbed it under his nose. He smelled and emitted a loud, satisfied Ahhh.

Encouraged, I decided to move on to more serious stuff. Ditching the tea bags, I got out a caddy full of Pai Mu Tan leaves. Before I could even think of scooping out some for him to smell, he plunged his hand into the leaves, grabbed a fistful of them and shoved them into his mouth. Prising his jaw open and taking out half munched leaves one by one was an arduous task and I am sure he ended up eating a good three or four of them. So much for keeping his caffeine intake down…

Bruce Richardson, the founder of Elmwood Inn Fine Teas and one of my tea heroes, has a very interesting piece on the January number of Fresh Cup about Britain’s declining passion for tea (disclosure: I too have an article in January’s Fresh Cup).

I agree with his rather sad assessment that the British increasingly associate tea with older generations or as a medicine for an upset tummy. And it is lamentable but also true that the average London high street has more American-style coffee houses and Italian-style espresso bars than tea houses.

However, London is not Britain–in most villages you’ll find not a whiff of Starbucks, although you may find some nice cream teas organised by the local church. And tea remains very much a part of everyday British life. Perhaps because instant coffee on the fly is never very good, most offices have tea stations–that’s what they are called, I kid you not–with a kettle, a fridge (for milk) and bagfuls of PG Tips or, if you are lucky, Twinings.

Anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that specialty teas are on the rise. And green and herbal teas are especially popular with young people for their much-touted health benefits. Granted, the British tea industry needs to work hard to shake off its somewhat old-fashioned image before it is too late. But there is yet hope for tea in Britain.