Vietnamese like their tea green and strong. Or so Vietnam tea exporter Future Generation leads me to believe. I know virtually nothing of Vietnam�??s tea drinking habits so I am taking the site at face value.

Vietnam has a patchy tea history. According to the Vietnam Tea Association, tea bushes have been growing in the country for centuries. The French, which colonized Vietnam in the mid 19th0, started growing tea commercially in the early 19th century. They had some success selling Vietnamese black tea to the European market and green tea to the North African one. But the two Vietnam wars�??first against France, then against the US�??wreaked havoc with the local plantations. It is only over the last ten years that the Vietnamese tea industry began flourishing. Tea drinking, however, continued throughout the years, and Vietnam consumes about half of the green tea it produces.

Future Generation says that the Vietnamese have a tea ceremony, which, though not as articulate as the Japanese one, is nonetheless an important part of their culture. What struck me about it is that they are only supposed to brew tea using rainwater or dew taken from lotus leaves. On my side of the world, this would make tea drinking very rare indeed. Which is why I used tap water instead, though I let it run a little to make it as fresh as possible. I also read that the Vietnamese always boil water first, then let it cool to about 90C, so I followed suit. I steeped 2.5g of Shan Tran leaves I had got from Soana, in Milan, for three minutes in the cooled water. The resulting liquor was a lovely golden green, with a strong vegetaley scent that had something of the sea in it. It had a good mouthfeel, smooth and fuller bodied than I thought. Slightly astringent, it had a very long vegetaley end. Like a vivid landscape on a Vietnamese silk scroll.

My friend Leslie, who likes tea and occasionally reads this blog, asked me how I make tea. Now, I am primarily a black tea drinker and I tend to brew it the British way. This means that I pre-warm a ceramics teapot, put the leaves in, pour water on top as soon as it starts boiling (95C) and let them steep for a few minutes. The first time I try a new tea, I usually follow the vendor�??s instructions on amount of leaves to use and steeping times, and then adjust them to my taste for the future. When there are none, or, more likely, when I misplace them, I go for the classic British formula�??a teaspoon for every cup�??and almost always end up with something drinkable.

Green tea, however, is a very different kettle of pisces. I find that general formulae don�??t work at all so I am forced to rely a lot more on vendors�?? recommendations, as well as my previous knowledge and a generous amount of trial and error. Which is why I was gutted when I discovered that I had no instructions to brew the tea from Laos I had scheduled for today. I had bought it a few weeks ago from Soana, in Milan, together with an Assam Mokalbari, a Vietnam Shan Tran and a Turkish tea. The old shopkeeper told me how to brew each of them as he placed the leaves in shiny red bags. I should have written it all down pronto, but decided to trust my usually reliable memory instead. It was a show of supreme hubris for which the gods promptly punished me. Because, much as I racked my feeble neurons this morning, I couldn�??t remember anything. The old man�??s instructions had vanished in the same black hole that sucked my scarce notions of law and all poems learned by heart at school. A blessed vacuum, whence there is no return.

I opened up the bag in search of inspiration, saw the odd stalk and what looked like coarse leaves, and hazarded a recipe. I steeped 4g of leaves per 7oz in a pot of heavily steaming water for two minutes. The resulting cup was deep golden with a delicate scent blending toasted nuts and some undergrowth with a vegetaley essence. It was very sweet in the mouth with a persistent endnote, which I thought of as barley coffee and which reminded me of Japanese kukicha. It was good, no question about it. A comforting winter tea, like a Corot landscape. Only, I am not sure this is what it was supposed to taste like.

So Leslie, my dear, here is my one tip for you: When you are get a new tea, write the brewing instructions down and keep them safe.

An adventurer I interviewed years ago tried to persuade me that he had once seen a woman with a tail in Burma. He was dead serious when he told me the story and insisted on it. She was the missing link, he said. To this day, I don�??t know whether he really believed in what he was saying, or was simply very good at taking me for a ride.

Beyond that, what I know about Burma or rather the Union of Myanmar, as the governing military junta rechristened the country, is rather disheartening. The opium fields. The liberticide regime. The repression of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1990 democratic elections only to be placed under an on and off house arrest for the last sixteen years.

For this reason, I thought long and hard before buying Burmese tea. Anything that will bring money to the local military regime bothers me. But then I weighed that against the fact that income from tea trickles down to the local growers and maybe�??just maybe�??buying from them can help sway them away from opium. If only tea became more profitable than heroine. Silly as it sounds, it convinced me.

So I ordered some 100g of Ko Kant from Mariage Fr&egrave:res. The tea in itself is very interesting. Picked from �??nearly wild�?� trees, according to Mariage Fr&egrave:res, it is entirely handmade.

I followed the brewing instructions, steeping 5g of leaves in water at 95C for three minutes, but found the cup slightly too bitter. So I brewed it again steeping 5g in steaming water for two minutes. It yielded a rich golden cup with a vegetaley scent and just a hint of earthy undergrowth. A fleeting floral sweetness hit the mouth first, followed by a long, sober vegetaley note.

Maybe I am prejudiced by its origin, but Ko Kant tastes austere, dark, almost barren, like the moon on a bad day or a Morandi still life. It is an interesting tea, though not one I see myself drinking regularly. Still, I drained my cup this once, in silent toast to a better future for the Burmese people�??and to the girl with a tail if she really does exist.