When things go wrong in
Britain -- I mean really wrong, like widespread
floods, transport strikes, a national outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, or a
truly serious catastrophe, such as the defeat of Manchester United, or whatever your favorite team is, in a Cup Final -- we know exactly what to do. In addition to keeping calm
and carrying on, we have a nice cup of tea.
Somehow, tea’s much more significant
to us Brits than coffee is to you Americans. It’s a pacifier, a cure for
anxiety and depression, a panacea. The wisdom in Britain is ‘have a nice cup of
tea, and everything will be all right.’ No panic, no histrionics. So jolly
sensible.
It has
to be said that most UK visitors say about American tea exactly what American
tourists say of British coffee, that it’s weak and tasteless and, well, a bit
like brown bath water.
Both are
true, actually. But it’s not surprising that the British revere tea in the way
they do. Their history in the last few centuries has been steeped in the stuff.
I’ll bet that when Sir Francis Drake saw the Spanish Armada hovering on the
horizon at Plymouth, the last thing he thought of was finishing that silly game
of bowls. No, he sat down on the grass and called for a nice cup of tea.
It’s s a
ruddy certainty that Lord Cardigan, standing knee deep in dead and dying
redcoats after the Charge of the Light Brigade, invited Lord Raglan to his tent
for a cuppa. And don’t believe that Sydney Carlton, the upper-crust hero of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, crouched beneath
the guillotine, waffled on about it being a far, far better thing that he did.
Of course not! He asked for, well, you know what he asked for. This is, as
prime minister Margaret Thatcher once said about something entirely different,
‘The British Way.’
We have to admit grudgingly that the
Chinese discovered tea first, along with fireworks, medicine, astronomy,
gunpowder, and a lot of other things. It was around 5000 years ago that the
emperor Shen Nung inadvertently made the first cup of tea. While he was sitting
in his garden, some camellia leaves blew into a cup of boiling water. I’ve
always wondered what he was doing sitting there with a cup of boiling water,
but never mind. Anyway, he was intrigued by its fragrant aroma, and soon
decreed that drinking tea prevented illness.
Then the Japanese copied Shen Nung,
copying being something they’ve always been rather good at. Like the Chinese,
they lauded tea’s efficacy as a cure for aches and pains, including headache,
depression and constipation. They made quite a cult out of it with their tea
ceremony. They also had tea-tasting gatherings, much like wine devotees do
today.
It was 4500 years more before tea -- er --
percolated into Europe. It came from China in relatively small quantities by
way of the Silk Road, via Asia Minor. Because it was scarce it was also
ruinously expensive, so that only the aristocracy could afford it. Marco Polo
had called tea one of the ‘world’s wonders,’ and it was the Dutch who, in 1606,
really discovered what he was on about, did a deal with the Chinese, and
established tea trading posts, followed quickly by the French.
The Brits, with their trading fleets such as the
East India Company, were a year or two behind their European trading rivals,
but then, as Eartha Kitt put it so pithily, ‘An Englishman needs time.’ It was
largely the British who, with the help of the Dutch and the French, reversed
demand with supply, making tea affordable for everyone. Tea quickly became the
favorite English drink (at least for the upper classes) and the first teashops
opened in London.
By the 1700s
the national fancy for tea provoked excessive taxes, and tea smuggling became
as common and as lucrative a booty as brandy or rum. And it was these taxes
that provoked a slight altercation about tea in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1773.
But let’s not talk about that.
It was, of course, the British who invented the real
tea parties, which have no connection whatever with that vulgar incident in
Boston. Before tea first arrived, the British had two main meals: breakfast and
dinner. Breakfast commonly consisted of bread, beef and a flagon of ale. Yes,
they had beer for breakfast, and nobody thought this in the least uncouth.
Dinner was a protracted, massive meal at the end of the day. So it’s not
surprising that aristocrats such as Anna, Duchess of Bedford, had a ‘sinking
feeling’ toward the end of each afternoon at Belvoir Castle, and began to
invite her friends to join her for an additional snack. She served little
cakes, and ‘assorted sweetmeats.’ And what else? Tea, of course. It was made in
a silver teapot down in the kitchen and carried up by a maid to the duchess,
who presided over the fine china cups and saucers, surrounded by her twittering
guests. Occasionally the hostess would top up the teapot from another, smaller
one, kept hot over a small spirit lamp.
The tea
they drank at these gatherings would have been green tea from China and, later,
Empire-grown teas from India and Ceylon and, later still, Kenya and Malaya. And
it was in the days of the Duchess of Bedford’s parties that the ‘proper way’ to
serve tea evolved. China tea, being so much more delicate than Indian, was (and
probably still should be) drunk with nothing added, though it was not unheard
of to add a little unrefined sugar. But for most Indian teas, which have more
flavor, and much more tannin, a little cold milk was acceptable, providing it
was poured into the cup first. Nobody
has ever offered a rational explanation of why this is important, or whether it
makes the slightest difference. The snobbiest way to drink Indian-style teas is
with nothing more than a wafer-thin sliver of lemon.
The British think the American way of making and
serving tea a little . . . how should I put this? Uncouth? People in the upper echelons of society there
still look on the teabag as an abomination, even though their supermarkets are
full of them. Though, if pressed, most of them would probably admit they’ve
used them on occasion. But no, those who truly cherish Britain’s favorite
beverage use fresh leaf tea that’s been kept in an airtight tin container, protecting
it from light, moisture, heat and anything that may contaminate its flavor.
Indeed, the most pernickety tea drinkers warn the rest of us not to keep a
batch for more than three months.
If you’re interested in how to make a perfect cuppa
– unlike the millions content to dunk a tea bag in a cold mug of luke-warm warm
water for a minute or so – there are one or two other things you should know.
To begin with, buy a good teapot. The absolute ideal will be made of sterling
silver, but a good earthenware pot will be fine, providing you warm it well with
hot water before you begin brewing. Make tea with only the best water, because
water tainted with chlorine, lime or iron, can make the finest, priciest tea
taste like ditch water. Don’t over-boil the water, because this will evaporate
its oxygen, making your tea flat and lifeless. Real gurus will advise you to
wait a few seconds before pouring the water into the pot. They say that using
boiling water when it’s ‘rolling’ will bring out too much tannin, making the
tea bitter.
I’ll never forget an old radio jingle from Radio
Luxembourg in the late 30s. It went like this:
“I like a nice cup of tea for my luncheon,
and a nice cup of tea for my tea.
And when I go to bed,
there’s a lot to be said
for a nice cup of tea.”
What else can I say?
Cheers!
