My friend, Trisha, has an abiding affection for all matters related to the noble Camellia sinensis plant. She would pore for hours deliberating which teas to buy from her favorite online or mail order emporia. She was always the first person you knew to try a new brand of tea. She could pontificate for hours on its history, it’s cultivation, it’s properties.

 

Actually, she was fascinating! She educated me, for example, on the fact that white, green and black tea, oolong and pu-erh are all harvested from this same plant, but are processed differently, to attain different levels of oxidation. She explained that Chinese tea is a sinensis varietal, and Assam tea an assamica varietal. Cultivars, like Uji Hikari, a premium tea developed in Kyoto for producing matcha tea, simply tripped off her tongue.

 

She could regale me for hours on the delights of Nilgiri tea. How it was grown at 1,000 to 2,500 metres and that it was subtle, gentle, so often it would be blended with other more robust varieties. She could pontificate for hours on its health benefits. That in traditional Chinese Medicine its leaves were used to cure asthma, angina, coronary artery disease. That tea extracts were purported to have antibacterial actions.

 

She could tell you that in Britain we drink a staggering 165 million cups of tea a day; that it should sit for six minutes before drinking so as to cool to 60 degrees, the optimum temperature to release the flavour; that the average Briton makes their first cup of tea at seven and a half years old.

 

But best of all, she grew her own. She had trees of different ages on her tiny terrace. She would only ever harvest the leaves when her plants were at least 3 years old. It was a ritual. She would only pluck the youngest shoots, the tenderest buds, from her Oolong bushes. She would then spread them out in the sun for three quarters of an hour before bringing them indoors to rest at room temperature for a further 2 hours. She would stir the leaves halfway through the drying time and leave them till they turned red at the edges. Then into the oven at 250F for 20 minutes on a baking sheet, and from there to an airtight Kilner jar. And then, if you, were lucky, you would witness her very own tea ceremony. Tricia ran a tap for a while, to aerate the water and then fill her kettle and boil the water just once, or else the tea tasted flat. She warmed the pot first, with a little boiling water, then the cups in turn from the teapot. Then she’d scatter a teaspoon of loose tea per person into the pot, and one for the pot itself. She’d then pour the boiling water into the pot, stir and leave it for 4-5 minutes to brew. Remove the leaves so she could infuse them again if necessary, and finally, pour the tea. Bliss!