Water Water&;#063; Mine's a Tea - Please read and rate

A Plea For tea

After a terrible weekend trying to obtain refreshment around one of our
major seaside resorts, I feel it is time to put pixel to cathode ray
tube and voice a small protest against the decline of our national
drink.

Many cafes and restaurants are able to offer me a thousand pointless
and pretentious variations on a coffee theme, all made to exacting
standards, but seemed totally unable to grasp the simple art of making
a decent cup of tea.

We are in dire peril of loosing yet another of our great traditions and
institutions to the all consuming Euro blanding machine, determined to
make us just like all the other countries. I don't mind taking the best
of a culture and using it to enhance ours but I do object when we lose
the best of ours in exchange for the worst of theirs.
Tea is the stuff that empires are built from, it saw us through two
worlds wars in the last century and even now forms the backbone of any
relief operation when undertaken in this country.
Think back to the last tragedy to strike your family: chances are that
the first thing that a well wishing friend or neighbour did was to put
the kettle on.
During the blitz firemen and rescue workers were fortified by the fine
women of the WRVS who would stand by their urns through thick and thin,
understanding the true value of a good cup of tea.
Despite this marvellous pedigree tea is in decline, pushed aside by
it's slightly seedy and oily counterpart from across the channel.
People have started to turn their backs on the prince of beverages and
started to follow the way of the bean. Tea is a refreshing non-
pretentious drink that doesn't lend itself well to sophisticated
methods of preparation.
You can't affect an air of sophistication with a mug of tea in the same
way that you can in a pretentious coffee bar ordering a complicated and
convoluted cup of coffee. There is no tea equivalent of a double
decaffeinated latte with hazelnut syrup and raw Demerara sugar. You
simply have sugar or no sugar, milky or just a dash, strong or
weak.
And don't confuse weak for milky.

Coffee is supported by the avid consumer's love of extraneous
paraphernalia. The beans have to be selected, roasted, blended and
ground, expensive machinery then forces the flavour out of it, though I
suspect that a lot of restaurants have the big machine for show and
aren't above serving a small cup of instant.
One day there will be a national emergency the WRVS will turn out and
none of them will know how to make tea.
The cappuccino does not have the quality of tea when it comes to
slaking a thirst and washing work dust from a parched throat.
Our grandfathers marched into battle with the smell of tea in their
nostrils. If they had been forced to rely on a limp-wristed latte we
would probably all be speaking German now and many of the more
interesting elements of society would have been marched off, never to
be seen again. We owe a great debt to tea.

The art of tea is as at much risk as the drink itself, there is no
skill anymore in it's production. I have seen people do some horrible
things to tea, simply because their don't know any better.
I recently saw a professional caterer drop a teabag into a cup, slosh
in cold milk and top it up with hot, not boiling, water. I handed it
back and enquired which catering school he went to.

I remember my first proper day at work, I was placed in the care of an
old pro called George Bishop, for whom I was to labour for a week and
hopefully be initiated into the dark side of the building trade. He was
an affable old soul, so long as you didn't upset him. The best way to
do that was to give him a second rate cup of tea. The day's
conversation went something like this:
After mixing a small amount of concrete:

"Not bad, young 'un, but can you make it a bit less runny next
time."

Bricklaying mortar:

"Nearly there, young 'un, but not enough lime and a bit looser next
time, if you please."

Mixing Plaster:

"It's a bit lumpy, but I'll manage."

When tea time came around, the spirit of compromise disappeared.

"If you're going to work for me you have to get the tea right!"

He took a sip. Carefully poured the rest away and took me into the
house again for the tea making master class. He warmed the pot, spooned
in loose tea, used proper cups and saucers and made sure that the tea
was perfect before he drank it.

You can compare tea making to an academic or a martial art. The first
level of tea making instruction, usually received in the cub scouts or
at one's mother knee, is equivalent to an O level, or yellow
belt.
Institutional tea makers like the blood donor service or the WRVS are
Brown belts or A level equivalent.

Builders have their tea made to degree or black belt level. To achieve
the highest level of attainment you need to brew for a gang of
bricklayers, where you will attain PhD or black belt fourth Dan.

With a high level of tea education I have been appalled at some of the
practices I have seen some ostensible tea makers try on; a caf? once
offered me tea from the microwave, cold water and bag placed in the cup
and nuked for two minutes. It was hot, slightly fizzy and
horrible.
Another professional caterer offered a pot of tea accompanied by a
small jug of double cream, the flavour of which totally swamped the
tea.
Yet another brought a jug of hot water, not boiling, a tea bag on a
string (why do they always remind me of tampons?) and a small dish of
dry powdered milk. I sent it back. I noticed from the menu that they
served eleven different types of coffee and I am certain that they did
all of them properly.

I can understand it when European and Americans get it wrong, after all
they are coffee cultures.
The Americans even have a historical precedent for making lousy tea,
after all, they opened a war by trying to make tea using cold sea water
and not even opening the boxes first.

When I visited New England they did their best to make me welcome, even
to the point of asking if I would have tea with my breakfast. After the
first taste I followed old George's example and delivered the master
class. There is now a corner of Maine that proudly boasts "English Tea
Served here"

Don't let this fine drink slip away from us through indolence, support
your local cuppa, in fifty years time your descendants will be glad you
did.