Tea and me

[imomus]

It's quite peculiar, what's happened with tea and me, and I wonder if it isn't in some way symptomatic. Something to do with globalisation, or with the spectral nature of branding, or with the ironies of snobbism, perhaps?

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Basically, I started by drinking PG Tips -- for "PG Tips" read any generic supermarket black tea, blended and sold in bags -- and I've come back full circle to drinking PG Tips again. Now, coming full circle either means I've repudiated the quest for novelty, refinement and exoticism which has marked most of my last thirty years of tea-drinking, or it means that I'm somehow drinking an old tea in a new way, and that I've come back to monopoly in a self-consciously "post-diversity" way. I wonder if anyone else has done the same thing -- ridden the diversity ride and come back to where they started?

Basically, when I was about 20 (ie in 1980) I discovered my first "exotic" tea, Twinings Earl Grey. It was a time when Twinings were expanding their range, and a time when British supermarkets were diversifying their stock. People now would probably be appalled at the British supermarkets of 1980 -- at how little there actually was on the shelves, how industrially toxic the stock was, and how British they were. (Morrissey would pretend to love it, but escape at the first opportunity to a deli.)

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Earl Grey became my staple tea, and in my mind at the time (this was, after all, the dawn of New Romanticism) it made a statement about me: that my "standard" was slightly more perfumed (with bergamot, as it happened) than yours. That there was no "normal" in my world, mate. No PG Tips monkeys for me, thank you, but, instead, aristocrats and discrimination. I may have been a euro-communist, but I drank an imperial and aristocratic tea with a little text on the box about Earl Grey, a British prime minister of the 1830s said to have been gifted the perfumed blend by a grateful Chinese mandarin whose drowning son had been saved by British soldiers.

While others experimented with drugs, my next-door neighbour Simon Artley and I experimented in halls of residence with the Twinings range. Simon would call me out of my tiny room into the communal kitchen with "Cup of tea, Nick? Earl Grey? Darjeeling? Lapsang?"

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For quite a while I stuck to Earl Grey, with occasional cups of smokey Lapsang Souchong. But in the early 90s -- about 1993 -- I remember noticing that Earl Grey had become a standard tea in Britain. A posh computer consultant came round to my flat in Covent Garden that year and specifically asked for Earl Grey tea. You'd go to an estate agent's office and they'd bring you Earl Grey without even being asked. It seemed that the fruity taste of Earl Grey appealed to the British sweet tooth. I began to see it as part of the sweetening and over-flavouring of everything, and I suppose I began to tire of it.

In 1994 I was married, and living in Paris with Shazna. One day we were walking up the Rue Sainte-Anne, the Japanese street near Opera, and we went into Voyageurs du Monde, a cross between a cultural centre and a travel agency, a place specialising in high-end cultural tours of exotic Asian lands. Voyageurs du Monde was -- in a very French way -- unapologetically orientalist, exaggerating Asia's otherness and selling it to bourgeois tourists. The day we visited there was a rickshaw exhibition and cups of Yunnan tea were being handed out in little earthenware cups.

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The Yunnan tea was subtle and dark and mature and authentic. You drank it without milk, and I'd long ago stopped taking sugar in my tea. From then on Yunnan became my ideal tea, though it was hard to find; you had to scour through Chinese groceries, trying to decipher packs with Chinese-only lettering.

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This was also the time of my first trips to Japan, indelibly marked by the taste of hot and cold Japanese green tea. At first green tea tasted sort of wishy-washy to me, but, back in Europe, I began to crave it. In Japanese shops I bought boxes of green tea in bags. I remember being shocked, at Toog's house in Pigalle, to find that he and Flo made it quite differently, with raw green tea leaves just dropped into a pot of boiling water. It tasted miles better made that way, so I too began to buy loose sencha leaves rather than the industrial bags.

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The other revelation of the 90s came from that notoriously tea-unfriendly power, the United States. I began visiting the US annually from 1996, and the cool drink in Lower East Side cafes like Lotus Club (and alternamalls across the nation) was chai. Iced or hot, dairy or soy, American chai was a sort of sweet, industrial drink (the concentrate slopped out of a pail) with a malty flavour under the sugar. When I got back to Britain I started buying a rather different drink that bore the same name, the chai sold in Bangladeshi supermarkets on Brick Lane. This I drank hot and unsweetened. It was different from the American syrup, more authentic than "sweet white hipster chai".

But the most authentic chai I ever had was in a shabby hole-in-the-wall cafe in Camden Town market. Here the tea was infused in hot milk with cardamon, cinnamon and cloves, in the real Indian style.

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Twinings -- the bastards! -- were never far behind me; they added Yunnan and Chai to their range (the specialty teas were by now ghetto-ized under the category heading "Aromatics"), and for a while I drank Twinings Chai, which had a dry, subtle, nutty flavour; it wasn't too Christmassy, and didn't go over the top with the spice, as some of the Bangla-brands did.

Soon I noticed that most Indian groceries didn't stock chai per se, they stocked the constituent parts, which made it much cheaper. So I started buying masala chai powder, which I'd sprinkle into ordinary black tea (the Indian and Thai grocery stores I frequented mostly stocked PG Tips in catering-size boxes), sometimes adding a real cinnamon stick for good measure. And somehow the chai powder got less and less each time, until it disappeared completely, and there was only the PG Tips.

That's too neat -- I also drink Japanese green tea (maybe two cups a day, with loose leaves and sushi-restaurant-style powder blended) and Chinese Pu-Erh tea, which gives me a strong caffeine buzz. My whole day is just endless tapping away on a computer, and endless cups of tea. In fact, I aspire to the Asian style of having constantly-hot water available, either in an iron pot over an open fire (the ancient, lyrical way) or in an electric denki poto. I brought a denki poto back from Hokkaido in 2005, but it felt wasteful to have it on all day (my electricity bills are already ridiculous), with a hot step-down adaptor converting the current. So that's still an aspiration.

I've gone through two cups of Pu-Erh writing this, loose Yunnan Pu-Erh shaken into an open-topped coffee filter bag, and I'm feeling quite buzzy now. We need to stock up on PG Tips -- I must buy a big €8 box next time I'm at the Thai grocery on Alexanderplatz.

Comments

teafortwoandtwofortea

[(Anonymous)]

I have always thought the subject of tea to be so obvious that I steered well clear of it. I think it is due to the history of the British and Irish public's love for it. It's always been a celebrated past-time, but in today's websnapper culture it's tea, as far as i can see, not weed which is labeled as a 'vice'...

"I HAVE to drink 20 cups a day" - Glasgow Journalism student (actual quote)

It's all of a sudden 'cool' to love a traditional cup of tea. See Nevermind the Buzzcocks jokes and references to cups of tea being consumed...(no not winehouse)

There has been nothing said about the subject which has inspired me to fall in love with it though.

Gladstone was quoted as saying something like, "Thank God for tea, what would the world do without tea. How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea."

For such a man, such a statement turns him into a simpleton in my eyes. Of course he loved the drink, but asking how the world existed.... I know it's just a joke, but it's not even funny.

Yet what about the cultural impact a lack of tea would deliver....I don't drink it, mainly because the hot water burns my virgin lips and tongue, and I am fully aware of the faux-pas I conduct every time I refuse a cup.

I wish tea was left as the cultural beverage and traditional drink, for now that it has become the latest toy for the E4 masses we will no doubt have to put up with quotes like that of Gladstone's yet from today's rabble of drinkers...yourself of course not included.

Re: teafortwoandtwofortea

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What's E4?

[(Anonymous)]

I think the full circle thing is when you start exoticising what you've been trying to escape from. In fact, you've succeeded in escaping it so thoroughly that it becomes The Other. Your PG Tips saga reminded me of a bit in a Rimbaud biography I read recently, when after years and decades of getting as far away from small-town provincial France as he possibly can, he starts fantasising about it. The idea - from the viewpoint of a gay man living as the only Westerner in the desert city of Harar - of returning home and marrying and starting a family becomes impossibly exotic.

Tea, exoticism and Anglophilia

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Traditional British cups of tea are probably more chic in places where Britishness is seen as a sophisticated, exotic thing; all of a sudden, what would be a cup of "builder's tea" in Britain becomes redolent of some kind of groovy, Union Jack-bedecked chic, setting one aside from one's less worldly peers and connecting one with the idea of Britain.

It's much like aspects of British culture (Ben Sherman shirts, indie lad-rock bands) which are a bit declassé in Britain get a new meaning abroad. A young American or Japanese drinking a pint of Carling and listening to the Pigeon Detectives is quite different from a lad from Essex doing the same, though both the drink and the music remain awful.

[ohmavie.livejournal.com]

Ahh, great post! I'm still a tea novice, I suppose, but I really love it. Living in the Upper Midwest (USA!), I was never exposed to tea growing up. Had my first cup of tea in Ireland...Barry's Irish tea, I believe. I was staying with a host family for the weekend (study abroad thing), and the woman was incredulous that I had never had tea before.

Despite being a late-bloomer, I'm now quite into it and excited about trying different kinds, and have developed a little fascination with the wide variety of cute teapots, kettles, mugs, and other tea paraphernalia out there.

Any tea recommendations welcome!

[meeni-milk.livejournal.com]

I have been through a similar tea-exploration, yet i suppose prematurely to yours.
Before the onset of an an eating disorder ( specifically anorexia nervosa) i despised hot drinks, my mother and father would try and try to make me see their benefits, my father with his coffee on the hob and lapsang, and my mum with her endless cups of darljeeling. I hated them however, no matter how much sugar or milk they dumped in them i always thought it tasted simple of hot water, thus very wrong
However having lost a lot of weight i was always casting around for new ways of keeping myself warm, one of which was hot drinks. It was in this way that i slowly forced myself into tea, coffee, chai,, hot chocolate ( diet of course) fruit teas, herbal teas...basically hot water with a flavour. I did begin to really enjoy them and it was only when i went into a hospital based in the asian area of Tooting Beck in London that i was suddenly made aware of this huge range of teas. I became obsessed and would hardly be seen without a mug of something hot in my hands. This in th elong run, did get me into trouble as excessive water consumption is not good for someone meant to be recovering, and so my tea was rationed.
Through this rationing i was weened back onto just PG-like tea and bog-standard coffee, and i'm afraid that since recovering i haven;t really been able to bring myself to go back to my huge stack of tea boxes.
Ironically for someone who has had difficulty with their intake of calories, i have always been a 'sweetner' fan.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you associate the big range of teas with being in hospital?

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

I never got into the standard English "builders' tea". I can drink it when it's on offer, though it's not something I'd choose. When I chose black tea, it used to be varieties with fruit flavouring, such as Whittard's mango indica.

I used to drink a lot of chai when I was in Australia; they do good chai mix there (Byron Chai, from Byron Bay, was my favourite). I haven't drank much of it here, despite having a few packets of it which were sent over in care packages.

More recently, my tea consumption has tended to consist of either genmaicha (i.e., Japanese green tea with roasted rice) or various exotic blends (I quite like some of the ones from Mariage Frères, a French tea shop with branches in Paris and Japan but nowhere else); their Marco Polo and Sakura blends are quite good.

Then again, I drink more coffee than tea. It has to be coffee made with an espresso machine, though.

Btw, it just occurred to me that, literally speaking, "builder's tea" in today's Britain would probably have to be served without milk, in the Polish fashion.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, that's interesting, the balkanisation of building has brought a balkanisation of tea!

The British builder is supposed to say "I like it like paint, me!", ie very strong, with the bag left in. The same man eats vindaloo curry in the evening, which he also likes to taste like paint. And of course vindaloo and tea both come from India. So if there's been a swing to Polish tea-drinking customs, it's actually brought tea-drinking customs closer to Britain rather than further away, as the crow flies.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"sushi-restaurant-style powder blended"

Matcha?



I'm surprised nobody has caught on and started serving matcha with okashi here in the UK. Because of the froth it has a creamy smoothness to it the British would appreciate (no need for milk), and the side okashi would appeal to the British sweet tooth.

Tea etiquette doesnt really exist anymore in the UK, except for when it comes to the use of sugar.
As a general rule you're supposed to grow out of wanting sugar in your tea. Is that just a British thing? Anything over 2 teaspoons is generally regarded as greedy and childish. There's also a class distinction -- "builder's/truckers tea" is sweet and milky and is associated with laborers and the working class. An acceptable amount of sugar for an adult is 1 teaspoon, and no sugar at all is more refined and for people who really appreciate the flavor of the tea.

When Yaohan Plaza was open, one thing I always noticed was the popularity of Pearl Milk tea with the young Chinese community, it's a Taiwanese import invented in the 80s. It's sweet and milky (almost malty because of the use of evapourated milk... infact it's pretty much cold ovaltine with tapioca balls) there's no reason why it couldn't become popular here. Someone should open a teahouse that sells matcha with okashi and Pearl milk tea.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, I left those two out of my account!

Matcha I associate with temple visits in Japan. I have some at home, but mainly to sprinkle into Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream. One little tin lasts all year.

The bubble pearl tea part of my life is 2000-2002, when I lived in NY Chinatown and went often to Saint's Alp and the Green Tea Cafe on Mott Street to quaff the tapioca bubbles through the thick straws. You can buy it in Soho Chinatown, I'm pretty sure.

jonesing

[silkytooth.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

i find that i drink less tea over the course of a day than i used to, say a few years back but i almost always crave a second cup, DIRECTLY after drinking the first one.

Re: jonesing

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

Joe - buy a bigger mug ;-)

I drink about 9 large mugs a day. I like it to be strong enough that the spoon virtually stands up by itself. I also like curry.

I think I may actually be a repressed builder.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

I work at a Japanese company and our denki pot moves about 7 liters a day. I drink 8 to 9 cups of assorted green, oolong, jasmine and black teas.

I don't know how I could cope without tea! Excellent article!

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

I have Yunnan, Oolong, Rooibos and some russian tea at home. Not in bags though, I prefer measuring the tea myself. Although I am the only one in my family who drink it without milk or something sugary in.

By the way, Roobios is becoming so popular that the store where I get my tea got several flavors: Cinnamon, lemon and some other. I want mine natural though.

A thai grocery store here got some ginger tea as a powder.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hisae drinks rooibos, but I don't think I've tried it. I sort of imagine it's going to taste like rosehip tea, which I hate.

I don't like any fruity herbal infusions which masquerade under the name "tea", in fact.

[(Anonymous)]

I can relate very well to this entire post. Especially since I am having a cup right now.

I have not, however, managed to try Pu-Erh. I only read about it, and watch lovingly crafted videos on youtube by pioneering Chinese cultural exporters. I think I may have even come across them first through you. Here's one:



There's something very viscerally calming about the way the video is put together - the tea-maker and the person holding the camera, the editing, all seems very particular and lovingly done - tea otaku.



Every action seems deliberate, concise, meaningful. It reminds me a bit of tai chi.

Perhaps that's why I like tea. I think once I get back to Vancouver (which seems to be home, lately) I will finally get myself together and head down to Chinatown to find Pu-Erh.

[(Anonymous)]

You only get an ooh with Typhoo

My way (and no sugar please)

[tjaq.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/bd/Mate-gourds.jpg/458px-Mate-gourds.jpg

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombilla

Ever been to South America, Momus?

TJAQ

mmm... Matcha..

[tristan-crane.livejournal.com]

I too associate Matcha with temple visits, your post has made me long to go back to Japan.

I'm a big fan of tea in many forms.. my partner got me into timing loose-leaf tea years ago and our morning always starts with Earl Grey or more recently, a number of chinese teas.

For the ultimate caffine buzz I go straight for the Bohea. Going to check out Pu-Erh soon, we've honestly been trying to drink our already insanely stocked cabinet down before investing in any new teas!

Here in SF we have this slowly growing chain of high-end tea 'lounges' called appropriately enough 'Samovar'. There's one in Yerba Buena Center across the street from the museum of modern art. Very touristy, and overpriced, but they have a nice selection of unique and free-trade teas from all over the world along with snacks to match.

I personally prefer their location in the Castro, but it's a nice stopping point if you're in town.

http://www.samovartea.com/

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed at how much plain, utilitarian Lipton I can go through - and what having Indian coworkers did for my enjoyment of it. (Hint: Americans do NOT know what really hot water does for tea. No idea. None.)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It also makes a big difference if you "chuckle" the boiling water in from a height. No joke! But your aim must be good (tricky with just one eye).

Although not technically tea...

[philentropist.livejournal.com]

I've been partial to rooibos lately. Having given up all sources of caffeine for health reasons, it's the only thing that seems to fill the void. It's quite good with cinnamon, clove, cardamom, and ginger.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

I tend to drink PG Tips or Yorkshire tea with milk and sugar. But, it's rare to find a tea I dislike.

I bring my own teabags when I visit the US (and mourn the lack of electric kettles there) and have never had a cup of coffee in my life. This latter bit confuses most people since I'm from the US and everyone assumes that if from there, you drink coffee and not tea.

tea

[(Anonymous)]

Hello. English isn't my first language so don't judge me too hush. I decided to write here because I have made an amazing tea related discovery.
I also drink lots of tea. Usually it's Earl Gray or Lapsang. I love oriental tea also. I could find many exotic teas at Algerian coffee shop on Old Compton Street in London or have an occasional pot in Yauatcha.
I tried many interesting teas, but I never had anything as gentle and vanilla-sweet (without any vanilla additions) as Monkey-Picked Tea from Haozhan on London's Gerrard Street. I tried to find that tea everywhere in London or the net to no avail. Nothing comes even close to that tea in Haozhan but I am glad I have a personal top tea measure now.

Re: tea

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Nick, rooibos fan here. Try it with a nice big dollop of honey - creates a slightly sweet/salty taste that is rather un-British

[ksta.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! I love tea. I've recently moved to the US and am appalled at how expensive and 'gourmet' it is here, as opposed to the normal drink of the masses.

[(Anonymous)]

How do you prepare your PG Tips?

denki poto

[funazushi.livejournal.com]

I wrestled with this problem of purchasing a denki poto and opted for a thermos hot water dispenser. It keeps the water at an adequate brewing temperature through my work day.
I also use a stainless steel mug and strainer arrangement to get more than one cup out of my loose tea.

My tea of choice these days is Organic Dragon Pearl Jasmine. It comes in small hand rolled balls of jasmine scented green tea. It is slightly sweet with a more subtle aroma than regular Jasmine tea. Given the volume of tea I drink, I thought it prudent to drink organic when I can.

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

In the family home it still seems to be Tetley's.
I have started drinking tea without milk and rather weak. There is a temptation to just drink hot water.
Occasionally I will have Lapsang or Earl Gray.

I have always been intrigued by Arabic or Moroccan tea making. It is meant to be really sweet.

tea, evolution, and circularity

[graywyvern.livejournal.com]

i really didn't fall in love with tea until i spent a winter in Seattle where there was a teahouse (Kwan Yin--is it still open i wonder?) that even would make you a bowl of the tea ritual kind (which is actually kind of blasphemous, i think).
eventually there would be places in Dallas i could get my favorite Lapsang Souchong, & right now Infini-Tea has quite a wonderful selection--though they still keep asking me if i want "anything in it"--. a strong cup of Assam on a chilly gray day, ah.

in the part of town where Korean, Indian, & Vietnamese restaurants most abound, i occasionally buy a sweet iced "tea latte" flavored with milk & red bean powder. it reminds me of the taste of the "Boston Baked Beans" candy of my childhood.

but i also shop in the dollar store, and one time i thought i'd try their tea, mainly because it came in an adorable balsawood box. it was pretty good, actually; so now i buy some whenever i shop there. don't know what to do with the boxes, but i've kept every one.

still haven't done the full-dress tea thing yet, though i did introduce the "Lojban Tea Ritual" into that peculiar subculture...

m.

Re: tea, evolution, and circularity

[graywyvern.livejournal.com]

wait--Keemun not "Assam" & Teavana not "Infini-Tea"...

meanwhile a box of PG Tips has appeared in our break room.

m.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

twinnings lady grey. earl grey is way too strong.

post-travel

[shadowshark.livejournal.com]

I think I have very similarly come full circle on the idea of travel. Being American and self-conscious about it, you start off with a huge list of places all around the world that you want to see. You visit some, consciously avoid the tourist-y spots (the American chais of the world), and decide that it was great, but it would really be better if you could un-plan it just a bit, and incorporate that element of chance (you wouldn't ever say you were searching for "authenticity," of course). And you go somewhere else, and have your first realization that experiencing otherness really isn't valuable, and that what you really wanted to do was make connections with the unknown, which was something you could have been doing back home, just by thinking about things differently. And you frown your face at the people who put together facebook albums of the places they've been, and say that it's really just the same as the balding father who takes his family out to the Grand Canyon just to get a good picture of the family out at the Grand Canyon. Experiencing otherness/unfamiliarity in a valuable way is like enjoying the winter--many people say they like the winter, but (paraphrasing this from Richard Adams) for the most part, they just like the satisfaction of protection from winter--any small animal out there really experiencing the winter will tell you that it's largely an unpleasant, uncomfortable experience (without the narratives we can make out of it later, of course).
I didn't want to mention specific places, but when I was in Nepal, about to go to Tibet, I met with some exiled monks, and the thing they wanted more in the world than anything else was to go see their home again. And not because their home was 'Tibet,' but because it was where they grew up, and where all their memories were. I decided that it's really not worth sacrificing that for the sake of self-narrative.

And then you visit somewhere else anyway and have your second realization. You read about this place in a book that you believe moved you. Some director or composer or musician you really admired really embodied this place. You saw the pictures of all these places that are up on wikipedia/google image search and now here you are. When suddenly, you feel like you're really wasting your time trying to catch up all the time. There are so many wonderful and fantastic things out there to do and experience, and it's really horrific to have a thing like the internet to remind you of how inadequate your own experiences are, next to what you could have done with the time. I mean, you trust your instincts--when it comes down to it, you think of yourself as someone who knows how to really savor a moment and sniff the roses, even in a big suburban parking lot. So why not make do with whatever comes, trying to remind yourself to put the effort into how you experience things, rather than searching out the experiences? At least, I imagine that's something like what you're talking about with stripping away the layers of self-delusion as to what you're getting out of experiencing these various novelty drinks. Or, rather, delusions related to who you are for being someone who drinks those drinks?

If someone read this, I'd love to hear if this just sounds like some familiar block that you got through with such-and-such a thought or if you think that maybe, I don't know, I'm just an idiot!

Nothin' but the best for my monkey

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

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