Toby Atkin-Wright

There are two main criteria in enjoying drinking tea: having it often, and having plenty of it.

Sometimes I buy loose-leaf, and sometimes I buy tea bags. When I brew loose-leaf tea I like to make it in a little pot with a drop-in strainer (rather like those in-mug coffee filters). It is better to warm the pot first, or warm the cup if I’m brewing from a bag directly in the cup. Freshly boiling water must hit the tea, it must be given sufficient space and time to brew, and it must be served with fresh cold milk. Tea leaves must never meet milk.

It is amazing how many coffee shops and bars fail to serve a decent cuppa.

A horrible modern trend is to serve a cup of hot water, with a wrapped teabag on the side. I can’t fathom this — are we supposed to be impressed by the teabag’s packaging? Some places that I’ve experienced this are the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, and the Fairmont Hotel. The only solution is to send it back and ask for boiling water to be added to the tea, preferably in a pot.

Some cafés serve hot milk, presumably for the benefit of coffee drinkers, which tastes foul in tea. Others serve sachets or plastic jiggers of UHT, which isn’t much better. If a café can serve a glass of milk, then they can provide fresh milk to go in tea.

Coffee-shop chains tend to serve grim tea — it might have all sorts of fair-trade or rainforest-friendly accreditations, but it seldom tastes good, and most of them haven’t heard of a tea pot. If I’m paying a premium price for a cup of tea, I expect it to be served properly.

Supermarket cafés tend to do better, with tea served in a pot, and fresh milk available. Most hotels make a decent cuppa too, and cafés can usually be trusted if they have a significant proportion of old ladies in their clientele.

Fast-food-wise, McDonalds manage to serve a consistently drinkable cup of tea — nothing special, but much cheaper and more enjoyable than anything Starbucks or Costa could manage.

A cup of tea should be cheap and cheerful; it should make the world a better place; it can be served with meals or by itself. It is a drink that built an empire, and makes a bad day better. It helps me debug code, and is key ingredient in many of my social gatherings.

I tend to favour either a breakfast blend or an assam; a tea with plenty of strength. Irish blends traditionally have more assam than English ones — I approve of Irish tea. Nothing fancy, no dandy Earl Grey or smoky lapsang souchong for me, and I have a mild suspicion of people who regularly drink green tea or — worse — redbush. (I think self-loathing must be involved in choosing to drink redbush.)

My tea caddy is currently filled with Punjana. Time to boil the kettle!