Fortnum & Mason: Time for Tea

By Tom Parker Bowles

An expert and entertaining guide to tea from Fortnum & Mason by award-winning food writer, Tom Parker Bowles.

Fortnum & Mason has nearly as much experience of selling tea as Britain has of drinking it – some three centuries’ worth, in fact, since the early eighteenth century.

This fun and deeply authoritative guide whisks you through all the information you need to get the most out of your cuppa. It instructs on how to make the perfect brew or infusion and helps identify a wide range of teas to try that will suit different tastes whether for a single estate Darjeeling, a smoky or a delicate tea from China or a regular builder’s. It also explores which teas are best to kickstart the day, revive the spirits or soothe at evening’s end. And now, enough of the talk, it’s Time for Tea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9780008387112

Tom Parker Bowles

Tom Parker Bowles, son of Prince Charles’ wife Camilla, is a respected British food critic, with columns in The Mail on Sunday, “Night and Day” and Tatler.  He is the author of The Year of Eating Dangerously and E is for Eating: An Alphabet of Greed. He lives in London.

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Copyright

4th Estate

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2021

Copyright © Fortnum & Mason 2021

All photographs © David Loftus 2021

Illustrations © Zebedee Helm 2021

Design by Luke Bird

Cover design by Julian Humphries

The right of Fortnum & Mason Plc to be identified as the author of this work has been

asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

Excerpt from ‘Caitlin Moran: tea v coffee’ reproduced by permission of The Sunday

Times/News Licensing

Excerpt from Mr Stink by David Walliams reproduced by permission of the author

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008387105

Ebook Edition © April 2021 ISBN: 9780008387112

Version: 2022-11-30

In recognition of Ewan Venters’ achievements – as well as to the ladies and gentlemen, past, present and future, involved in the production of tea.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

A history of tea

Around the world with tea

Ideal conditions for tea

From leaf to cup

How tea is made

Wake Up

Breakfast

Elevenses

Lunch

Mid-Afternoon

Tea Time

Cocktails

After Dinner

Bedtime

Bibliography

Index of Tea

Index of Recipes

Acknowledgements

About the author

About the Publisher

Introduction

Ah, tea. Both soothing and uplifting, a salve and a sharpener, the morning jolt and the evening’s end. It’s not so much mere drink as national obsession, a fragrant religion, sippable meditation, succour in a cup. Unashamedly democratic too, poured from silver tea pots and battered urns alike.

‘Wouldn’t it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn’t have tea,’ sang Noël Coward, echoing the thoughts of a nation. George Orwell agreed. ‘One of the mainstays of civilisation in this country,’ he mused. Because tea unites this country. And divides it, too. Bag or loose leaf? A chipped mug of Builders’? Or a bone-china cup of first-flush Darjeeling? Which goes first, the tea or the milk? (If you take milk at all.) Sugar, honey? Or lemon? Or naked and unadorned? Oh, the agony of choice. And tea’s not just a cup of char. Rather afternoon tea, a meal in itself, a glorious tradition, one of Britain’s most enduring culinary gifts to the world. Cucumber sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and jam, chocolate cake and crumpets drenched in butter. As Henry James said, ‘There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.’ And then there’s High Tea, a feast unto itself, where savoury is the order of the day. Washed down, of course, with lashings of tea.

Now the history of tea is not exactly pure as filtered water – by any stretch of the imagination. It’s closely entwined with empire, colonialism, greed, injustice and war. The East India Company, one of the first major importers of tea, was rapacious, immoral and almost entirely unregulated. In writing about tea, we acknowledge all this. But this book is primarily a guide to choosing, making, drinking and cooking with tea. If you want to find out more about the historical background, please see the Bibliography at the end.

Fortnum & Mason, though, has a bit of experience when it comes to the leaves of the old Camellia sinensis. Three centuries, to be precise. Despite tea being so stained into our national history that one imagines Boudicca swigging it while bashing the Roman invader, it only reached these shores in the middle of the seventeenth century. And at 25 shillings a pound, was expensive enough to be locked away in tea caddies (with the key held by the lady of the house), making it an exclusively aristocratic tipple. Nowadays, though, it’s the most widely consumed drink, after water, in the world.

At Fortnum’s, tea is taken to a high art. There are nearly 150 varieties in store at any one time, ranging from the refreshing kick of Queen Anne, the delicate, floral caress of Rose Pouchong, the verdant, gently roasted sweetness of Long Jing, right through to the altogether more powerfully strident allure of the Albion blend. Hundreds of millions of cups of tea have been sold in the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon alone. There are single-estate rarities, famous blends, fruit infusions, tea cocktails, chocolates flavoured with Earl Grey, even salmon smoked with the stuff. Tea runs through the store’s veins like white water through Darjeeling ravines. This book is a celebration of Fortnum’s passion for tea in its every form. ‘Thank God for Tea,’ cries the Reverend Sydney Smith, noted gourmand and wit. ‘What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.’ A sentiment shared by so many of us too. Anyway, enough of the talk. It’s time for tea.

A history of tea

Around the world with tea

In tea, just as in wine, terroir is all – that unique combination of climate, geography, soil and altitude that together create the dazzlingly diverse and distinctive flavour profiles of tea across the world. From the lofty slopes of Darjeeling and the highlands of Kenya to the rather more tropical sultriness of Assam, Sri Lanka and Yunnan, it’s this all-important terroir that gives tea its character, flavour, personality and charm.

China

Once upon a time, there was a wise and powerful emperor. And this legendary deity, said to be the first ruler of ancient China, enjoyed a cup of hot water every day, sipped in the shade of a leafy bush. One day, though, a few leaves from the nearby Camellia sinensis tree fluttered into his drink. Creating, they say, the world’s first cup of tea.

Now this is obviously more fable than truth, but it was in China where it all began, around 7000 BC, the place where Camellia sinensis was both discovered and widely cultivated. Buddhist monks helped spread it across Asia, a drink that is part medicine, part ritual and all pleasure. The ritual of tea drinking is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture, flowing through the country’s veins like caffeinated blood, with the drink as much traditional medicine, an expression of thanks and respect, as it is a soothing sip. Green tea was seen as ‘yin’, or cooling, black tea as ‘yang’, or warming.

There are a huge range of styles and varieties, from the super-strong Tibetan yak butter tea in the west, via the pu’er of Yunnan down south, to the eastern regions of Fujian (where you’ll find whites, jasmines and Lapsang Souchongs), and the famed green teas of Zhejiang. From the soft, delicate, apricot-scented purity of Fuding Silver Needle, to the rich, smoky allure of Lapsang Souchong, China is a tea lover’s paradise.

Tea houses abound, places to sip, gossip, contemplate and relax, secular, democratic temples for everyone from street sweeper to internet billionaire. Most of the tea produced in China is green (although the country also produces every other style of tea too) and slurped on the local market. In fact, only 14% of their teas are exported (still a mighty 365 million kilograms per year), and this remains the largest tea-drinking population on the planet.

Post 1949, and with the Communist Party rule, Chinese tea was organised by province, as all production and sales became state-controlled. Each province had a government-run tea branch, responsible for all the tea sales from that region. Unlike India and Africa, with their vast plantations (often owned by multinationals) and estate-owned processing plants, China has always been, and is still, largely, made up of tiny smallholder gardens, where plucking, pan-firing and rolling are still done in the traditional way. They’re often family owned and managed, with no processing facility. It’s either done by hand, or taken to nearby factories for processing. This makes the supply chain in China that much more complex.

Anhui

The climate and terrain are variable in this north-eastern region, with Keemun from Qimen County being particularly sought after. It’s slow-withered and oxidised, a black tea with complex aromatic character and a hazelnut sweetness.

Fujian

Nestling on the south-east coast of China, Fujian’s tea-growing area is high-altitude, misty and very mountainous, not unlike Darjeeling in India. It has a subtropical climate, with distinct wet and dry seasons, although you will find year-round rain. The landscape is stunning, with neat tea gardens dotted among the soaring granite peaks and rock-scattered soil. Even though the gardens may be only a few hundred metres apart, and all planted with the same tea, the flavours can differ substantially. Terroir at its best.

The styles take in all sorts, from the perfumed lightness of Fuding Silver Needle, to the toasted, floral-crisp, semi-oxidised oolong Tie Guan Yin (Iron Goddess of Mercy), to the mighty, pine-smoked black tea Lapsang Souchong.

Yunnan

Deep in China’s south-west, and bordering Tibet, Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos, the tea gardens in this tropical, hugely humid climate (Yunnan means ‘south of the clouds’) can be found in mountainous terrain, blanketed with thick forest and watered by the mighty Mekong river. You’ll find pu’er here, both fresh and aged, which comes from the eponymous town. Yunnan’s regular black teas are rich and mahogany-coloured with a deep oiled-leather character.

Zhejiang

This is the home of the famous Dragon Well (Long Jing) green tea, which comes from the West Lake (Xihu) region near Hangzhou city. The leaves are pressed into the pan while drying, creating a flat spear shape with a fresh toasty character.

Taiwan

Taiwan is known for producing some of the best and most interesting oolongs in the world, including Dong Ding, from Nantou, on the western slopes of the central highlands, rolled into balls and given a medium oxidation. The result is a fruity aroma, with buttery texture and a long, lingering aftertaste. Taiwan also produces Pouchong (‘wrapped type’, from the days when it was sold wrapped in paper packets).

There are low-altitude coastal plains, and high-altitude, mist-covered mountains running down the centre. The top-quality oolong tends to come from high up, with the more commercial tea plantations in Nantou County, on the plains. The climate is subtropical, hot and humid, with plenty of rainfall.

Standards are very high here, and strictly regulated. And competition among growers is fierce, as they vie for prize money and auction proceeds in the annual tea competitions. In Lugu alone, in 2014, there were 5,882 entries for the Dong Ding competition. Taiwan is also the home of bubble tea, that lurid, over-sweet mélange of powdered milk, various flavourings, sugar syrup and black tapioca balls.

Japan

Once again, we can thank those Buddhist scholars, tea’s early emissaries, for discovering tea in China, some time in the eighth century, and bringing it back to Japan. The bush was cultivated in the temples, grown first for medical use, then for ceremonial purposes, before finally hitting the mainstream and being drunk for pleasure too.

Shizuoka, in the shadow of Mount Fuji, is home to almost half of Japan’s tea, with its flat plains, mild climate and sweet, clean water. Like all the other tea plantations in Japan, it is close to the sea, and uses the distinctive steaming methods that create those green, verdant grassy notes.

Matcha is one of the most famous green teas, where the leaves are steamed, dried and ground into a fine powder. The traditional Japanese tea ceremony, chanoyu, is based upon the ritual and ceremonial act of preparing and serving matcha tea. The principles are rooted in Zen Buddhism, involving the humility and respect of those taking part, as well as a respect for the art of simplicity.

Bancha (mild and astringent), sencha (light, sweet and mellow), gyokuro (fresh and fragrant, and grown under shade, rather than sun, to concentrate chlorophyll production, which makes for a savoury, umami character) and tencha (sweet and mellow, used to make matcha) are also very popular, all sharing that unique fresh, fragrant taste. Genmaicha is green tea mixed with toasted rice, once a staple for the