The Colour of Magic

By Jess Hodges

There are a staggering number of different varieties and sub varieties of tea, so many that it can be hard to get a handle on them. An understanding of the basic types makes the whole thing much less daunting. As a general rule teas can be divided into three broad categories; black, green and white. The names arise from the different colours of the tea which derive from the different ways it is processed.

Black tea is the most commonly consumed in the west and undergoes the most processing to transform it from leaf to tea. The leaves are partially air dried then cut and bruised either using traditional methods or a mechanical method called crush, tear and curl in which the leaves are passed through a sequence of rollers with teeth. They are then left to undergo oxidation, a crucial process in which the chlorophyll in the leaves is broken down to produce the tannins which give tea it's distinctive, bitter taste. The tea is then dried for sale.

The green tea production process is very similar but the leaves are heated, by being steamed or cooked in pans, to halt the oxidation process soon after it has begun. Green teas will typically have only around 5% oxidation, Black teas have 100% and Oolong teas are found in the vast region in between.

White tea is the least processed of all. It isn't cooked or oxidised but instead the leaves are allowed to wither on the bush before picking, after which they are simply dried and that's that. This lack of processing allows it retain many of the beneficial compounds in the leaves making it extremely healthy. White tea has been claimed to have all sorts of benefits from helping to fight plaque to increasing the efficacy of anti cancer medication.

There are off course absurd amounts of detail which can be gone into at each stage of the process, hundreds of little intricacies which give different teas their subtleties. It's good to know the basics though before plunging headlong into all of that insani-tea.

Yellow Tea

By Jess Hodges

The best thing about writing this blog is that I occasionally come across something like yellow tea, which I never previously knew existed. This is probably because yellow tea is extremely rare, being produced only in small quantities and hardly ever heard of in the west. It dates back to the 17^th century in Anhui and Sichuan province in China and gets it name from the golden colour of the leaves and the tea they produce. Yellow tea can also be a name used to refer to the tribute teas which were presented to the Imperial Royal family, yellow then being the colour of royalty in China.

Yellow tea is allowed to oxidise for slightly longer than green tea and is then left to dry very slowly which is when it takes on it's distinctive yellow colour. The result is a tea without the strong grassy flavour of green tea, it has a mellow sweetness and stands up well to repeated steeping. It is therefore ideal for people who want to enjoy the health benefits of green tea but don't like the taste of it.

The process of making yellow tea is complicated and time consuming when compared to other teas which contributes to it's scarcity and relative expensiveness. The specific methods used to make different varieties of yellow tea are often closely guarded secrets and many have been lost over the years.

I encourage you to hunt for some yellow tea, elusive as it may be, I believe it's high time that more people made the discovery. Let's do our bit to increase the demand for this secretive and refined tea before any more of it is lost.

Matcha

By Jess Hodges

Matcha is a powdered Japanese green tea, best known for it’s use in tea ceremonies and as the green tea flavouring in a wide range of other food and drinks.

Matcha first came into being back when tea used to be stored and transported in bricks. In order to brew the tea these bricks had to be steamed and broken apart which broke up the tea leaves and created a coarse powder. In the Song dynasty the preparation of tea by whisking the powder with water became popular and was ritualised by Zen Buddhist monks.

The tea leaves are prepared before harvest by the covering of the bushes which darkens and sweetens them. The selectively harvested leaves are then dried flat instead of being rolled, which causes them to crumble. The resulting tea is called tencha. To create matcha all of the coarser material such as the veins and stems of the leaves is carefully removed and the remaining tea is ground to an extremely fine powder.

A special bamboo whisk known as a chasen is used to blend the tea with a little hot water at first to create a smooth paste which is then whipped with more hot water. Depending on the amount of powder used the tea can be either koicha (thick) or usucha (thin).

In a traditional tea ceremony the matcha is sieved into a small caddy and then moved into a tea bowl using a bamboo scoop before being whisked with the water. As it can sometimes be bitter it is often served with sweets.

It’s powdered form makes it easy to use as a flavouring and as such it often appears in baking as well as in lattes and smoothies. It’s high antioxidant content makes it much prized for it’s health benefits and it's bright green colour makes it a healthy dye. It is the only acceptable kind of instant tea.

Pu-erh

By Jess Hodges

I have a new favourite tea. It's a green Pu-erh and after having two cups at an Edinburgh cafe I ended up buying the rest of their supply (not as crazy as it sounds, they didn't have that much left!).

Pu-erh is named after the county in the Yunnan province of China where it originated. It is made from the assimica variety of camellia sinensis which has larger leaves and a slightly different flavour and benefits greatly from ageing. The leaves used should ideally be from old, wild trees making it a scarce and expensive product.

The harvested leaves are first made into a green tea known as maocha. To do this they are sun dried and then briefly pan fried before being rolled and dried again. The maocha can now either be pressed raw producing green pu-erh or ripened first to create an aged pu-erh. This is done by piling and turning the leaves in damp conditions to encourage bacteria and mimic the flavour of a naturally ripened aged pu-erh which can be left for decades to develop.

There are several famous mountains where pu-erh is grown and each produces tea with different characteristics. It's variety, rarity and the benefits of ageing mean that genuine high quality ripened pu-erh can be a collectors item and is extremely highly sought after. Lower cost versions will be blended with more affordable green teas before pressing and a lot of counterfeit versions are sold illegally.

Just a few of the various health benefits ascribed to pu-erh are that it reduces cholesterol, acts as a hangover cure and aids weight loss so it's pretty much the perfect antidote to the modern life style! I'm in love with it though not because of it's wonderful properties or celebrity status but just because it tastes absolutely delicious which at the end of the day is the most important thing.

Visions of tea

By Jess Hodges

I have made another quest into the murky brown waters of the future, the waters in question this time being those of a particularly excellent cup of chai at my local café, where I'm starting to get quite an audience.

There were loads of leaves left at the bottom of the cup this time making for a very comprehensive reading. The first things I saw were two sad faces, which was a bit worrying, followed by a square, a vampire and a ski slope.

The sad faces cannot possibly bode well and the square shows a need for creative thinking. This can only mean that I need to beware of vampires, especially while skiing.

Things get a bit fishy after that, I saw the letter G, a fish and a cat mermaid thing (top half cat, bottom half fish). Fish mean good things coming to you from across the water but cats mean a deceitful friend, maybe one who's name begins with the letter G? They will try and steal my nautical goodies and I must watch them!

Finally there was a tea pot, a traffic cone, an egg timer, a sauce pan, a tiger eating someone (even more worrying than the cat-fish abomination) and a shooting star. Teapots can only be good things, they are the bringers of good things for certain but traffic cones aren't usually as pleasant. Obviously I'll be needing to poor myself a cup of tea while I wait for some hold up to clear, luckily I didn't see builders. Egg timers are for new beginnings, evidentially things will change once the road works have been removed. A saucepan is for anxiety, a Tiger is good luck with gambling and the star is success so obviously a risk will pay off but unfortunately may result in someone being eaten.

The fates have spoken.

Enough Monkeying Around

By Jess Hodges

Half the fun of looking into the history of Chinese tea is the multitude of strange myths and legends about it's production, but in the case of Golden Monkey tea the myths are still being repeated to this day. This black tea is grown in Yunnan and Fujian, it's a high quality variety made from only the bud and the first leaf of the plant and it stands out because of the distinctive gold veining of the leaves. It isn't the golden part of the name however that needs to be explained, it's the second part where things get strange.

There are those who say it is called monkey tea because of the appearance of the leaves which look like monkey tails or paws but the most common and surprisingly widely believed story is that the tea gets its name from the fact that it is actually harvested by monkeys. The story goes that the trees grow on such remote and inaccessible cliffs that humans can't reach them and have had to train themselves furry little assistants.

Sadly it isn't true. Aside from the fact that no one would create a tea plantation on a cliff face there are a large number of people being employed to pick the tea who deserve the credit for their own hard work. It is a lovely story but although, given the intelligence of monkeys, it's certainly possible it's hardly a practical method. While monkey tea is more than deserving of fame for it's great taste and high quality it's maybe time we laid the legend to rest and let the tea speak for itself.

Tea drinking, the final frontier.

By Jess Hodges

“Tea, Earl Grey, hot.”

For those of you who have no idea where that quote comes from I apologise, you're about to become slightly geekier than you were when you started reading this post. That is the standard request made by Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the SS Enterprise when getting a drink from the replicators. There, now you know some Star Trek trivia.

For captain Picard a cup of tea in space is a recognisable and civilised affair, the reality is slightly different. In 2003 astronaut Don Pettit was filmed enjoying his tea on board the international space station. He observed the old Russian tradition of having it with honey and the new outer space tradition of eschewing a cup in favour of chopsticks. Fluids act slightly differently in zero gravity, their surface tension causing them to form balls which if you're careful you can apparently manipulate with chopsticks, plucking them out of the air.

It's not surprising that human beings would take tea with them into space, it's so ubiquitous, so important to so many cultures that the step from international to extra terrestrial seems inevitable. It leaves tantalising scope to imagine what kinds of new tea drinking traditions could be emerging up there above earth's atmosphere. Specialised tea cups used for scooping balls of tea out of the air, teapots with spouts that open and close automatically to release the liquid in manageable quantities, an array of bite sized floating biscuits that can be plucked from the air alternately with the tea, ornate tea chopsticks and probably a large napkin would be in order.

We're not quite at the replicator stage and you probably don't want it too hot given that it's going to be floating about with you but at least we can have Earl Grey for the captain.

Darjeeling

By Jess Hodges

Darjeeling has long been regarded as the champagne of the tea world, the most highly regarded of all the black teas, although technically they should be classified as oolong due to their level of fermentation. Grown in India but from the traditionally Chinese variant of the tea plant, it's history begins in 1835 with a civil surgeon called Campbell. The experimental planting of Chinese seeds in Indian soil was to yield unique results. The project which began in Dr Campbell's garden was moved into government tea nurseries in 1847 and then into commercial tea gardens by 1852.

Darjeeling itself is located in the west Bengal region of India in the Himalayas. There was little to no tea growing expertise in the area so the production of darjeeling moved forwards by trial and error. Friendly rivalry between tea gardens separated by the peaks and valleys of the region helped to make standards as high as they are. There are 87 active tea gardens in darjeeling today producing the main income of the region.

Darjeeling is a light, delicate brew with a floral, slightly astringent flavour, it is said to be similar to that of muscatel wine. A variety of different teas with different qualities are produced throughout the year depending on the seasons. Spring, Summer, Monsoon and Autumn teas all have their own distinct characteristics.

Four times as much darjeeling tea is sold every year as is actually produced, indicating a pretty serious problem with counterfeit versions. To combat this it has now been given Geographical Indication meaning that the darjeeling brand is protected by international law in the same way as champagne. The tea board of India has bought in a certification mark and logo so if you want to ensure you're drinking genuine darjeeling you need to look for this mark.

The Kettle

By Jess Hodges

It's definitely the right time of the year for hot drinks again. We can put away the ice tea and reach for the kettle. If there were ever an appliance ubiquitous to modern life surely this is it. Boiling hot water at the flick of the switch, what an incredible luxury that we get to take for granted. The electric kettle is such a feature of modern life in Britain that power companies have to increase supplies during breaks in popular TV shows to meet the demand that comes from everyone switching them on to make a cup of tea at the same time.

The kettle evolved from ancient times when large vessels or cauldrons would be used to boil water over an open fire. These pre-dated the bronze age and would initially have been made from animal hide. These gradually developed into stove top kettles which are simply a way to hold water above a heat source and were usually made of copper. The distinctive kettle shape can be traced back potentially as far as 3500 BC.

Electric kettles were a major step forward as they incorporated their own heat source in the form of an electrical element, making the kettle a separate, independent appliance. The first electric kettle was invented in Chicago in 1891 and took 12 minuted to come to the boil. In 1922 The Swan company developed a much faster version by sealing the electric element in a tube and immersing it in the water. These kettles remained basically unchanged until the second world war when a shortage in metal lead to the production of many ceramic models. The main remaining difference between these kettles and modern ones was that you still had to watch them and turn them off yourself when they reached boiling point. It wasn't until 1956 that Russell Hobbs created an automatic version, finishing the transition from leather cauldron to our modern tea making essential.

So next time you reach for the switch spare a thought for one of our most under appreciated and hard working appliances.

Teapots

By Jess Hodges

For a while now I've been fighting a losing battle to try not to start collecting teapots. I don't have enough space and I really am enough of a tea geek as it is. Unfortunately my brother has effectively foiled this plan by buying me a teapot shaped like an elephant. It takes my collection up to four, which even I can't pretend I need, and in addition is far too cute to be resisted.

When tea was first beginning to be drunk in China and Japan it was brewed in bowls or pans and it was centuries before any kind of teapot came in to use. The earliest creations resembling teapots come from China and were made from the clay of the YiXing region and dating back to the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). These were originally used for brewing but not pouring, they were individually sized and the tea was drunk directly from the spout, true teapots probably evolved from kettles at a later date.

Teapots were brought to Europe towards the end of the 17th century in the same ships that were carrying the tea along with other luxuries. These early imports acted as inspiration for European craftsmen and teapots became something of a British speciality. With the works of wedgewood and the invention of bone china teapots became items of as much artistic value as practical use.

Teapots today come in an amazing variety of different shapes and sizes including a 35 foot high pink one erected by a Malaysian cult called the Sky Kingdom. There is also the Chester teapot which is a 14 foot hight model found in Ohio and the Utah teapot a virtual 3D model which is used as a standard reference object used in developing computer graphics.

I guess my collection doesn't look too extreme after all!

The beauty of tea

By Jess Hodges

Over the last few months of writing this blog I hope that I've given you lots of good reasons to be interested in tea so just for a change here's a more frivolous one - it makes you look great. We all know by now that drinking plenty of fluids, especially ones high in antioxidants like tea, is great for your skin but it's doesn't just work on the inside. There are loads of other ways to extract the beauty benefits from tea.

One old trick is instead of discarding your teabags to squeeze out any excess liquid and put them in the fridge. Then after a hard day or night out, once the tea has done it's relaxing, rejuvenating work, you can place the bags over your eyes to refresh and relax them as well. It is however advisable to finish drinking your hot drink before obscuring your vision.

Green tea in particular, with its high vitamin and antioxidant content, is supposed to have an amazing array of beauty applications. Sprizted or patted onto the skin (cooled first!) it's supposed to tone, cleanse, fight spots and help with sunburn. Boiled until reduced and mixed with bicarbonate of soda it's reputedly effective as a home-made toothpaste and it's a key ingredient in any number of face masks and hair treatments.

If you fancy enjoying all of these benefits whilst effectively soaking in a giant cup of tea then get yourself a large piece of muslin, fold in half and sew up two sides to make a pouch. Now add a decent handful of green tea leaves and the other ingredients of your choice. Lavender and chamomile are a good way to go if you want to relax or rosemary if you fancy something more invigorating. Now sew up the top of your pouch and voilà, your own giant tea bag. Add to a hot bath and brew yourself beautiful. Biscuits are optional.

The Beauty of Tea

By Jess Hodges

Over the last few months of writing this blog I hope that I've given you lots of good reasons to be interested in tea so just for a change here's a more frivolous one - it makes you look great. We all know by now that drinking plenty of fluids, especially ones high in antioxidants like tea, is great for your skin but it's doesn't just work on the inside. There are loads of other ways to extract the beauty benefits from tea.

One old trick is instead of discarding your teabags to squeeze out any excess liquid and put them in the fridge. Then after a hard day or night out, once the tea has done it's relaxing, rejuvenating work, you can place the bags over your eyes to refresh and relax them as well. It is however advisable to finish drinking your hot drink before obscuring your vision.

Green tea in particular, with its high vitamin and antioxidant content, is supposed to have an amazing array of beauty applications. Sprizted or patted onto the skin (cooled first!) it's supposed to tone, cleanse, fight spots and help with sunburn. Boiled until reduced and mixed with bicarbonate of soda it's reputedly effective as a home-made toothpaste and it's a key ingredient in any number of face masks and hair treatments.

If you fancy enjoying all of these benefits whilst effectively soaking in a giant cup of tea then get yourself a large piece of muslin, fold in half and sew up two sides to make a pouch. Now add a decent handful of green tea leaves and the other ingredients of your choice. Lavender and chamomile are a good way to go if you want to relax or rosemary if you fancy something more invigorating. Now sew up the top of your pouch and voilà, your own giant tea bag. Add to a hot bath and brew yourself beautiful. Biscuits are optional.

Holidays with Tea

By Jess Hodges

It takes me roughly five minutes to make a cup of tea depending on what type I'm making and how full the kettle is. In an average day I have somewhere between ten and fifteen cups, if we say twelve that makes an even hour of daily tea making. So 365 hours a year spent making tea or just over two weeks, the length of a really decent holiday.

So how do I better capitalise on this unofficial tea making holiday I take every year? Should I cover the kettle with pictures of exotic, far away places or only make tea whilst putting on funny accents? Do I replace my tea time biscuits with foreign alternatives, or maybe some kind of tea making sun hat is in order?

I certainly want to make the most of this two weeks I never knew I had, maybe I should turn it into something virtuous like two weeks of exercise or two weeks of quiet reflection on the meaning of life. Or maybe something daft like two weeks spent on one leg or two weeks dancing or just something nice like two weeks of thinking happy thoughts and smiling. I have until the end of December to decide what I will be doing for the two weeks of 2011 that have been slipping past unappreciated for all of these years.

Whilst this is just a fun exercise for me for many people it's an important consideration. Wherever you travel and whatever cultures you explore there always seems to be ritual associated with tea making, often with religious connotations. Maybe because it's a simple and versatile undertaking that lends itself well to variation but maybe it's because it's such a regular occurrence that all of those little moments of ritual build up and up until centuries of ceremony are carried out every day across a nation.

When you think of it that way putting the kettle on begins to feel like a pretty special thing, certainly something to make the most of.

Oolong Tea

By Jess Hodges

On the face of it oolong is one of the inbetweeners of the tea world. Produced in the mountains of China and Taiwan, the level of oxidation is more than green tea but less than black and the leaves are either curled or pressed into balls, sort of like gunpowder tea. Despite this you couldn't mistake it for anything else. It's flavour is completely unlike both green and black tea and it bares very little resemblance to gunpowder tea. It is very popular in Chinese restaurants where it is brewed to be strong and bitter. The oolong family contains some of the most prestigious varieties of tea in China.

Like most Chinese teas the origins of oolong tea are shrouded in ancient myth but no other tea can claim quite as many competing theories. Some say it is evolved from a type of cake tea called dragon-phoenix which was a tribute tea offered to Chinese emperors. There are ancient poems and songs which may indicate that it originated in the Wuyi mountains and takes its name from the area it came from but it is also said to have been discovered in the Anxi tea plant and named after it's creator. Some stories attribute its discovery to a man called Wu Liang who was making green tea but got distracted by a deer and allowed the fermentation to go on for too long and there are yet more stories that a travelling army requisitioned a barn where green tea was being made to sleep in. They prevented the workers from getting to the tea, prolonging it's oxidation and they slept on the tea itself, crushing and shaping it's leaves.

It's taste and colour vary widely depending on exactly how long it's fermented for and it's supposed to aid weight loss. Whichever story you chose to believe oolong is certainly a mysterious character and definitely one worth investigating for yourself.

Time for Tea

By Jess Hodges

In a supermarket the other day I saw a product that struck fear into my heart. Instant tea granules. Not content with the insidious freeze dried blight on good coffee some unscrupulous individual has turned their attention to tea. Is this the next evolution of our favourite drink? As loose leaves gave way to tea bags are we now going to have to watch in horror as the age of granules begins?

I worried about it for a bit but concluded that we were safe, it will never catch on. It seems a strange thing to be confident about in this day and age where every second that can be saved is ruthlessly harvested from our lives by modernisation but the thing about tea is that it takes just the right sort of time.

On those days when you can't spare a tea break but none the less need a cup to sustain you at your desk the act of brewing it can be the perfect moment of respite. Just those three minutes while the tea is infusing can be all that is needed to take a deep breath and return to work with fresh determination and perspective. The classic English ritual of making a cup of tea in times of trouble isn't just about comforting the recipient, it also gives the maker a quiet moment to gather themselves before returning to whatever problems await. Carrying out a simple task that requires you to take your time is the perfect way to slow yourself down and think clearly, letting your stresses float away with the steam.

Instant coffee serves its purpose, making a lengthy and involved process short, simple and transportable but in the case of tea, which is all those things already, it only serves to relieve us of a burden than most of us enjoy. The leaves certainly have nothing to fear for the moment.

North African Mint Tea

By Jess Hodges

North African mint tea is a drink made from a combination of green tea and mint which is drunk throughout western and central Saharan Africa. Most people would be familiar with it as Moroccan mint tea and it is also known as Touareg tea or Tuareg tea after the Tuareg, a nomadic people who can trace their way of life back to the writings of Herodotus (around 50BC), the ancient Greek historian.

Whist being part of daily life in five different countries mint tea is especially important in Morocco, hence the association. The country imports more green tea from China than anywhere else in the world.

To prepare it a pot of green tea is made and then strained into a stainless steel teapot. Sugar is added and the tea is bought to the boil, fresh mint is then added either to the pot or the cup when the tea is served. Mint tea is offered as a sign of hospitality and is traditionally prepared by the head of the family. Brewed in the traditional way the tea should be served three times giving three different strengths of drink which are described by this proverb.

“The first glass is bitter as life,
the second glass is as strong as love,
the third glass is gentle as death”

Mint tea has enjoyed a global increase in popularity with many people enjoying the flavour combination of the two main elements. In Morroco however the mint isn't considered vital with many people now choosing to exclude it due to some of the more alarming pesticides it is often sprayed with.

So mint tea is ancient, traditional, poetic and evolving, most importantly it is also delicious. Rather than buying the instant tea bag versions that exist I would thoroughly recommend buying some green tea and some mint and making it properly. Trust me you'll be more than happy to have your traditional three servings!

Russian Caravan Tea

By Jess Hodges

The idea of tea being shipped across vast oceans through storms and pirates is certainly a romantic one but it's not the only way that tea used to be transported around the world and certainly not the most arduous. If you've ever wondered what links tea, freezing Siberian winters and thousands of camels (and who hasn't?) then the answer is Russian Caravan tea.

The Chinese started exporting tea to Russia in 1638 and they sent it over land. It was transported by camel caravans which carried a blend of Oolong, Keemun and Lapsang Souchong. Russian caravan tea, as the blend became known, is a strong, full bodied tea with a distinctive smoky taste from the Lapsang Souchong component, though some say this was added to by the camp fires of the weary caravan traders.

The camel trains travelled through Mongolia and Siberia and took six months to reach Russia from the Chinese border. The tea was said to benefit from taking the terrestrial route and avoiding the hot, humid sea air of the tropics but that can't have been much consolation to the travellers struggling through the cold, harsh conditions for months on end.

The route was so difficult that the costs of tea remained sky high until the creation of the Tea Road, also known as the Siberian Route, which was started in 1730 and not completed until the mid-eighteen hundreds. The road started in Moscow made it's way across Russia, through Mongolia and passed through the Great Wall of China before continuing onward to Beijing.

The road made tea transport easier and record volumes began to pour in to Russia but it wasn't to last. With the advent of the suez canal, which saved ships from having to journey around the cape, a general increase in sea borne trade and the completion of the trans-Siberian railway the camel trains were gradually replaced and faded out of history but the distinctive tea they carried remained as popular as ever.

I Love This Tea!

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.

By Jess Hodges

I may have found the smoke for my bonfire night celebrations but as anyone who's ever been to one knows it's just not up to scratch without the gunpowder. Luckily tea can provide me with that as well.

Chinese gunpowder tea is a green tea the leaves of which are individually rolled into pellets. This protects them and allows them to produce a more aromatic, intense brew. It can be historically traced to the Tang Dynasty as far back as the seventh century.

There are two theories as to how this tea got it's name, it may simply be a derivative of the Chinese gāng paò de which means freshly brewed or from the similarity in appearance between the rolled leaves and the gunpowder used in firearms.

Gunpowder tea isn't roasted giving it a fresher taste than other green teas. All except the really expensive stuff is now rolled by machine but otherwise it's production remains unchanged. It's grown in the Zheijang province on the east coast of China. Zheijang has traditionally been called the land of fish and rice but it is also the land of extraordinary tea, producing more than any other province in China. Zheijang also produces Longjing tea or dragon well tea, an extremely famous green tea of exceptionally high quality, known as the national drink of China and enjoyed by world leaders.

My second cup of Guy Fawkes tea may not be producing any actual explosions (except of flavour!) but a tea resembling gunpowder from the country that invented fireworks seems like a fitting way to round off the evening. When I'm celebrating back in England this time next year maybe I'll incorporate this calmer tribute amidst all the mayhem of smoke and gunpowder.

Happy bonfire night everyone.

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

By Jess Hodges

November to me can be summed up by two scents, smoke and gunpowder. Wood smoke from the bonfires and gunpowder from the fireworks stinging your nose in the cold air means only one thing, Guy Fawkes Night. It's one of my favourite nights of the year but this year I'll be spending it in Florida where not only is it sunny but bonfires and explosions are sadly at a minimum. How do I capture the November spirit in a true British fashion? As usual tea has the answer.

Lapsang Souchong is a smoked tea originating from the Fujian province of China. Supposedly it was created by accident during the Qing dynasty when workers were prevented from drying fresh tea leaves in the usual way by an extremely inconvenient army. When they were finally able to get back to the tea there was no time for the traditional method so they lit pine wood fires to speed the process. The smoke from the fires gave the tea a distinctive flavour which was an instant hit.

The tea is grown in a nature preserve in the Wuyi mountains, a UNESCO world heritage sight. Home to the clouded leopard and dotted with the remains of ancient Taoist temples it's a very special place and the tea it produces is just as unique. If you don't like your tea strong then this isn't going to be the brew for you but if you can stand up to it then the smoky flavour is unmistakable and very evocative.

So if you, like me, are stuck somewhere sunny this November 5th without even a hint of gunpowder then join me in a cup and spare a thought for England where fires are being lit and things are about to become distinctly less civilised.