.. significant investment in both money and occupied space. If I was adding up – which in my darker moments I am – some might consider it a considerable investment. Which, in my darker moments, I do.
I don’t know what some of these devices do – though there are a number that bear a striking resemblance to 19th Century medical cupping devices wrought large – but they augment the two espresso machines, four grinders, pour-over coffee ceramic and gold filters, scales capable of measuring to the microgram and about eight assorted French Presses. Which do nothing for the creases on one’s trousers.
Returning my mind from that inventory and back to the world of tea, I realised that what I held in my hand was not the average teapot. For starters it was bone china, of infinite delicacy of form ….. and too small. It really only holds one cup. It is a specialist teapot for brewing exotic specialist teas from the specialist shop from which the said specialist teapot came. A teapot for sampling tea rather than preparing the morning’s bracing and necessarily copious brew. The two teas samples that came with the gift were from the mist covered mountains and distant provinces of Sri Lankar and China respectively and had been picked by young virgins wearing the sheerest of silken pyjamas. They had delicately plucked the fragile new growth during the thirty minutes before dawn when the seers, sages and sorcerers of the remote villages said they, and the tea, were at their peak.
I have a vague recollection that the small packets of tea came with a little video of those beautiful young ladies, their wide straw hats encircled by perfumed candles, as they moved silently on the wings of prayer through the tall alpine tea plantations. From a distance it seemed like a slowly moving band of stars cast upon those dark slopes – a moment of enchantment bringing magic to those lonely tea lovers shuffling in their worn flannelette pyjamas on the icy floors of their bedsits in the early hours of their despondency in the far distant corners of the British Empire.
Even though I made most of that up it does seem to be one reason why they might have been more than usually expensive. Maybe as expensive as coffee. At least it had not been strained through the alimentary canal of an Indonesian civet cat or a Thai elephant. Mind you someone is planning to sell tea grown in panda dung which proves that humanity as a species is of unlimited gullibility.
One thing that Wikipedia has enlightened me about was that ‘Aboriginal Australians drank an infusion from the plant species leptospermum (a different plant from the tea plant or camellia sinensis). Upon ‘discovering’ Australia, Captain Cook noticed the aboriginal peoples drinking it and called it tea. Today the plant is referred to as the "ti tree."
However I can never see tea reaching the absurd frenzy that envelopes the world of coffee in Australia and particularly Melbourne. Column inches have turned to column feet in the daily papers; baristas have become more elevated in the world than wines makers, billionaire philanthropists and astrophysicists.
Perhaps the reason for coffee’s ascendancy lies in the new abstemiousness brought about by the decline of the business lunch which strangely coincided with its lack of tax deductibility. People being social need to get together and have at least one other topic of conversation apart from sport. Chocolate, dare I say it, is perhaps too feminine and tea has an association with the public service tea lady trolley. Therefore coffee became a substitute for chardonnay and it has enough margin built in it to launch a thousand café bars and ensure that people with no other definable skills can become stars. In fact they are probably better trained than the majority of financial planners. It may be Australia’s gift to the world and to diminishing unemployment.
With the exception of Italians (my benchmark is the bar in the Venice railway station) who make a fine espresso the rest of the world makes pretty poor coffee. Most especially the French who defy their gastronomic reputation by producing something resembling either dirty bathwater or a milkshake served with a generous dollop of indifference. The Americans produce something that boils away for hours till it looks and tastes like sump oil thinned with hot water and the English – well whatever it is it is unspeakable. I will give a pass mark to the Greeks and the Levant who at least give you coffee you can chew and accompany with a potent local firewater such as Cretan raki . Just remember to drink carefully and not to stir so as to not drink or disturb the grounds at the bottom of the cup. Sedimentary my dear Watson.
Tea requires little in the way of paraphernalia to make, good heavens, you can make a presentable cup in a billy full of boiling water over an open fire. But the good thing is that I have sworn off tea bags forever although I have found that there is a use for them in stopping smelly feet. Dip five used tea bags in a basin of warm water, and soak your feet in it for 30 minutes then allow your feet to dry naturally. The residue will taste like French coffee.