{"id":32091,"date":"2015-07-22T05:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T09:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32091"},"modified":"2015-07-21T21:06:09","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T01:06:09","slug":"tea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/07\/22\/tea\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was not aware that there were quite so many grades of tea: David Warren<\/a> explains the rankings (and why you won’t find any in the Tea and Coffee aisle of your local Sobey’s or Metro):<\/p>\n

There are six grades of Darjeeling, and the highest, Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (SFTGFOP), will never reach the Greater Parkdale Area. One will need not only money, but contacts to obtain it. Perhaps, fly there, and start networking among the estate managers. You can\u2019t buy it at Harrod\u2019s, because they don\u2019t sell to Harrod\u2019s: it would be beneath them. The Queen might obtain some, but then, she has a staff.<\/p>\n

Each grade lower drops a letter off the front, so that my fine tea is of the fourth grade, just short of \u201ctippy,\u201d which refers to the abundance of flowering buds. \u201cGolden\u201d means that in the process of oxidation, these tips will turn a gold colour. \u201cFlowery\u201d is the term for high floral aroma. \u201cOrange\u201d has nothing to do with fruit, but refers to the Nassau family of Holland, whose most creditable accomplishment was pioneering the importation of tea into Europe, four centuries ago. The term insinuates, \u201cgood enough for Dutch royalty,\u201d perhaps. \u201cPekoe,\u201d or more correctly pak-ho<\/em>, refers to the white down that gathers at the base of the bottom bud, an indication of the plant\u2019s mood, its susceptibility to plucking. (Tea picking is an art; one does not strip the tree bare, but selects each leaf as it is ready.)<\/p>\n

Now, survey your local supermarket shelf \u2014 let us suppose it is an \u201cupmarket\u201d emporium \u2014 and you will find in the tea section nothing but sludge. The teas will all be \u201cblended\u201d \u2014 which I esteem as blended whisky, or blended wine, delivered in tanker trucks. This will be especially true of the expensive boxes with whimsical names for the blends \u2014 that say nothing of date, terroir<\/em>, or the specific variety. The tea inside the boxes will be packed in irritating little bags, probably with the absurd claim that they are \u201corganic.\u201d Once cut open, they reveal that the tea was ground by a Rotorvane, even before being stirred in a diesel-electric mixer. Various chain tea stores have sprung up, posing as effete, to separate fools from their money. Their pretensions are risible, and they annoy me very much.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t comment on the \u201cherbal teas\u201d they also sell; except to recommend, to the women (including nominal males) who want herbal remedies for their malades imaginaires<\/em>, that they take up smoking.<\/p>\n

Rather, let us focus on the words, \u201cOrange Pekoe.\u201d They attach to most of the Subcontinent\u2019s black tea supply, as to that of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (the former paradise of Ceylon). I have explained what the words mean in a series \u2014 not much \u2014 but standing alone, they mean less. They guarantee that the purchaser will receive, at an inflated price, tea of a low, coarse, common quality, processed by the method called \u201cCTC\u201d (crush, tear, curl), introduced in the 1930s by a ravening industrialist named McKercher (\u201cSir William \u2026\u201d), and now spread around the planet.<\/p>\n

The machinery was designed for volume at the expense of quality. It makes no sense to put good tea in, and what comes out might as well be bagged. This is tea for the masses, who have no prejudice or taste, and do not aspire to the humane. Like so much else in our fallen world, the best argument would be that tea of this sort is \u201cbetter than nothing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was not aware that there were quite so many grades of tea: David Warren explains the rankings (and why you won’t find any in the Tea and Coffee aisle of your local Sobey’s or Metro): There are six grades of Darjeeling, and the highest, Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (SFTGFOP), will never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,23,73],"tags":[396,222,757],"class_list":["post-32091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-india","category-randomness","tag-monarchy","tag-netherlands","tag-srilanka"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2hpV6-tea","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32091"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32094,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32091\/revisions\/32094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}