Milk first or milk after? The great tea debate is finally settled
Whether we’re arguing over the right colour, brewing time or added extras, Kiwis have long been divided on how to make the perfect cup of tea. Virginia Fallon goes in search of answers.
The best cup of tea I’ve ever had was made by a little man who couldn’t sleep. It was about 15 years ago and he’d been shuffling through the corridors for ages, occasionally passing me on his business of wandering and keeping an eye on things.
I’d been keeping an eye on him too but only a cursory one. His nocturnal activity had long been a normal part of night shift, never deviating from the endless walking and checking, until that moment he appeared in the nurse’s station.
‘‘I’ve made you a cuppa,’’ he said, ‘‘just the way you like it’’.
There are two factors cementing this cuppa as my alltime favourite; the first simply being that this man made it. That’s because while nights would see him mobile, sun-up would find him back in bed, confused and trapped in a body that didn’t work. Typically, the last job of my shift was feeding him breakfast; helping him drink tea from a sippy cup.
The second factor, albeit a much more selfish one, was the tea really was just the way I like it, and God knows that’s no mean feat in itself. We’ll get to that later, but first some history.
New Zealand’s first black tea likely arrived with sealers in the late 18th century and by the 1870s the country, together with Australia, had the highest tea consumption in the world per capita.
So popular was the beverage that during the second half of the 19th Century it replaced the traditional ale for breakfast and was advertised as a drink that ‘‘refreshes but does not intoxicate’’ by the temperance movement.
Tea gardens followed, then came tearooms, and while women’s lives were particularly changed by the ability to socialise outside their homes, the whole country was mad for the stuff.
Up until the 1970s Kiwis drank about 3 kilograms of tea each a year, though that dropped to about 2 kgs in the following decade – the same as coffee. By the early 2000s yearly consumption was halved, even as reports of the beverage’s myriad health benefits continued to flow.
Drinking black tea might even help us live longer, according to a recent study finding people who consumed two or more cups a day had between a 9% and 13% lower risk of mortality than those who abstained.
But while tea is touted as a cure-all, it’s bloody stressful serving the stuff. People are so picky about their dirty leaf water that making someone a cuppa means a quick trip to Anxiety Land.
In fact, I’m so particular about my own tea that I long ago gave up accepting it from anyone else and, quite frankly, wish everyone would do the same.
‘‘No sugar!’’ someone will say to a begrudging offer; ‘‘six sugars!’’ says someone else. ‘‘Milk first please!’’ and ‘‘milk last for me!’’ come the calls from the lounge. ‘‘ Leave the bag in!’’ one person pleads; ‘‘Take the bag out after exactly 33 seconds!’’, another demands.
‘‘Oh, you’re not using a teapot?’’ someone else might mutter in your house, but I wouldn’t allow anyone like that in
mine. Then of course there’s the colour. While New Zealanders are typically happy to forego the traditional saucer we’ll fight to the end about what shade our tea should take.
From the dark oak of my preference to the insipid beige enjoyed by monsters, the preferred hues form the tea equivalent of the Bristol Stool Chart, though with no definitive answer as to what the finished product should look like.
And if that debate isn’t tensioninducing enough, now we have all the things that go along with the process: infusers, strainers and those long silver spoons, not to mention the endless choice of flavours.
‘‘Do you have chai?’’, the modern visitor is likely to ask, ‘‘or maybe an organic turmeric crapberry?’’, though again not at my place. Here, the only answer to what’s on offer is ‘‘gumboot, if I can find it.’’
Ultimately, what should be the simplest act has become mired in complications and controversies; Aotearoa might be a nation of tea
drinkers but its one torn apart by the process.
So how should we be drinking our tea? Fortunately I have just the person to ask.
On Friday afternoon in an Eastbourne cafe´ a bunch of welldressed people are sipping from bone china, nibbling hors d’oeuvres and occasionally asking if I’m lost.
Actually, I’m here to quiz Amrit Fernando about all things tea, starting with how many cups he has a day. About 200, he says, then qualifies that by adding he spits most of it out.
‘‘It’s just like tasting wine, though I do actually drink about six cups of tea a day.’’
Fernando is both a tea taster and the third generation of his family to join Dilmah, the company founded by his grandfather Merrill J. Fernando in 1985. Now one of Sri Lanka’s leading tea companies, Dilmah pioneered the concept of singleorigin tea and is firmly committed to ethical practices, taking care of growers and pickers as well as funding charities and conservation projects.
While that good work continues at home, Fernando and his father Dilhan are visiting NZ to host a series of tea-inspired events, including this one I’ve managed to crash.
For the uninitiated, high tea is like afternoon tea but flash. Here there are all sorts of brews; a bit of booze and tiny snacks served on towers. One of the latter looks particularly delicious, but I don’t know how to eat it so will never know for sure.
Afternoon tea is thought to have been created by an 18th Century duchess warding off a late afternoon ‘‘sinking feeling’’ with a pot of tea and snack. As friends joined her, the practice became fashionable amongst upper-class women, who would change into gloves and gowns for the refreshments usually served in drawing rooms between 4pm and 5pm.
High tea, however, was reserved for British workers who had to go without lunch breaks so came home famished. For them, treats and cakes were replaced with filling hot food and a pot of re-energising tea.
Fernando agrees it’s unlikely those people were anywhere near as picky as some modern drinkers, then once and for all solves the debate.
‘‘Let the leaves brew for five minutes, allowing the flavours to develop and releasing the antioxidants. If you want milk, add a splash after the tea is poured.’’
‘‘What about sugar?’’ I demand. ‘‘No sugar,’’ he says.
Back at the table I impress my fellow diners with my knowledge of how a cup of tea should be made, then ask about the best one they’ve had. One lady describes a high tea in Sri Lanka; another a tea-tasting in China.
Nobody asks me about mine and while the tea we’re drinking right now is a close contender – made by experts and accompanied by macarons – it doesn’t hold a candle to that late-night cup in the dementia ward.
‘‘How do you know how I like my tea?’’ I asked Murray back then.
‘‘I don’t’’, he said, ‘‘that’s just what you say when you bring mine in the morning.’’