Tea and Me

So today has been a reminder that there are some days when I just don’t feel in the mood for tea. It happens very rarely at the moment because I’m going through a big tea phase and can usually slurp all day and all night, but I guess everyone has an off day once in a while. To be honest, I’ve had an extremely busy day at work so maybe that hasn’t helped as I haven’t been able to relax and enjoy the taste in the way I normally would, and every cup has ended up stone cold – and most of them didn’t pass that test very well.  In all,  I’ve tried 5 different flavours of tea today and the only one I’ve really enjoyed was the first one. With the exception of the first cup (and by cup, I mean the big Harry Potter mug obviously) they have all been black teas which might have had something to do with it although generally, I enjoy black tea. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last few days drinking nothing but Milky Oolong, to which I am a bit addicted and which has def...

Camellia’s Tea House , you win a prize both for the prettiest packaging of tea and the marvellous goodie bag you sent me with my recent order. Thank you! Regular readers will remember that I found Camellia's after having afternoon tea at the Corinthia Hotel last week and I fell in love with their China Milky Oolong . Having checked out their website, I discovered that 21 April was National Tea Day, and to celebrate they are giving away a small mystery bag with all orders placed between 21-28 April. Thus inspired, I ordered the Oolong (and it tastes and smells every bit as good now as it did during afternoon tea – yes, I am drinking it as I type) and their  Chocolate tea – which smells divine, but I haven’t yet tasted it as it’s a black tea and I try not to drink black tea in the evening. So, onto the contents of my ‘mystery’ bag. If you don’t want to know what was in it, I suggest you look away now – although the bag itself is lovely, especially with the bright yellow...

According to Camellia's Tea House , yesterday - 21 April - was National Tea Day. To celebrate, they are giving away a small mystery gift bag with any order placed between 21-28 April. Obviously, I felt this was a sign and took the opportunity to order some of the China Milky Oolong I enjoyed so much at the Corinthia Hotel and also some of the Chocolate tea , which I didn't try but smelt so delicious.

Well . . . sort of. Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be taken for afternoon tea at the Corinthia Hotel’s Crystal Moon Lounge in London as a late birthday present from my friend Beryl. As it’s tea-related, I thought it would be good to share my afternoon and the lovely sandwiches and cakes they served us. As both a tea lover and a cake lover, I am a big fan of afternoon teas (I am actually considered the Queen of Afternoon Tea in my office because I’ve had so many – my 50 th birthday seemed to consist of nothing but afternoon tea for several months) and to my mind the Corinthia is one of the best venues in London and I have been there several times now. Unlike better-known establishments, the Corinthia is extremely easy-going and they don’t impose a 90-minute time limit that the more touristy places such as the Ritz, the Savoy and the Dorchester do and they always, unfailing, provide excellent service and a good level of knowledge about the products they serve. We spe...

So, tea that smells like weeds – I honestly can’t stand the stuff. When I was a teenager and still living at home my mum used to ‘enjoy’ and I use the word loosely drinking things like chamomile tea, a beverage which made me feel ill. It was the smell, mainly. I couldn’t even get as far as tasting it because the horrible smell was so off-putting. Fortunately, years have passed and chamomile is no longer quite as popular as it once was and so I’ve managed to keep away from its terrible ditch water smell, until today.  Today, I decided to try the Bluebird Tea Company’s Honey Bee Beautiful as I was having quite a stressful day at work (and that was before I found out about the General Election) and wanted something soothing. Ingredients: Rooibos, honeybush, chamomile, nettle leaves, cornflowers, calendula petals, flavour They describe it thus: ‘Have you ever considered the work it must take to make a queen bee? Their beauty regime is extensive and their mu...

Okay, so I thought I would give you a quick rundown on the way I go about tea tasting.  I am not trained in any way, I’m just a tea lover who can be quite fickle and thinks that flavoured teas often smell much better than they taste. I am not good at subtle nuances of flavour nor am I particularly good at describing them, so you’re generally just going to get me just telling you whether I like it or not and if it tastes like the flavour it’s representing or whether it just smells nice and tastes like dishwater. Usually, I will use tea leaves rather than bags, as I have recently come to prefer this (especially as I now own several teapots), although I am slowly accruing a collection of teabags thanks to the Bluebird Tea Company’s wonderful policy of giving away free samples with every order and so, eventually, I will no doubt get around to reviewing them too. In future I will try, where I remember, to taste the tea after the recommended brewing time to see what it tastes li...

Let me talk for a minute about rooibos tea. These days, it seems to have always been around and is everyone’s favourite hydrating, non-caffeinated beverage, but I remember when it was first introduced. Eager to find a tea I could drink without milk because of the diet I was on at the time, I latched onto it and forced myself to drink it, even though I honestly couldn’t stand the taste of it. Shortly afterwards a vanilla flavoured version came out, which was marginally better but still only drinkable when I was really desperate. I did find some caramel flavour and some orange flavour tea bags in one of the cheap supermarkets but they weren’t a regular visitor, and while the caramel one was just about bearable, the orange was as bad as all the others. Once I finally decided to own up to the fact that I didn’t like Rooibos my life was much improved and I never once felt the urge to go back to trying it. Until now. The Bluebird Tea Company use a lot of rooibos in their te...

I thought it might be useful if I keep a league table of my top 10 favourite teas, going forward. This list reflects the favourites of those I've drunk recently rather than all-time favourites as I've discovered its very difficult to have an all time list when I'm trying so many different teas and what I like is affected by the weather or the time of year.  For instance, over Christmas and through the winter I drank enough Gingerbread Chai to sink a battleship (is that a thing?) and I would definitely have said it was my all time favourite tea. But at the moment I have no interest in drinking it at all because it seems to me that its the wrong time of year for it and so it's dropped from the top of the charts completely off the list. It will definitely be back by Christmas, though, that I can guarantee. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that my all time favourite tea is definitely China Milk Oolong from Camellia's Tea House. I could, quite...

Recently, I’ve had a bit of a renaissance with regards to my love of tea. To be honest, my love affair with tea has always been a bit hit and miss, from the early days of my childhood when my Nan used to serve it with sterilised milk (an interesting taste to say the least) to a brief flirtation with green tea and even matcha and finally, through to my current obsession with flavoured teas. For years I eschewed tea altogether, though I honestly can’t remember why now – probably because my family all drank coffee and so tea was never on the menu. Strangely, during that period I did collect teapots which I never used – completely mad, I know! When I did take up tea drinking again (by which time the teapots were long gone), I was locked into only drinking the strongest ‘builders’ tea available – hello M&S Extra Strong teabags or Yorkshire Gold (I still love you really). But relatively recently my love of Harry Potter (of course) collided with my (mainly forgotten) love of ...