Tea and Me

In the dim and distant 1980s and 90s, anything that wasn’t ‘normal’ Indian tea was considered ‘herbal’ and was, therefore, generally only available from health food shops (or in Chinese restaurants in the case of Jasmine tea) – unlike today, when every style and flavour of tea fills up both the supermarket shelves and specialist online tea sites – oh, how far we’ve come. I used to regularly frequent Holland and Barrett as one of the only health food stores I had access to, to buy such exciting fare as those provided by the brands Heath and Heather and Yogi. One of my favourite blends was lemon and ginger (which I seem to recall was also one of Twinings first attempts at branching out into more interesting flavours) which was perfect for keeping me going in that post-lunch slump and was good for when I was bunged up with a cold or hayfever, had a sore throat or just generally felt a bit rough. Obviously, this was the start of my love of ginger-flavoured teas although I never realis...

One of the sets of tea bags I received in the free goody bag from Camellia’s Tea House last month was called Sleep Well . As someone who suffers from chronic insomnia, I am open to anything that might aid in helping me sleep so I was interested in trying it. It’s actually an infusion as it doesn’t contain any type of tea leaves but I will still be treating it as if it is tea.  I did have some slight concern as one of the ingredients is my old nemesis chamomile but as it contained plenty of other (potentially) good stuff too, I decided to give it a go. Ingredients: Valerian, hops, chamomile, lemon verbena, hawthorn, red clover, violet and spearmint. They describe it thus: ‘Sleep Well is a lovely infusion which combines lemon verbena with chamomile to produce a gentle and soothing infusion with delightful undertones of mint. The ingredients of the tea are believed to ease insomnia and promote restful sleep.’ Wrapped in a sealed foil packet, the infusion...