Rufus Wainwright and 'the crystal meth of tea'

How do I love Rufus Wainwright? Let me count the ways, including this extra tidbit about his beloved tea, which he mentioned this week in a New York Times blog post about some of his favorite things:

Oh, and also Yorkshire Tea. It’s the crystal meth of tea. I want to do an ad for them where it’s me with the beautiful English countryside behind me, and I go: “Enjoy Yorkshire Tea. It’s the crystal meth of tea.”

This from a guy who concludes one of his songs with this verse:

Where ya been, Zebulon?
Let's meet up, why not tonight?
In the lane behind the schoolyard,
and we'll have some tea and ice cream

That sounds like one delicious dessert.

London: Historic teaware is everywhere

Sunday in London: rainy, cold, blustery. Time to hit the museum! And museums in London are gloriously free. I opted for the Victoria & Albert Museum, for two reasons. First, they have some gowns by Norman Hartnell in their collection, and he's on my family tree (alas, none of them are on display currently). Second, they just opened a Grace Kelly fashion exhibit (alas, it was already sold out for the day when I arrived). So I wound up roaming the collection and snapping photos of all the teaware — in the British collection, in the Asian collection, many continents and many eras.

This, I discovered, was the third reason I enjoyed the V&A. They focus less on Art and more on art. The collections are filled with handiwork, everyday stuff rather than fine art — I'll stop short of saying "crafts." Thus, they have a lot of tea items in house.

Forgive my crap photo skills, but here's a look:

In the Asia gallery, straddling the China and Japan rooms, there are two shelves in a case along one wall dedicated to teaware. Instead of snapping a couple of dozen photos, I simply passed my video camera along the cards and then the shelves of pots, cups and other artifacts. Sorry for the soft focus on the cards, but here they are ...

I loved both of these pots because of the mixed media, which I'm not sure I've seen before. The one on the left is a classic British silver design with a wicker handle. The one on the right, circa late 1600s, is Yixing clay with a silver spout and a wicker handle.

This beautiful silver tea pot was made in western India around 1880 by (deep breath) Oomersi Mawji, the court silversmith to the ruler of Kutch, Maharao Shri Mirza Raja Sawai Khengarji Bahadurno.

Dig the colorful detail on this pot in front, showing a Cantonese viceroy from 1745.

A black bowl and stand with intricate dragon motif from 19th century Japan (left), and a stoneware tea pot with a crackled cream glaze and a phoenix vs. dragon design made in Kyoto, early 1800s.

Finally, for a different take on teaware history, here's video of Stephen Twinings — during an interview with him at the Twinings HQ in The Strand — talking briefly about the background of the antique tea box collection on display there:



More to come on the chat at Twinings ...

London: Some twists on afternoon tea

So I ask you: should I cry or laugh?
Drinking tea in a King's Cross caff
A leather jacket against the cold
Gone down to London, changing coal into gold
— Joe Jackson, "Down to London"

Well, blokes and birds, I'm just back from four nights (well, five after the canceled return flight) in London, the sole purpose of which was to drink as much tea as possible. I organized the trip with the help of the friendly folks at Visit Britain, and I'll be writing about the trip extensively here on the blog this week as well as for other outlets in the near future. So here goes ...



The mission of this voyage was to dive into the epicenter of afternoon tea, that storied Western (and specifically British) custom, and explore some places that are trying to do it a bit differently. In four afternoons, I sat for five afternoon teas. Here are some thoughts on three of them ...

Afternoon tea at the Ritz
I started in the belly of the beast, as it were, figuring that tea at the famed Ritz would set the controls on this experiment. Tea at this Piccadilly hotel is an institution in London, and the service wins awards fairly regularly. People line up for the experience; reservations are required and must be made months in advance. The Palm Court is certainly an opulent room, just off the hotel's Long Gallery (read: lobby), rich with golden decor and an air of wealth that stops surprisingly short of stuffiness.

But I must say, I found the whole tea experience there fairly underwhelming. I ordered a strong tea, Russian Caravan, which was not strong, though it was served in a splendid, heavy silver pot. It's a basic menu. But the sandwiches were bready and a bit stiff, the scones were biscuity and bland (they could've come from a tube, really), the sweets were OK (the coconut macaroon with a fruit jelly is a winner). The experience seemed more touristy than traditional. They pack people in for five seatings a day — the first afternoon tea seating is at 11:30 in the morning — and charge £38 for the basic tea and up to £49 with champagne. That's a lot of silver for tea that's fine but not spectacular, and an experience you can't really linger over because they're fluffing the tablecloths as the next round of hungry shoppers drifts in.

My favorite part of the Ritz tea was the pianist, Ian Gomes. This kind of playing — providing ambiance, background, subconscious support without performing — is so difficult, and this guy was so smooth knocking out lively but not too lively takes on standards from "Tea for Two" (of course) to "Puttin' on the Ritz" (of course). I chatted with him during his break. Fascinating career: he had a rock band in his native India ("playing real rock, you know, Elvis 12-bar rock — not like these bands today where everything is called rock") and then worked for Sinatra for 11 years. He wasn't Sinatra's on-stage pianist; Gomes played for the Chairman after hours. "He'd finish his show and want to hear piano music in his hotel suite while he entertained guests, people like Gene Kelly and others dropping by to see him," Gomes said. "I played every night for him, from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m." As Gomes returned to the keys Thursday afternoon, as he has at the Ritz for the last 15 years, he asked if I wanted to hear something. I said, "Play Frank's favorite song." He sat down and slid into "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?" He then merged it into "Chicago," both as a Sinatra reference and a wink to where I'd just come from.

Afternoon Tea for Men at the Mandeville Hotel
Since afternoon tea is often viewed as a feminine pursuit, the deVille restaurant at the comfy Mandeville Hotel has fashioned a tea service that might appeal to XYs. The idea is, according to the hotel's PR folks as well as my waiter, to create an occasion for discussing business that's not as dramatic and maybe even more conducive to talking than a heavy lunch, dinner or cocktail hour. Makes sense. So imagine my surprise when, during my Friday afternoon visit, the tea patrons included me ... and about 20 young women, all in pink sashes and pink dresses sitting with pink balloons, celebrating some lass's impending nuptials.

Here's how the Mandeville butches up afternoon tea: heartier food, and whiskey pairings. It's pretty brilliant, really, and it works. The waiter was flummoxed when I asked for bourbon selections instead of whiskeys (damn Yank) but he brought me a neat glass of beloved Woodford. I have to say, the sweeter nature of a bourbon is a better choice for this than a peaty whiskey. It envelops the flavors of the manly chow — a sirloin sandwich with red onion and thyme jam (awesome), grilled veggies with brie on toast, a sesame beef skewer, chicken satay and a smooth crab salad. The only drawback to this approach is that this chow is served hot, as opposed to the typical tea sandies, and it cools quickly. The second plate, with the scones, included — get this — a deep-fried fig dusted with powdered sugar and with chocolate injected into its center (brilliant, and lighter than you might expect). The usual jams and cream were delivered, plus a chili-cream sauce (great on the satay) and an anchovy paste. Here's where we make our manly "Home Improvement" woofing sounds.

So you don't necessarily want a light green tea to go with this. I ordered the Mandeville Special Blend, made especially for the hotel by London's Jing; the menu said this was smoky, but it wasn't very — rather surprisingly light, but solid enough to mix cheerful company with the second and third plates. And it paired beautifully with the bourbon, creating an eye-popping butterscotch flavor when the tea followed the liquor. The only oddity about the tea service here is that the waiter pours your tea but doesn't leave you the pot, so when you want a refill you have to flag someone down — which is no mean feat while 20 bachelorettes are playing party games.

All in all, though, this was a great experience. And I felt very manly. Harumph, harumph.

Afternoon tea at the Dorchester Hotel
If the Ritz seemed to prostitute its traditions a bit for the sake of turning the tables, the Dorchester stands proudly with an afternoon tea service that illustrates how magnificent the experience of afternoon tea can be. No gimmicks, just superb service and fine offerings, presented well in a beautiful room.

If you're going to splurge for the glass of champagne during an afternoon tea, do so at the five-star Dorchester. They offer some decent basics, but they also have a bottle exclusive to the hotel, the Gabriel-Pagin 1er Cru 2000, and it's a treat for the tongue — glowing with honey tones and hints of citrus, and it pairs so beautifully with the menu that the sense memory is making me salivate as I write. The sandwiches are vibrant and obviously fresh; they're basic, really — egg salad, chicken, etc. (and roast beef "because it's Sunday," one of my servers said) — but each is made with a different bread (caraway seed with the cucumber, yum) so the basics seem not so basic. After that, the Dorchester offers something that might be my new favorite word: a "pre-dessert." Just a little vanilla panicotta to clear the palate. Then comes the tea, provided here by Harney & Sons. I went commie again, choosing the Russian Country, a blend of four blacks plus (finally, someone gets this) the exact right amount of lapsang souchong. The scones, fine. The jams, delish. The sweets, inventive. (One was a basil-lime macaroon, which was delicious ... but not with tea.) The service throughout was absolutely impeccable. When your tea pot needs refreshing, they don't just bring you more hot water; they whisk away your pot and cup and bring you brand spanking new ones. Huzzah!

The only bad thing I can offer about the Dorchester tea experience is the nature of the room. The Promenade is elegant without being showy, but pay attention to its name. It's called the Promenade because it's just that — a walkway for people strolling between the lobby and the rooms, and the restaurants, piano bar, etc. On one hand, this makes for some fine people watching — London is nothing if not diverse, even in its fine hotels — but, on the other, the traffic can be distracting.

The Dorchester offers just two seatings a day (2:30 and 4:45 p.m.) and is, no surprise, booked way ahead. But the maitre d' gave me a tip when I chatted with him on a very cold, rainy London afternoon: "My worst days are when the weather is beautiful," he said. "That's when we can get up to 20 to 25 percent no-shows." The lesson: If you want tea at the Dorchester (and you do) and you don't have a reservation, try them on a sunny spring or summer afternoon. They hold reservations for half an hour. If folks don't show, you can likely snag their table.

Rishi launches concentrate in Chai-town

Rishi Tea hosted a special launch party in Chicago this week for a new product, a Masala Chai tea concentrate. The creation and marketing of this stuff focuses on its green and sustainable background; it's made with organic, wild-grown, single-origin black tea, and traded fairly. Proceeds from the sale of the Masala Chai benefit Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots youth program, and Ms. Goodall herself was on hand Wednesday at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (and then wound up in interviews throughout the local media, such as this one).

So hooray for all that do-gooding, but here's the real deal about the new Rishi chai: It's delicious. It comes in rectangular cartons like soy milk, so you can keep it on hand and grab it when you crave a chai without the fuss of boiling and brewing. Simply combine equal amounts of the chai concentrate and your choice of milk and heat. The flavor is strong without being overpowering — that is, the spices are balanced perfectly, no cinnamon hogging the spotlight.

Though as I've been working through a carton of the stuff during the last month I actually haven't used it to make many drinks. Here's what else I've used the concentrate for, loving every minute:

• A splash goes into the cereal bowl in the morning with the milk. My humdrum a.m. ritual has been transformed, and even the blandest box of flakes comes alive with the chai underneath.
• Similarly, I've added it to oatmeal just before finishing on the stove. It imparts a hearty flavor and cuts the need for added sugars.
• I made a basic pound cake a while back, and I cut back on the cooking liquids slightly in order to cut in some of the chai concentrate. The flavor delivered a wonderful autumnal edge to the cake (which was perfect with some Bailey's whipped cream).
• My favorite thing in the world is now: A dish of quality vanilla bean ice cream with the Masala Chai poured over it. I may gain a hundred pounds because of this discovery, but I will be one happy obese dude.

Tuesday tea tunes: 'You take as long as you like'

I'm just back from a tea tour of London. Four afternoons, each with one or two afternoon teas. Here's hoping my veins now aren't as clotted as the cream. But this tune was on my playlist for the trip. I'd give up Keemun for a month if I could have afternoon tea with Ray Davies ...

(Thanks, Wooley!)

Tuesday tea tunes: Free to be tea and me

Thanks to Maggie B. for this Tuesday tea tune recommendation! I'm loving the old-school, dawn-of-disco soul groove this woman's got going on. I love her voice, too, though I'm mystified by how she's using tea as a metaphor. The lyrics build a definite message of personal freedom — "I can't fit inside that box that you put me in" and "Let me keep my right to do it my way" — before hitting this chorus (as best I can make out):

You tried that, now give it back
’cause this is the tea for me
C'mon and just let us be free



Readers, any suggestions as to what Choklate means by that?

'The fragrant breath of tea'

I'm told this is an "oft-quoted" passage, but it's new to me and I love it. From Agnes Repplier's 1933 book To Think of Tea! (now that's a great exclamation point), discussing the appeal of tea as it becoming an institution in the British empire around the time Queen Anne switched from her morning ale to a cuppa:

Tea had come as a deliverer to a land that called for deliverance; a land of beef and ale, of heavy eating and abundant drunkenness; of gray skies and harsh winds; of strong-nerved, stout-purposed, slow-thinking men and women. Above all, a land of sheltered homes and warm firesides — firesides that were waiting, waiting for the bubbling kettle and the fragrant breath of tea.

I'm continually fascinated by the tale of tea. In every chapter, in everyone's books, the spread of tea always seems so ... inevitable.

iTea app helps me cool down

Thanks to Martin Zöllner who brought to my attention his new mobile app, iTea. It's a full-scale tea timer, handy and useful like many other tea timers available. But it's got one unique feature I really like. Not only can it time the brewing of your tea — it times the cooling down of your water.

For instance, got a nice Japanese bancha tea you'd like to steep at 176 degrees? You could stare at a thermometer, or you could boil your water and set the iTea for the amount you've got (0.2, 0.5 or 1 liters), and it counts down the estimated time for the water, off the stove, to cool down to that approximate temperature. Then use the same app to time the steep the tea, complete with a slider tool to select how mild or strong you prefer your brew.



The cool-down calculations are approximations, of course, but it's darn handy to have an alarm for even a best guess. Can't tell you how many times I've gotten distracted in the kitchen, only to find that my water got too cool.

Available for iPhone: iTea Lite (free, 11 teas), iTea ($0.99, 75 teas) and iTea HD (for the iPad).

I think we're gonna need a bigger cup ...

Two things I love: tea and great design. Argentina designer Pablo Matteoda won a prize for this design, the Sharky tea infuser — a tea basket underneath a floating dorsal fin. Ingenious.



Writes Matteoda: "INFUSION means to extract certain properties from an soluble ingredient such as tea leaves, herbs or fruit by soaking in liquid (water) until it gets saturated. So we can say that a infuser is the in charged of make this happen. This is a ludic point of view about the color given off from the phenomenon, which makes more interesting the waiting of the whole process."

He claims it will be manufactured soon and available for sale here.

Tuesday tea tunes: Staggering jazz

Bad blogger. Life has intervened, and I haven't posted all wekk. Returning to duty shortly.

Meanwhile, here's a tune for my own D, who now enjoys tea with me ...

Tuesday tea tunes: Kookoo Danish pop

Book report: The Tea Enthusiast's Handbook

Oh, dear. Another tea book, full of the same history, the same Tea 101 info, the same artfully calming and colorless photography on the cover. Tea books are developing a template, right? Cover photo: Asian tea service. First chapter: The story of those ancient tea leaves that allegedly fell into a pot of hot water. Middle of the book: Careful, just-shy-of-condescending advice on how to make tea. Near the end: Recipes, darlin'!

But that's not at all what The Tea Enthusiast's Handbook is. How could it be? It's written by Mary Lou and Robert J. Heiss, who've already broken that mold with their supreme summation of this beverage's backstory in The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide. I've had that book for a couple of years now, and I'm still absorbing it all. No, this new title is a slim, portable companion. It's beautifully printed on fine paper, and it's exactly what it says it is: a handbook.

That's a rare offering, really. So many tea books seem to think they're handy, but they're either actually a coffee-table book (tea-table?) or merely self-indulgent (i.e. look, here — golly do I ever know a lot about tea!). Heiss-squared offers a true guide, a book that's actually nice to keep handy. I have a shelf of tea books in the sunroom, but this one's going into the tea cabinet in the kitchen.

The usefulness comes from the Heisses getting right down to business. They don't waste time with a history of tea; in the first chapter, they're explaining terroir and how it relates to what's about to be poured into your cup. As tea allegedly becomes the new wine (shudder), several tea enthusiasts have dug up that word as it's traditionally applied to the vineyard, but here we get a serious discussion of how it applies to the terraced mountainside. That's the appetizer, along with some basic component information, before getting to the bulk of the book: six chapters detailing "The Six Classes of Tea" — green, yellow, white, oolong, black and pu-erh. Each section discusses styles of the tea, flavor characteristics, a gallery of most common types, and then we get some useful (trust me) historical and cultural information. (And, having enjoyed yellow tea on sadly few rare occasions, I'm thrilled the Heisses maintain its authority in this little book as they did in The Story of Tea.)

At the end, there are storage tips and a helpful glossary. It's a neat, tidy little package, and its utilitarian value cannot be overstated. Highly recommended.

Teapography

Cool images here of letters and words made with tea leaves, and more here (with a gif showing time-lapse assembly)>

Homemade teas for Mother's Day

Pardon me for shilling my own publication, but the Sun-Times today ran a feature about a nifty craft project (and I don't use those three words together very often, believe me). It's pitched as something you can make your matriarch for Mother's Day: a box of homemade teas and tea bags.

It's a cute idea — coffee filters spooned full of homemade blended teas, cinched up, lined in a special box ...



I almost feel crafty enough to try it.

@twettle: Your water is ready!

OK, I know I just posted this morning about my desire for a camping Kelly Kettle. But scratch that. My next kettle (says the tweeting tea blogger) will most assuredly be the Twettle.

That's right. A tweeting tea kettle.



According to Gizmodo: "This smartly-designed kettle, which tweets via Wi-Fi, will alert you when it's boiling. Designed by Ben Perman and Murat Multu, it also records details on how many times it boils each week, and just how much water you've boiled up."

But wait — it doesn't exist yet! "The designers are looking for an investment of $500,000 to get the $115 kettles onto the production line."

If this sounds too hilarious to be true, please to enjoy the lengthy explanation by Multu of how such a wacky idea came into their heads. A clue: It started in a vodka bar!

(thanks, Misha!)

Green for this cool Kelly Kettle

The return of warm weather has stirred up a hankerin' to plunge into the wild on a camping trip. Or at least a backyard barbecue. The following gadget would work well on either occasion, though it's really made for the former.



Kelly Kettles are cleverly constructed devices for quickly boiling water with available fuel (twigs, leaves, etc.). It's a double-walled cylindrical kettle, built around its own fire stand and chimney. Boils water for outdoor tea (or soup) quickly and conveniently, so even in the deepest, remotest terrain you can still have your morning and/or afternoon cuppa.

Here's a video showing it in action ...

Tuesday tea tunes: iBud

We raise our cups this week to the new iPad, with this light jazz tune, "Apple Tea," by the group Apple Tea!

'O Tea!'

Another free-book find via the iPad's iBooks is The Little Tea Book by some dandy named Arthur Gray, who contributed this poem in his collection of tea trivia:

In the drama of the past
Thou art featured in the cast;
(O Tea!)
And thou hast played thy part
With never a change of heart,
(O Tea!)
For 'mid all the ding and dong
Waits a welcome—soothing song,
For fragrant Hyson and Oolong.
. . .
A song of peace, through all the years,
Of fireside fancies, devoid of fears,
Of mothers' talks and mothers' lays,
Of grandmothers' comforts—quiet ways.
Of gossip, perhaps—still and yet—
What of Johnson? Would we forget
The pictured cup; those merry times,
When round the board, with ready rhymes
Waller, Dryden, and Addison—Young,
Grave Pope to Gay, when Cowper sung?
Sydney Smith, too; gentle Lamb brew,
Tennyson, Dickens, Doctor Holmes knew.
The cup that cheered, those sober souls,
And tiny tea-trays, samovars, and bowls.
. . .
So here's a toast to the queen of plants,
The queen of plants—Bohea!
Good wife, ring for your maiden aunts,
We'll all have cups of tea.

Taking what's Meinl

Just a photo of our table as we languished Saturday afternoon inside Julius Meinl. I love a place that serves great tea, of course, but also one that serves breakfast until 3 p.m. They do these baked eggs .... hmmm, boy! And crepes filled with Nutella, zowee! Their Yunnan tea (front and center), too, is tippy and lively. (Not pictured: Sean, Nancy, Daniel and Sophie. This is so typical; I have a splendid afternoon with splendid people, and I photograph the tea.)

Teatime with the new iPad

After spending a weekend with our new iPad, returning to this MacBook laptop to blog seems so clunky and quaint.

I can say one thing immediately about the iPad: It's a wonderful reader. I have never had the slightest interest interest in a Kindle (really? it's the 21st century and you had no intention of a color screen?), and I look forward to watching those wither and crumble in the weeks ahead. While my spouse has spent the weekend loading fun apps and games onto the iPad, and watching video (fantastic!), my moments with it — to my complete surprise, really — have been spent reading. The iBooks feature is glorious. The display is crisp and clear. The navigation is simple, the page-turning function lifelike and intuitive. The battery life seems interminable. The best part, to me, is that the iBooks store is easy to use (like iTunes) and is already filled to the gills with free books. You'd be amazed how much great literature is free — from Dickens to Joyce to Twain, from The Art of War to The Prince — including several intriguing old texts about tea.

My favorite free tea book thus far is Tea Leaves: Being a collection of letters and documents relating to the shipment of TEA to the American colonies in the year 1773, by Francis S. Drake. It's loaded with details of the tea boycott that lead up to Boston's infamous tea party. And, frankly, it's easier to hold an iPad and flick the pages with the pinky sticking out from my teacup than it is to hold and navigate a real book. So here's to more iTea with the iPad.

Can't wait for my favorite iPhone tea apps to update for the bigger, brighter iPad!

It also doubles as a marvelous tea tray ...



Oh, and don't miss this nifty new tea gadget for the iPad. (Whether you intend to buy one, be sure to click on the "pre-order" button for full details...)