Infused

by Henrietta Lovell

  They approached, tentatively, drawn to the only lights beckoning across the sleeping stands.

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Tea.’

  ‘No way! Really?’

  ‘Yes. Hot tea. Would you like a cup?’

  ‘How much is it?’ They scrabbled through the empty pockets of their skinny jeans, looking at me with their saucer eyes.

  ‘Here, have a cup. It’s okay.’

  ‘No way! Really?’

  ‘Yes. You look like you need it.’

  I was only a little bit less wrecked than they were. Together we huddled around warm cups of rescue and comfort. They were coming down. The tea caught them before they fell.

  They left me with colour in their pallid cheeks. In those cups, sweetened with a little sugar and enriched with full-fat Somerset milk, they found the stamina to locate their tents and their friends; they were no longer lost, just on their way to bed to sleep off their excesses. It made me think of the wagons bringing tea to bombed-out cities in the Second World War. If I ever have fortunes to blow, I’d like to take tea to refugee camps. I’d like to have a tea disaster-recovery unit, with special planes and equipment so we could be there, on the scene, giving out tea. Proper tea to make the heart glad, so that all is not lost when all seems lost.

  CHAPTER 31

  YOUR BEDROOM

  Travelling alone to a remote and unfamiliar place on the other side of the world, I am rarely afraid. I feel far more elation than fear when I’m off on an adventure. But I’m not always brave. I am painfully self-conscious here, with just you.

  In the safety of my own bed I have known more dread than I’ve felt alone in the back streets of an unknown city or bumping down a mountain in an ancient bus, on a dirt road, looking down perilous drops. There are times when, unexpectedly and inexplicably, a sense of unease overtakes me. In those moments I am lost and afraid in my own head, fearful to take a mental step forwards or back.

  I imagine you know that feeling. I think it engulfs most of us from time to time. Often it descends in the dark of night and seems to come from nowhere. Out in the world, and in company, using a bit of humour and cheerfulness as props, real, tangible problems rarely get me down for long. And yet, unaccountably, there are times in the night when I find myself incapable of a single bright thought. I’m a shivering weed in an abandoned asphalt tennis court.

  Tea can’t always fix this. But it can always help. And it’s far, far better than a bottle of whisky.

  When I drink a truly delicious tea in the dread of night, I am less alone. Each sip unwinds the straightjacket of my isolation. I taste the farm and think of all the men and women who grow and harvest and craft the leaf. I feel the connection with all the people around the world sipping beautiful tea, possibly alone in the night like me.

  I’m not afraid of the caffeine keeping me awake. At those times, sleep is no comfort. It will drag me stupidly into endless repetition of all the petty worries and embarrassments my mind can dredge. Though the anxiety saps my will and threatens to paralyse me in my twisted sheets, or in the arms that cannot comfort, I have learnt to force myself up and to the kettle. I wash my face and brush my hair. Self-pity makes me ugly. I put on something beautiful. Now is not the time for clumsy utility. You need your most beautiful things around you. Of course, you need your loveliest teacup. This is not comfort tea that comes in a mug. This is a rescue in a world that has no comfort. The normal things don’t work. You need your most treasured teapot, your most cherished tea.

  In the darkness, there is the glow of your lamp and the beauty of the cup in your hands and the warmth of your tea. I’m trying to picture you, wondering what tea you have chosen and what you’re wearing. You’ve draped yourself in a silk dressing gown. Your girlfriend’s underwear. Your lover’s suit jacket over your bare shoulders. A cashmere shawl. You are wrapped in a linen sheet, a soft blanket, a long evening dress you never get the chance to wear, the suit you had made for your wedding.

  Alone in a terrifying world, instead of trembling in bed, feeling hopeless, you are sitting there, upright. Your hands wrapped warm around the cup, your lips hot, drinking delicious, well-loved tea.

  Who knew a humble leaf could reach such heights of flavour? Someone thousands of years ago perfected a way of drawing this delight from a camellia bush. This came from the imagination of a human mind. It seems impossible. It is improbable. And yet there you are, drinking the tea. Alive.

  CHAPTER 32

  FUJIAN, CHINA

  On better nights full of love, I would suggest making a pot of Jasmine Silver Tip tea.

  If your intentions are seduction, this is the aphrodisiac of the tea world.

  Not all jasmine teas are created equal. You could take a cheap black tea and scent it with jasmine or douse it with jasmine oil. You could take any tea and add synthetic flavourings. You could add dried jasmine flowers to make it look natural. A handful of flowers scattered through the tea might serve as a warning. You need a lot of flowers to scent tea. Those few blossoms wouldn’t give more than the vaguest of whiffs. If it smells synthetic, it probably is. I wouldn’t try and seduce anyone with one of those teas. They might work well with a banquet of Chinese dishes competing for the attention of your taste buds, but in the quiet of your home, alone at last with the person of your desire, the sensory focus is acute.

  Jasmine Pearls can be good. Made from leaf that’s steamed and rolled into tight balls, they unwind as they brew. The steaming is necessary to soften the leaves so that they don’t split as they roll, but this makes them into a more astringent green tea. These pearls are pretty, but they are second grade. I’m not being a snob here, I’m just suggesting you break out the best for someone you want to share something so intimate with, setting the scene as beautifully as you can. If you’re reaching for your second best, you might question your intentions. I’d go for jasmine-scented silver tips.

  As soon as the hot water hits the tea, the jasmine rises. Not a cloud of heavy perfume but the soft aroma of a long, warm night in a scented summer garden.

  While you’re making the tea, you could tell the romantic story of its creation.

  Jasmine Silver Tip was once the preserve of emperors. The people of Fujian province in China had to offer the emperor the very best thing they could produce as a tribute to His Celestial Majesty. Each region of China made this offering, from the finest silks and porcelain to precious jade. The people of Fujian selected jasmine-scented white silver tips. It is said that the emperor was so enamoured with this tea that he kept it jealously for himself and his court, allowing no lesser mortals to enjoy its heady delight.

  Coming out of the scenting room one hot summer’s night in Fujian, I smelt like one of the medieval courtesans who used to shut themselves up in chambers full of petals to scent their skin. I had spent the golden afternoon in the jasmine fields, among pickers bent low to harvest the flowers. The jasmine varietal used for scenting grows as a shrub rather than a twining wall-creeper. The pickers moved slowly between lines of dark green bushes studded star-like white. Each flower had to be carefully selected: once open, its scent dissipates; too young and the scent would not have fully developed; too tightly furled and it would not open in the scenting rooms that night.

  Just like the silver tips, the jasmine flowers are harvested when they are ripe buds at the very point of opening. As darkness fell, abundant baskets of parturient flower buds were brought to the scenting rooms. In came chests of white silver tips, stored carefully since April in thick foils. The bags were opened, releasing their fresh aroma like a waft of cool spring air in the hot, humid night. Deep baskets were filled with the tea, while others were filled with jasmine.

  A young man stood before a circular tray of woven bamboo the diameter of an arm-span. From the basket of tea, he tenderly scooped overflowing handfuls and scattered the silver tips across the tray until they formed a covering blanket. Turning to the basket of flowers, he began to scatter a layer of jasmine buds until they c
overed the downy silver tips. Over this he laid another layer of tea until the flowers were covered. At six deep he stopped, the tray full, and began the next.

  While he worked, filling the trays, in the next room men in plastic boots laid a muslin sheet about half the size of a tennis court over a stone floor. Onto it they dumped wheelbarrows of black tea. With spades, they spread it evenly, about eight centimetres deep. Then they wheeled in barrows of jasmine flowers, many of them open, a less particular pick. Covering over the carpet of tea, they shovelled on the flowers. Later in the night they would return to mix the tea and flowers, tossing leaf and blossom together with their spades. This tea, they explained, would go to restaurants. It would make a lesser tea than the white silver tips but was still very valuable for its real flower scenting.

  The room with the deep baskets of silver tips was sealed and the jasmine blossom left to spend the night bedded with the tea. In the hot June darkness, the buds opened, exhaling their scent. The soft downy hairs of the silver tips captured their perfume.

  In the morning, after their night together, the flowers were discarded. Like a callous lover, the spent flowers were cast aside. The tea was carefully sorted to remove each blossom. The damp flowers, heavier than the dry tea, fell as they were gently sifted. Then, by hand, any stray flowers were extracted. The following afternoon, more flower buds were picked, and the scented tea was laid out a second time with fresh blossom. This process was repeated for six nights; each night, fresh flowers were brought in to lie with the tea. Each morning, the flowers were removed. On the seventh morning, the silver tips were ready.

  Lilting jasmine wafts up from your cup. Few things you raise to your lips can be lovelier.

  MAKING JASMINE SILVER TIP TEA

  Use 2g per 150ml cup. Heat the water to 70°C and infuse for ninety seconds.

  CHAPTER 33

  ESKDALEMUIR, SOUTH-WEST SCOTLAND

  We are back at the start, in south-west Scotland, with the other most important influence on my life in tea. She is a woman I met only once, on a wet autumn day not far from Diana’s house. Her name is Ani Dechi Palmo and she was once a designer for Vivienne Westwood. After a horrendous car crash, she changed her life. She moved from London to the largest Tibetan monastery outside Tibet, Samye Ling in Eskdalemuir. I can’t remember who first introduced me to Ani Dechi, but I was making a film about tea for the Guardian.

  The abbot of her monastery assigns each monk and nun a role, and Ani Dechi’s is to be a sentinel. She mostly lives alone in a stone tower at the edge of the monastery and her job is to pray for the protection of those inside. Her food is brought to her and left outside the door. She speaks to no one. Free to leave her tower and wander the green, brackened spaces and wet forests, she is confined in a vow of silence. These periods of silence can last years, with exceptions. Every Christmas she visits Vivienne and her family in London; and she talked to me about tea, and continues to do so through letters.

  The room inside her tower is so small she can barely lie down, but it was warmed by a wood-burning stove and saffron rugs and cushions. It seemed more like a snug than a cell. We spoke about isolation and escape, and she explained that many people assume the choice to live the life of a nun is made to avoid harsh realities. She laughed at that thought, her small body, wrapped in orange robes, rocking gently. Her blue eyes shone bright in her pale face beneath a shaved head. We laughed a lot in the hours we spent together drinking tea, but the idea that made her most amused was the one that isolation might be an escape. The hardest thing in the world, she told me, is to face yourself without distraction. I can only begin to imagine.

  I fill my day with a multitude of distractions. I feel as though I barely have time to think, with all the thinking that is required. Though I have tried, and continue to do so, I’m very, very poor at sitting still. Writing this book has been a torture. Ani Dechi is a master of sitting quietly; over decades, she has made peace with herself. If there is a person I could describe as being comfortable in their skin, it is her.

  The one luxury she allows herself is tea. The making of it is a precise ritual that requires deep concentration, so much so that she describes it as a meditative act. As she prepares her tea, her mind is drawn from babbling thought to clear focus. Then there is the intense pleasure of drinking it. Most of the day she kneels or sits cross-legged. At all times her back is straight, her head aloft, that pose and that straightness maintaining her concentration and stopping her prayer or meditation from slumping into sleep. The only time she allows herself to sit back, to lean against the orange pillows and relax, is in the sipping of her tea.

  For over a decade I have been sending Ani Dechi tea. Interestingly, it is not a stimulating tea that she loves, but wild rooibos, an uncaffeinated herb. She is not like the Tibetan Buddhist monks who have for millennia drunk green tea to aid meditation, and she is far better company than the Japanese monk who favoured matcha. Ani Dechi taught me that the real drug is pleasure.

  CHAPTER 34

  REVOLUTION

  Some years ago, a reporter from a British tabloid newspaper challenged me, saying that tea is tea and that any difference lies in price, fancy packaging and hyperbole. I took him to a tattoo studio close to King’s Cross railway station in the then slightly seedy heart of London. The studio was run by a ferocious-looking, gentle man called Xed Le Head. He has tattoos across his face and patterning his entire body. He is a great lover of good tea.

  The other tattoo artists and their customers in the shop were far friendlier than they looked. I made two mugs of tea for everyone. One with a generic teabag, the other with one of my loose-leaf English Breakfast blends. I asked them if they could taste the difference and which one they preferred. There wasn’t a single dissenting opinion: they all preferred the leaf tea. You don’t have to be a chef or a sommelier with a trained palate to recognise the good stuff.

  By good tea, what I mean is tea made by a skilled artisan team for the best flavour. Tea that has been grown, harvested and crafted on a farm to be the most delicious expression of the leaf. What I wouldn’t call good is tea that has been made on an industrial plantation, by a vast agri-business with massive machines, for the lowest price and the greatest volume.

  Sales of industrial teabags are declining, even in Britain. We are reaching for different cups. The consumption of green tea and herbal infusions is growing rapidly. Lovely loose leaves are no longer considered esoteric or hard to find. We have a cornucopia to choose from. We are not bound by the past or rationed in supply. It’s all out there for us to enjoy.

  I’m not trying to blow smoke up your arse when I tell you: you are important. You are. You really are. What you reach for matters. With good tea you can change the world.

  No pressure, chaps. I don’t want to hector you, but just like Nayan, Beverly, Morris, Rajah and Alexander, I can’t see another way. They are counting on us. They’re not expecting us to be selflessly philanthropic; they are offering us something really bloody good. They are crafting more valuable leaf in exchange for a better price. We don’t have to buy their tea because we want to save them. They are not looking for handouts or aid. They are hoping their efforts to create something wonderful will give us something we will be happy to pay for. And you only have to try it to understand that these revolutionaries are not wrong. One sip of their tea and the future looks decidedly more hopeful.

  It’s not supply that is the issue. It’s demand.

  Choose good tea, tea sourced directly from a farmer rather than faceless brokers. The knock-on effect of that choice will be manifold. You’ll be supporting communities around the world, people trying to work their way out of poverty into a sustainable future. You’ll help maintain great skills and keep craftsmanship from disappearing under mechanisation. You might even force the giant conglomerates to change the way they do things.

  This is a call to arms, comrades.

  And there is no hardship in this calling. In choosing to drink good tea, we might change the world
and give ourselves the greatest pleasure.

  A pleasure revolution.

  POSTSCRIPT

  OVER THE NORTH SEA

  I’m writing this on an aeroplane heading back to London from Copenhagen, feeling jolly happy but a bit ropey, wondering about the future.

  I’ve felt worse on an aeroplane. Ten days after I had surgery to remove my ovaries, I flew to Malawi via Ethiopia. They took them out for fear that they would do me in. The BRCA2 gene mutation also predisposes me to ovarian cancer, and after the second breast cancer my gippy genes were playing up enough to warrant caution. On the flight to Addis Ababa I was still in some discomfort and had to load up on codeine and intermittently jab myself in the leg with a blood thinner to prevent clotting. But it felt good to leave a grey February in London, and with it too much time to focus on what I had lost.

  A major customer of Rare Tea was making the trip to neighbouring Kenya and I had persuaded her to make a detour to Malawi. I needed to show her Satemwa and what it really means to grow tea: the great hardships and beauty; the very real struggle to make exceptional tea for a fragile value market. If she could only see what I see, she would surely be as devoted to the cause as I am. I had to go. I went. I was fine.

  From there I flew home for a week, and then to New York to see some customers, across the States to LA, San Francisco and on to Mexico. I flew back to London only to change planes for Hong Kong. A rather tortuous route, but it was significantly cheaper to transit in London. I travelled five thousand kilometres across China for the spring harvests. I returned to London and the office for two weeks and then went back across to Japan for a tea-pairing dinner I was creating and hosting in Tokyo. Then on to visit Uji and the matcha makers.