Tea-Rod

Included as a free sample in my latest order from What-Cha, was something I never knew nor even suspected the existence of – a ‘tea-rod’. This is a vaguely cigar-shaped bundle of black Ceylon tea leaves. The picture I took of mine didn’t turn out too well, and in any case the What-Cha product page shows it much more clearly. The blurb there explains that “the leaves are collected from a former tea estate called Warnagala which was planted over 140 years ago” only to be abandoned, where the “tea bushes have since become trees which are now 40-50 feet (12-15 meters) in height”.

I usually just brew my tea in a strainer directly in the cup, but as the accompanying instructions for the ‘rod’ suggested brewing it in a pot, that’s what I did. My seldom-used teapot is a Forlife ‘stump’ model. For my taste I could have done with brewing it longer as it came out on the weak side. Despite that, the flavour, if a little dilute, was really very good. “It has a smooth and sweet taste with ripe plum and molasses notes which linger in the mouth” they claim. Faintly fruity mellowness seemed about right: I’d like to try more of the stuff.

I served it in a Royal Albert ‘Masquerade’-pattern cup. It’s a design apparently first made in the ’50s, where the black roses conjure up something of a gothic mood. The cup is one of four or five I was given by my father, from an incomplete spare set he and his late partner once used in their holiday caravan. I imagine it must have come from his partner’s family. From what I’ve seen on-line, it’s more common for the cups to have the floral design and the saucers to be plain black, rather than the reverse, as here.