demand, and willingly pay, for the best quality tea leaves expertly blended available anywhere.

With today's high-speed lifestyle, the tea ceremony in England and all over in Great Britain

has lost much of its sparkle (and silver). Even the quality of the tea has suffered. You see store

brand tea bags more and more in afternoon tea sessions. As in other parts of the world, inexpensive

or even poor quality generic teas are taking the place of the more traditional high-quality leaves.

Even worse, instant tea has established a stronghold among English tea drinkers—the

beginning of the end for the famed high tea ceremonies, perhaps.

Benefits of tea

Tea has health benefits beyond the pleasure of a soothing and refreshing hot or iced

beverage. The tannin is thought to have beneficial effects in fighting tooth decay. Tea leaves also

have a relatively high fluoride content, much of which ends up in the liquid after steeping. Fluoride

strengthens tooth enamel, and research has shown that tea-drinking nations have better teeth than

non-tea-drinking peoples. With fluoridization of the drinking water in most urban centers of the

United States, that benefit is no longer as valuable. Today we drink tea for pure pleasure.

Interestingly enough tea leaves have high caffeine content, twice the amount of that in

average coffee beans (in an amount needed to brew a cup of either tea or coffee). But the tea-

steeping process doesn't extract the caffeine efficiently, so the final beverage contains only less than

half the amount of caffeine that the same cup of coffee. Someone may yet come up with a process to

brew espresso tea, that will hopefully give you an extra kick of caffeine.

Different types of tea leaves have differing amounts of caffeine. The lowest are the Chinese

and Japanese green teas. Indonesian, Indian and Ceylon black teas have twice the amount of

caffeine that green teas have. A few herbal teas, like South American maté, have high caffeine

content, too. A cup of maté contains about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.

Tea may be decaffeinated just like coffee and is readily available in this form in the U.S.

How people drink their tea

Tea drinking habits are as varied as the number of people who drink it. The English always

offer sugar and freshly heated milk with tea, sometimes lemon wedges. Americans are far less

particular. They don’t use cream or milk, but they expect sugar and lemon with their tea. Canadian

tea drinking habits fall halfway between.

The traditional milk in tea may have a culinary reason. The protein in milk binds with the

mouth-puckering tannin in tea and tempers its astringency, making it a much smoother beverage.

Since the English brew their tea particularly strong and full-bodied, milk is a welcome addition that

tames the astringency and smoothes the rough edges. American tea is milder, less astringent, the

tannin content is lower and muting with milk is unnecessary.

In the Orient, especially in China and Japan where they use light, mild and dainty green tea

predominantly, they add nothing to their tea. Elsewhere in tea-drinking Asia very hot regular black

tea is the common beverage with plenty of sugar along with milk, canned evaporated milk or

sweetened condensed milk. It is amazing how refreshing hot tea can be in these scorching, humid

climates.

Russians love their tea strong and full-bodied, just like Brazilians love their coffee. The

characteristic samovar with its little oil or candle heater to keep the tea hot testifies to the ritual and

ceremony that goes along with tea drinking. Now, even the samovar has been electrified, losing the

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