charm and grace of a small live flame under the tea pot. The next step for the Russians, no doubt, is

the tea bag with water heated in a microwave oven.

Before the modern tea bags Russian brewed a fresh pot of hot tea concentrate they served

with a pot of plain boiling-hot water. You serve yourself to a little of the strong concentrate in your

cup, then diluted with hot water to suit your taste.

Central Europeans sometimes add rum to their tea—just enough to flavor it. Tea with rum is

especially welcome on a cold winter day, a tradition that matches American hot chocolate.

The worst place to find a properly-steeped cup of good tea is in almost any restaurant in

North America. It is a rare restaurant that serves tea brewed with fresh boiling water. For instance,

guests attending a conference in a large classy hotel anywhere in North America can help

themselves to a reasonably good cup of coffee from a large shiny urn. Next to it is another equally

shiny urn containing hot water, with tea bags on the side so you can steep your own. The water is

far cooler than the required boiling temperature, probably stale to boot. It will never make a proper

tea.

What's the solution? There isn’t a good one. It takes relatively little labor to brew 100 cups

of coffee, and if they happen to use a good blend of beans, it is a good, drinkable coffee, still

acceptable after standing for an hour. But tea must be brewed fresh with some basic know-how, and

there is no automatic equipment available to do so. To brew a cup of tea individually takes far more

labor and time than justified in a banquet hall or restaurant, considering how few people drink it. If

you are a true tea lover, wait till you get home and brew your own.

Types of tea

There are only four basic types of tea: traditional black tea, green tea, oolong tea and herbal

tea. All but herbal teas come from the tropical evergreen shrub that is the tea plant. The different

types are the result of different processing not using different plant species. Herbal teas, on the other

hand, come from a great variety of aromatic plants using either leaves, stems, seeds, fruits or roots.

The varieties of tea available to the consumer are staggering. Yet, most people, even serious

tea drinkers, stick to a relatively few types or blends. Many people choose a brand name or a

generic tea conveniently packaged in a tea bag for their occasional cup of tea. Others select their

teas as carefully as connoisseurs choose their wines for a festive evening, and would rather drink

plain hot water than use a tea bag to prepare their brew.

Where tea comes from

Our tea comes from the fresh green leaves of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, a flowering

tropical evergreen shrub in the Camellia family. Pickers pluck only the topmost, youngest leaves

along with the bud that sits between two leaves. The many attempts to mechanize tea-leaf picking

have not been successful, and tea-pickers still hand pick virtually all teas.

Depending on the season, temperature and amount of precipitation, the leaves of the tea

plant may grow slower or faster. During the hot dry season growth is slow, and they pick the leaves

less frequently, the flavor becomes more concentrated in each leaf, producing premium leaves.

During the wet season, tea leaves grow quickly, the flavor is more diluted and the quality is poorer.

Faster-growing lower-altitude teas are always lesser in quality than plants growing at higher

altitudes, just as with the coffee berries.

The fresh-picked green leaves will not produce a satisfactory brew. The composition of the

Serious Kitchen Play