Pa. woman prepares tea for British royalty

READING, Pa. - Cynthia L. Wahl can now call her tea fit for royalty.

Wahl, who owns a wholesale tea business in Bucks County, served Cynthia’s Blend of black loose-leaf tea to Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, during the royal couple’s visit to Philadelphia.

“This is the Super Bowl of tea,” the Laureldale native said. “Serving tea to the royal family. You can’t really top that.”

Wahl and her partner, Elmer J. Conti, prepared 18 gallons of tea for about 120 people at a Saturday afternoon reception at International House, a college dormitory mainly for foreign students near the University of Pennsylvania.

“I actually got to personally serve my tea to Prince Charles,” Wahl said Sunday, reporting that he took his tea with two lumps of sugar and a drop of milk. “It was exciting.”

Wahl graduated from Muhlenberg High School in 1975 and then went to Penn State and got a master’s degree in business from Loyola University in Baltimore. She studied at the Specialty Tea Institute in New York City before opening Cynthia’s Premium Tea in Dublin, which offers more than 20 full-leaf teas, blends and herbal teas to gourmet caterers, restaurants and several Philadelphia-area colleges.

Wahl sent two of her own bone china teapots upstairs for a private tea for Camilla and a few guests.

“I can always say these teapots were touched by Camilla Parker Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall,” Wahl said. “This really is an event of a lifetime.”

(this article was taken from centredaily.com)