Cardew Club News » 2007 » July

Consumers want affordable luxury, and are getting more knowledgeable and demanding in their purchases. According to New York-based Telsey Advisory Group, an independent research and retail analyst firm, the luxury retail market — currently a $45 billion industry — will grow up to 9% in 2007. In response to this trend and to the success of its premium brand of teas launched last fall, Lipton(R), the world’s leading tea brand with a unique expertise in growing, purchasing and blending the best teas, is introducing three new flavors to its line of premium teas: Lipton(R) Pyramid Tuscan Lemon, Lipton(R) Pyramid Bedtime Story and Lipton(R) Pyramid White Tea with Blueberry & Pomegranate.

It should be easy to make iced tea. The ingredients are simple enough — tea bags, cold water and/or hot water and the optional lemon and sugar. But one nagging problem always seems to pop up: cloudy iced tea.

Kitchen Mailbox received a plea from Carol LeDonne of West Mifflin: “Do any of your readers know how to make iced that doesn’t get cloudy the second day? I’ve made it on the stove and with an iced tea maker. Both get cloudy the second day.”

Our always helpful readers came through with solutions and recipes.

IN MY LOCAL supermarket, ordinary leaf tea has now been consigned to the very bottom shelf. You have to clamber onto your hands and knees to locate a packet, as if you’re involved in the worship of some strange deity. Tea-bag tea dominates the shelves.

Making proper tea, in a pot with loose tea leaves, is now a minority pursuit. Suddenly it’s considered a bit eccentric, part of a quaint old Anglo world of kippers for breakfast and the darning of socks. When was tea-making consigned to the dustbin of history? Why did it happen?

If you look up ‘tea’ in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points.

This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays of civilisation in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.
When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden:

FIRST it was property, then the stock exchange. Now, a rare tea is at the centre of the latest asset bubble in China, that looks set to burst.

Like fine wine and malt whisky, fermented Pu’er tea improves with age. While a cake of two-year-old Ye Sheng Gucha tea sells for around £20, the 13-year-old fetches £130. And with prices rising by as much as 50 per cent a year, Pu’er is becoming a far better cellaring option than Bordeaux wine.

There was a time, before bottled and flavored teas flooded the markets, that iced tea was brewed at home. It was made with tea bags, usually Lipton, and tap water, and it was sweetened with granulated sugar that floated to the bottom of the pitcher.

The tea was poured into frosty glasses filled with ice, and it tasted of real natural flavors, such as fresh lemon or orange.

No bottled brew with “natural flavors” quite relieves a parched throat like authentic iced tea does. So, with a nod to the past, here’s how to brew your own.

From classic teapots graced with a single apple painting to creative pots in the shape of a tea shop, the Historic Dundee Depot and Museum’s teapot display is quite the eye-catching attraction.

The 37 teapots have been on display since June 1. While the depot staff generally changes the display each month, the teapot display will be kept another month.

“There are things here that children would be interested in,” said Martha Lowe, a volunteer who works at the museum and is a member of the board that was given the responsibility to take over the depot in May 1998.