Blizzards, snow drifts, cars left abandoned on icy roads-these are all part and parcel of a normal day for the Tracing Tea team in Central Asia…knowledge which has proved useful this week in the villages of Cambridgeshire.

Megan and I headed up to Histon library for our first tea tasting of the new year. Despite such adverse weather conditions we had a great turn out for the event with long standing members of the monthly groups appearing as well as some new faces.

As ever, Megan’s stories of tea espionage, 17th century sheep’s dung ’smooch’ and exploding tea warehouses had everyone intrigued. With sub-zero temperatures outside it was the perfect afternoon to get stuck in to some fine Darjeelings and unsurprisingly, it was the strong black teas which went down a treat this time. The Russian Caravan also proved popular, certainly meeting with more approval in Histon than in Barrington- never try to serve girl guides smoked tea!

Bernadette had put on a great spread of cream cheese sandwiches, and soon the questions were flowing. Even if some teas tastes better at 80 degrees shouldn’t we still use boiling water for sanitary reasons? Where does the word ‘tea’ originate? Does tea contain lots of antioxidants, and can I therefore include it in my new year’s healthy eating regime?

Well, this certainly kept us on our toes and you can rest assured that all the answers will be found in the documentary.

Thanks to all at Histon library, particularly Bernadette Thompson for all her help.

If you or your organisation are interested in holding a Tracing Tea tea tasting please do get in touch: cath@maximumexposureproductions.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 4:22 am and is filed under World Tea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.