Trouble brewing

‘Milk?…Milk!’ rages Nirmal Sethia, clutching the side of the table in ill-disguised apoplexy. ‘If you put in milk and sugar then you have destroyed the taste! Destroyed it!’

I apologise and say I will happily drink my Earl Grey black. The truth is, I don’t have much choice, because I am trapped in a basement near Smithfield meat market with an impassioned tea magnate.

I never knew there was such a thing, but there really is. Tea is an art form, you see, and although we Brits think we know quite a bit about it — well, we like drinking it morning, noon and night — we actually don’t know anything because we no longer drink proper tea, by and large, and have thus betrayed our great tea heritage. Mr Sethia is very cross about this. So cross that he borders on throwing a full-on tantrum when I ask for semi-skimmed.

To show me what real tea is, the founder of Newby Teas pours me out a small bowl of bright amber-coloured liquid and insists I slurp it with a silver spoon.

As much as 95 per cent of the taste of cheap tea is lost in transit due to poor storage and packaging methods. So a lot of our tea is to proper tea as Blue Nun is to wine, he says. And did I know, he says, pointing his finger in the air, that 99 per cent of that so-called builders’ tea — ‘Pah!’ — that I am buying will have black fungus in it? ‘Black fungus causes cancer!’ he cries, enjoying the look of fear on my face. I did not know this, I say, and I promise Mr Sethia I will be more careful the next time I am in the tea and coffee aisle.

To Sethia, a fine tea is a good deal more complex than a glass of Pétrus.