How I Learned to Make Tea (the Proper Way)

(Note: This post is actually my homework from a writing class I'm taking. The assignment was to write about someone I love and describe them to the reader. OK, but how to describe my husband? Where should I start? I thought about all the things that I find unique about him, and what kept surfacing was his passion for a good cup of tea :-))

I’ll often lie in bed in the morning, half-dazed from my alarm clock’s repeated attempts to wake me up. But when I hear “Good mornin’!”, feel a kiss on my cheek and hear the clunk of a ceramic mug on the bedside table next to me, that’s my final cue to wake up. If I don’t, I’ll soon hear the voice bellowing from the kitchen, “Drink your tea while it’s hot!” 

In the earliest days of our relationship, I offered him a cup of tea at my place. But I only had a half-crushed old box of Lipton’s teabags that was left by an old roommate in my last apartment. For some reason, I’d never thought to throw it out when I moved, even if I wasn’t really a tea drinker back then. I made him a cup anyway, to which he politely said “thank you”, drank two tiny sips, and quietly placed the cup down for good. I didn’t think much of it. But that was a few days before I knew I would marry him, and discovered that he takes tea quite seriously.

His father taught him how to make a proper “cuppa”, as they call it in Scotland, when he was a boy: Boil cold water in a kettle. Always use a teapot and warm it, along with the cups, with a splash of boiling water. Steep the tea for 3-5 minutes (and please, no Liptons! English Breakfast, Darjeeling, Assam or even Yorkshire tea is preferred), and pour a wee splash of cold milk into the cup before adding the hot tea. Never, ever use hot milk – it MUST be cold. It takes the edge off the boiling water, you see.

And drink it while it’s piping hot.

Where he comes from, tea is drank at breakfast, late morning, lunch, mid-afternoon, dinner (even with fish and chips), and really any time of day there’s a celebration, a crisis, an important occasion, or those moments in-between when just don’t know what else to do with yourself.

After several years of marriage, he’s not only taught me to make a perfect cuppa, but he's also educated many baristas and waiters who’ve mistakenly made his tea with frothy steamed milk (“It’s not coffee!” he’ll lament) or have given him a cup of microwaved hot water with a Lipton’s teabag on the side.

“You just can’t get a good cup of tea in America.” he’ll sigh under his breath, before he patiently explains, once again, how to make tea the proper way.





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