I have speculated in this very column whether it is correlated with a liking for cats or dogs. I have asked what Chinese teas/infusions I would recommend for a coffee lover to try; wheat tea (大麦茶) or burdock-root (牛蒡茶) tea. I have also asked aloud what makes me (and most other people) enjoy one so passionately more than the other. Well, this month, we have (perhaps) learnt a bit more. A study by Northwestern University, Illinois, USA, has identified specific DNA differences correlating with humans drinking coffee or tea. Apocalypse Tea; Should I...

I’m going to stop doing it. And not only because the law has changed. I’m going to put this filthy habit to bed… if I can.  Like that petty criminal in that O. Henry story, I will reform. My vice is tea-leaf chucking.  I’ve long thought of myself as better than other litterers. I would never have thrown the contents of an ashtray out of the window, nor plastic yoghurt pots. I’ve thought of the tea leaves I chuck as “like the leaves of Autumn”; fresh from nature and eager to return to nature. Indeed, the...

By coincidence, I was recently drinking Yunnan Green tea anyway. My favourite market-stall had been selling some. Yeah, it was cheap. And, despite the unpromising smell and ashen grey appearance, I was curious. I had not bought any of this stuff while in Yunnan itself. I remember seeing it piled high in the market there, dusty, no effort towards preservation. “That’s not the way to treat green tea”, I thought. Moreover, the Yunnan sellers themselves told us not to buy it! Buy the pu er, they said; this can only by...

Strainer readers may recall, about 3 years ago, reading about a new concept in tea preparation. It was called InWE Tea (因味茶). It exerted on the tea leaf high pressure as well as high heat, much like brewing an espresso. I was excited.  Maybe I was wrong to be too excited. While most of the company’s tea bars do still exist, my prediction that we would all start fracking our tea leaves has been unfulfilled; tea capsule machines have not become mainstream.   Except that aluminium tea capsules are appearing. Maybe you’ve...