Tea - In the beginning

We had a family holiday in the UK some three weeks ago, part of which was visiting the sites in London. As we crossed Tower Bridge one could see where the old tea wharfes used to be in the days when Tea was brought up the Thames. Today of course it's all fashionable flats, and this wonderful history that existed prior to striking dockers and the invention of containerisation is all but lost.

However what it did do was to remind me of some of the stories my Grandfather used to tell when he worked in London in the 1920's.

His first job was with a tea brokers, that is a business that used to buy tea off the market and then onwardly sell it to the trade, another line of business that has now virtually died out.

His job in those days was to taste the Assam tea. Whereas today we're lucky to see more than 3 or 4 samples of Assam tea, he used to have tray upon tray to taste. The samples would come in from the auction house and his job was to value the tea, that is establish its worth to his company. He told me that his valuation had to be within a "farthing" of the price paid in the tea auction otherwise he could be in big trouble.

Now for those of you unfamiliar as to what a "farthing" is, it's a unit of old English money, in fact it used to be a 1/4 of a penny. Given that when old money converted to decimal in the mid 1970's you got 2 1/2 new pence for an old 6d, that makes a farthing worth 1/10th of a new penny. Not much margin to play with then!

What it did however do was teach him the value of tea to other players in the market. He knew when to pay more for tea, or if he had bought a tea particularly cheaply. He knew how to blend tea so as to add value to it. He knew what other tea packers needed and how much they were willing to pay.

His expertise allowed him to became quite successful, to the point where he was supplying the world famous P&O lines with all their tea requirements. Bear in mind that this was in a time before tea bags, and all tea was supplied to the docks in tea chests.

After the war he started to do business in Jersey, supplying most of the major Hotels with their loose tea requirements, and in 1964 he bought out Cooper & Co. a business that has been on Jersey since at least 1890, and which I now run, the grandson of the original owner.

So there's a bit of our history. Over the next few blogs, I will endeavour to carry on the family tradition in tea as we taste the different teas and tissanes that we stock today and give you our tasting notes. I will also be giving advice on how to make the perfect cup of tea.