Chai Wallah Margate – Mango and Apple Black
Today’s tea is Chai Wallah Margate’s Mango & Apple Black and it was inspired by this month’s Shelterbox Book Club’s book, Three Apples Fell From The Sky by Narine Abgaryan. I have been a member of the Shelterbox Book Club since last August but this is only the third time that I’ve mentioned it here. This is because I have been really bad at finishing the books within the six-week timescale. Not so this month. Abgaryan’s book held me absorbed from the moment I picked it up and I had got to the end of the book well in time for this week’s Discussion Week.
Shelterbox
Shelterbox is an amazing charity who provide emergency shelter and tools for people made homeless by disaster and conflict. They work in countries all over the world including Syria, Haiti and Yemen. And, of course, right now they are providing support to families in Ukraine, by sending mattresses to people living in makeshift homes in collective centres, like schools and sports centres, and by providing shelter kits to help people survive in buildings damaged by the conflict.
If you would like to help support their work you can do so at shelterbox.org.
Three Apples Fell From The Sky
Shelterbox Book Club is is a great way to support Shelterbox’s work and to read books that tell the stories of people all around the globe. Three Apples Fell From The Sky by Narine Abgaryan is a beautifully crafted story which weaves together the many interlocking lives of the villagers of Maran in Armenia. This book starts and ends with Anatolia, a solitary ex-librarian and survivor of an abusive marriage, whose romance with quiet, steadfast blacksmith, Vasily, blossoms into something truly miraculous.
By the end of this book, I felt warm and uplifted, but there was a lot of misery to go through to get there. The villagers’ lives are beset by war, natural disasters and personal tragedy. But, through it all, the sense of love and community shine through. There are supernatural elements woven into the story threading the prosaic lives of the characters with a fairy tale quality.
There are so many different stories told here that it would be unfair to single out particular ones, but I really loved Nastasya’s story. She married the son of a villager and her visit to Maran to meet her parents-in-law is a wonderfully joyous part of the book.
The name of the book comes from an Armenian saying: “And three apples fell from heaven: One for the storyteller, one for the listener and one for the eavesdropper.
Chai Wallah Margate – Mango Apple Black
Naturally, I needed a tea with ‘apple’ in its name to pair with this book and Chai Wallah Margate’s Mango & Apple Black turned out to be an excellent choice. This tea contains Sri Lankan black tea, Indian Darjeeling, dried mango, dried apple, sunflower petals, safflower and natural flavouring.
It is the perfect marriage of tea and fruit. Both the apple flavour and mango flavour come through loud and clear but they don’t, for a moment, threaten to overpower the black teas at the base of this brew. It’s rather like an Earl Grey that’s been taken in a different, non-citrusy direction. It is certainly a tea I could happily drink on a daily basis.
Conclusion. (And an Apology.)
This has been a funny hodgepodge of review and I’m not sure I’ve expressed myself at all well. It probably wasn’t a great idea to try and tackle a tea review, book review and the worst war in Europe for years in one post.
It feels quite callous to still be twatting on about tea when the people of Ukraine are under fire. But – other than supporting charities like Shelterbox or the Red Cross – I don’t know what else I can do. It’s not that I don’t care. But right now, right here, I am drinking tea and reading books in a quiet corner of England and I really do appreciate how fortunate I am to be able to do that.
You can buy Three Apples Fell From The Sky by Narine Abgaryan directly from Shelterbox here.
