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Years ago, when my daughter was a baby and I was a single mum living on benefits, I lived a pretty frugal life. The meals I cooked would have made Jack Monroe (of cookingonabootstrap.com) proud, as I rustled together tasty and inventive stuff that often cost literally pennies.
I was a tea lover back then too, of course. Just one on a very restricted budget. No matter how little money I had, I couldn’t bring myself to bring to drink cheap tea. Loose Leaf was more economical, not least because you could refill the tea pot several times with the same leaves. (And whoa! I’ve just realised why I have an aversion to resteeping tea. I’m not poor anymore. Obviously, some bit of my brain thinks that I shouldn’t have to do that these days.)
I had a small supply of Whittard teas that I’d either bought in the sales or had been given as presents. And as I recall, one of my favourite teas from that time in my life was Whittard Russian Caravan.
So it was in the spirit of nostalgia, that in a recent order from Whittard, I impulsively added some Russian Caravan to my basket. If I had been less impulsive about my purchase, I might have checked the ingredients list and realised that the blend contains my sworn nemesis Lapsang Souchong (which I have likened to ashtrays and burnt pans of milk in the past).
Russian Caravan tea is named after the camel caravans, which used to take tea from China to Russia in the eighteenth century. The Russian’s love of a cup of tea even predates Britain’s preoccupation with the stuff.
It was, as you would expect, a very long journey. Story has it that every night, the caravanners would light wood fires for food and warmth, and the smell of these campfires permeated the tea. Rather than turning their nose up at this woodsmoke tea (as I would have done), the Russians loved the bonfiery taste, and before long, the Chinese tea merchants were smoking their tea on purpose in order to satisfy the customer’s taste for it.
Which brings me back to my inadvertent Lapsang Souching purchase and my 1990s tea-drinking self. I was quite prepared to give this a go with the openest of minds. It was no good. I really didn’t like this tea because it was, as one might expect, far too Lapsang-Souching-y.
So what happened? I loved this tea when I was in my twenties. I don’t think Whittard’s recipe can have changed all that much. Lapsang Souchong seems to be an essential part of all Russian Caravan blends. It’s possible that in my straitened circumstances, I was happy with any high-quality tea that I could get my hands on, even one with Lapsang Souchong in it.
But the most likely explanation is the simplest. I’ve changed. I’m not the same person now that I was when I was twenty-three. (And apparently, the person I used to be, loved a bit of Lapsang Souchong.)
It’s like LP Hartley said in The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country. They drink weird tea there.”
Today’s featured book is From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming, my version seems to be some kind of Smirnoff-vodka-tie-in-copy for some reason.
