Rare Tea

I recently received this lovely email and pictures of the prettiest tea-lady ever.

I have always liked “real” tea, but found it hard to come by. Lara and I were taking her sister for a holiday swim at the Guildford leisure centre (our pool in Putney has no slides) when we heard you on the Radio 4 Food Programme. Lara has also become a bit of a tea addict (she is 9), so we decided to try you out straight away.

To date, we have tried Silver Tip White (most unusually lovely one we’ve tried), Lost Malawi (our favourite everyday tea), Oolong and Jasmine Silver Tip. We like them all in different circumstances, and Lara’s Mummy is very pleased that Silver Tip White is low in caffeine!

We plan to work our way through the whole menu, and our only request is that Lost Malawi starts to be available as a refill pack, as we don’t know what to do with all the spare tins!

Thank you for introducing us to rare tea!

Kind regards
Lara and Alastair

Messages likethis make me more happy than I could possibly describe. Thank you so much Lara and Alastair.

I promise the next order of Lost Malawi tea will come in pouches and tins. I stupidly didn’t order enough pouches last time and they ran out so quickly. Sorry. But the tins can be used for all sorts of things- I use mine for storing pens on my desk. I have some in the kitchen full of sugar, split peas, cashew nuts, peppercorns and bay-leaves.

This year at the Real food Festival we served over 2000 cups of tea a day- all loose leaf, all made in tea-pots. They said we couldn’t do it but we most certainly did. Well, actually, Katherine did.

The world’s finest tea-lady.

Not long to go- next Friday 9th it all starts. There is going to be a massive tea party at the heart of the show. Do please come if you’re anywhere near London.

You can use this code RA86R700 to get discounted tickets at www.realfoodfestival.co.uk

And if you happen to be passing Earl’s Court look how big for my Vivienne Westwood shoes I have become

On Monday 24th I’ll be in the John Lewis Food Hall on Oxford Street from 4pm until about 7pm.

On Thursday 27th I’ll be back at Oxford Street in the morning and from 5-9pm I’ll be at the Canary Wharf branch.

Please come and have a cup of tea with me.

Today in the G2 section of the Guardian you can read about my quest for White Silver Tip Tea.

I was going to leave it at that and try to seem as though its an everyday occurrence that I get a piece published in the Guardian. But it’s not and I can’t. It’s brilliant.