Suntory’s bottled “Black Oolong Tea” is an institution, as well loved in China as in its native Japan. And here it is, refrigerated and available for purchase, in the UK. Always the stingy skinflint, I resent paying three times the price when the main ingredient, water, is on tap and essentially free. But here it is. Nice to know.    I buy a packet of oolong leaves instead. This is an Asian supermarket in Cardiff. These stores are easier to find than ever, thanks to the steady stream of Chinese students...

Let me tell you about this green tea I’m drinking. Laoshan tea (崂山茶), from Qingdao. It’s all a bit of a mystery. But, as these leaves unravel (slowly), I’m building up more of a picture. Let’s be honest; Baidu is helping out as well. This tea was a gift from a friend, who, like the tea, hails from Shandong,that peninsula jutting out from the east of China. It’s not North China. But Shandong is distinctly “northern” in tea terms; further north than Henan, home of the previous, most-northerly tea plantation mentioned...

There are those who love dogs and those who love cats. It’s common to meet fans of either, rarer to find people fond of both. With drinks, there’s a similar polarization; few people enjoy coffee and tea equally. I’ve written about coffee in this tea column. For me, the enjoyment is real, but still a disappointment after that tantalising aroma. As with cigar smoking, my mouth experience pales against my nose experience. As with cigars; something of coffee, something ashen, clings to the inside of my mouth long beyond its...

The term, “flatscreen TV”, continues to be used in 2023. I sometimes wonder why. Seems to denote value, luxury, modernity. “Police seized 15 stolen flatscreen television sets”; “The room features a mini-bar and flatscreen TV”.  It’s actually been impossible to buy a new TV which isn’t flat for at least 15 years, making the “flatscreen” preface useless. Yet it persists. There’s a name for this; “redundancy”.  Other examples include “each and every”, “balsa wood” or “cease and desist”.  Like bad handwriting, these are perpetrated more often by first language users, because they rely...