"Christopher Hitchens And George Orwell’s Ironclad Rules for Making a Good Cup of Tea"

From Open Culture:

It’s not that I don’t appreciate good coffee—I consider it a delicacy. But at the end and the beginning of the day, coffee mostly functions as a caffeine delivery system. But not tea. Tea must be savored, and it must be good. Americans’ enthusiasm for tea does not come naturally. What passes for tea in the U.S. is best described by Christopher Hitchens as “a cup or pot of water, well off the boil, with the tea bags lying on an adjacent cold plate.” (See his January 2011 piece in Slate called “How to Make a Decent Cup of Tea.”) If this doesn’t sound wrong, he elaborates, setting up his endorsement of George Orwell’s methodical instructions for proper tea:

Then comes the ridiculous business of pouring the tepid water, dunking the bag until some change in color occurs, and eventually finding some way of disposing of the resulting and dispiriting tampon surrogate. The drink itself is then best thrown away, though if swallowed it will have about the same effect on morale as a reading of the memoirs of President James Earl Carter.

I like Jimmy Carter. I haven’t read his memoirs, and this does indeed sound awful. And before I had learned anything at all about drinking tea, it was all I knew. I tried. I cribbed a few notes here and there, wrote in tea shops, read the rough-hewn formalism of Sen no Rikyu, and looked to the East. I did not look to Britain and her former Commonwealth.

Perhaps I should. George Orwell would probably say so. Hitchens as well, though they don’t perfectly agree with each other. “Tea,” wrote Orwell in his famous 1946 essay “A Nice Cup of Tea,” “is one of the mainstays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but… the manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.” The only disagreement Hitchens musters against Orwell is that some of his rules, “(always use Indian or Ceylonese—i.e. Sri Lankan—tea; make tea only in small quantities; avoid silverware pots) may be considered optional or outmoded.”

Many old restraints may be loosened. But make no mistake, for Hitchens, as for Orwell, making a good cup of tea is not about mindfulness, patience, impermanence, or meditation. It is about rules. Orwell had 11. The “essential ones are easily committed to memory, and they are simple to put into practice.” What are they? Hitchens has his own succinct paraphrase, which you can read over at Slate. Orwell’s rather baroque list we reprint, in part, below for your edification. Read the complete essay here. Hitchens recommends you straighten out your next barista on some tea essentials. Imagine, however, presenting such an unfortunate person with this list of demands:...MORE