How to drink: Tea (part one)

Fine tea can be as expensive as the highest-quality wine, but is it worth its bank-busting price tag?
Tregothnan estate tea
Tregothnan Estate Afternoon tea, grown in Devon Photograph: Guardian

My visit to the Tregothnan Estate in Cornwall, where they have a tiny tea
plantation, was so fleeting there wasn't time for a tasting. I had a stroll around the tea plants in the early morning drizzle and noted that camellia sinensis has narrower leaves and looks a bit, well, scraggy compared to the species cultivated for their vivid flowers.

I had a chat with garden director Jonathon Jones, who pointed out that, so keen are we on tea, that during the second world war Churchill, fearing the deleterious effects of a national shortage, first considered the practicalities of growing tea here on a mass scale. Then, realising this would take too long, instructed stockpiles to be kept in secret locations around Britain. And then I bundled onto the train back to London, with a big bag of tea samples to try once I got home.

I was curious to know what English-grown tea might taste like. But it was only when I got back from Cornwall that I realised my error. It was all in the small print: the tiny packets proclaimed themselves to be English Estate Afternoon and English Estate Classic Tea, but they weren't pure. They were blended with specially-imported black tea from India and China. "Sorry," said Jonathon, when I called him, "I should have given you some of the single estate tea. But don't worry, you can get it from Fortnum's."

And so you can. I found it behind the tea counter, where dozens of speciality teas are kept in majestic, oriental urns and carefully weighed out by men in crisp shirts with starchy collars.

"How much would you like?" asked a young starchy collar.
"Oh, I don't know, say 100g?"
"Well, it'll have to be 125g. That's the smallest amount we sell."
"Actually," mused starchy, "we've had this six weeks and you're the first
person to ask for it."
I nodded absently.
"It's the most expensive tea we sell," he added, as a friendly afterthought.

That did get my attention. Tea can be as dear as fine wine. But presumably tea grown in a damp, rainy garden in Cornwall couldn't command the price of a first growth claret in a good vintage - could it?

"How much?" I asked.

I absorbed this. 1000g divided by 125g is eight, then 180 divided by eight, so that would be £22.50 for the tightly-curled, reddish-black mass of dry tea resting in the pan of the weighing scales. Certainly pricier than PG Tips but, as an experience, manageable. There was just one thing I needed to check.

"That is £180 per kilo?"
Starchy collar looked surprised. "No, for the 125g."

Christ on a bike. In the absence of an expense account, or a roving MP who might kindly agree to put it on his, I resorted to calling the press office who agreed to break the 125g rule and sell me a minuscule quantity. It still cost £30 for a few teaspoonsful, but as I was en route to a tasting with speciality importer Jing Tea, I thought that at the very least I could get an expert opinion on it.

The average price of the tea crop sold in auctions in Kenya last year was $2.33 (£1.40) a kilo. Much of this is the stuff that goes into teabags. High-end Chinese pu-erh, on the other hand, which is formed into cakes and, like wine, may be matured for decades, costs even more than the £1,440 per kilogram retail price charged for Tregothnan Estate.

Can such tea ever be worth the cost? Jing's Edward Eisler describes the act of drinking a truly fine tea as being akin to "a religious experience" which might sound a bit intense, but it certainly provides an adjustment to the price scale. A couple of thousand pounds for a few religious experiences doesn't seem too steep. And I do know what Eisler means. When you sip a good wine, or a good tea, the rest of the world drops away, suspending you in a calm, meditative state of clarity.

Please stop swivelling your eyeballs. Fine tea - it's not a great name for it, but it's better than artisan tea, which as Eisler says has the off-putting air of the phrase 'craft fair' - is an entirely different drink to builder's tea, but it need not be so stratospheric. Good tea is nuanced and stimulating, to both the palate and the mind; because it satisfies these desires, it's what I choose to drink on on non-alcohol-drinking days (yes, I do have them) and I find I don't miss it one little bit.

Such teas are better drunk out of smaller cups - large mugs are just too overwhelming. I'm about to buy some of the small, Chinese-style cups that you refill over and over. "Straight-sided cups are good for drinking on your own," advises Eisler, because they feel cosy. "The ones that open out like saucers feel more sociable."

He is right. Eisler is also keen on glass teapots, that allow the aesthetic indulgence of watching the leaves swell and unfurl: "It's good to get intimate with the leaf."

I'll report on the Jing Teas I tried next week. For now, the verdict on the Tregothnan Estate, which I asked Eisler to taste blind went as follows: "Looking at it, from the colour and shape of the leaf and the flecks of green, it resembles darjeeling. It has good body and richness, but it doesn't have clarity of presentation of flavour, which is the key thing I look for in whatever tea I'm buying. It's also slightly burnt. I'd guess someone would use it for blending."

It wasn't an ecstatic experience for me either. Though when I did tell Eisler where the tea was from he admitted to being surprised by its quality: "For a Cornish tea it's much better than I expected!"

But not, I would say, worth £10 a cup.

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