The drink that played a huge role in public health and contributed to victory in two world wars is under threat, and it’s well we remember that as Anzac Day approaches. I, for one, mourn its impending demise but feel powerless to prevent it. Market forces are driving the good stuff underground.
I suppose I am a tea addict. I wake at daybreak, thirsty for it. Tea is my first thought and it gets me out of bed. To kickstart my day, I need a pot of it. Tea has the refreshing taste the advertisements claim for it, even though it is fermented, packaged, transported and awaits us on a shelf.
I acquired my habit from my father, and have made it strong with a dash of milk, no sugar, ever since. He was a one-brand chap when there were few choices, though he affectionately called the Kiwi variety – any of them – “floor sweepings”.
To my ancestors’ horror, those who drink it these days most often use teabags, in spite of warnings that the chlorine-bleached paper and the nanoplastic-rich mucilage in most are very harmful in our bodies.
After reaching dizzying heights in quality in recent decades, the real thing – what we used to call loose Ceylon black tea (not the herbal muck) – is in a spiral of decline. Black tea has become the poor cousin of fruity and green teas and is now often confined to the bottom shelf in supermarket “tea” sections. An appeal to staff to consider their grandparents’ old bones and place it at eye level garners no response beyond amusement.
The staff are probably part of the coffee culture, a billion-dollar business requiring massive machines with the decibel output of a taxiing jet that have infected our nation, which was built on tea. We may be nuclear-free, but in music and habits we sound like a colony of America or Italy.
It mystifies me. The expense. The home devices. The ads where film stars promote something where boiling water is forced through aluminium, to add to public health concerns as well as landfill.
The frothy latte or the crazily named flat white seem to be 2% espresso and so much milk I feel queasy afterwards. But try requesting tea at a cafe. You guessed it: a teabag. Dunk your own. That’ll be $4, please.
So I politely show the barista how to make a cafe noisette, which is common in Paris, though they use that awful long-life milk. (Their fridges are full of white wine.)
Tea sped the clipper ships of the great age of sail. When the Commutation Act of 1784 (the “tea and windows act”) reduced the tax on tea from 119% to 12.5%, the popularity of the drink exploded. In an age of terrible waterborne pathogens, boiling water for tea reduced mortality significantly in the slums after the Industrial Revolution. By 1800, even the poorest peasant drank two cups a day. Infant mortality declined and mothers lived longer.
In the World War II campaign against Rommel, the NZ Thermette, presumably fuelled with petrol, boiled water for tea, the lifeblood of the Long Range Desert Group. The resulting charred circles in the dust puzzled German reconnaissance.
From the trenches of the Somme to the jungles of Southeast Asia, the Anzacs marched on their tea. Along with cigarettes, tea arguably won each war.
My friendly supermarket chap was at the tea shelves the other day and I asked if the loose tea was higher up for the sake of pensioners who don’t wish to kneel on the floor. He said some suits had been through and removed most loose tea, my preferred Kiwi brand, Chanui, included. I had to buy an Aussie one where the tea is in bare cardboard.
I can hear my father speaking from beyond the grave: Blimmin’ floor sweepings.
David Calder is a New Plymouth song writer and broadcaster.
